AmHst21_Global.pdf

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Read the following material before attending the workshop. As you read the excerpts and primary sources, take note of the “Questions to Consider” as well as any questions you have. The activities in the workshop will draw on information from the readings and the video shown during the workshop.

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ntroduCtion

From the 1970s to the present, conservatism, globalization, and an emphasis on individual rights and non-discrimination have changed the United

States. Conservatism has sought to limit the role of the federal government, advance the market economy, and return the nation to a faith-based society. Globalization further integrated the United States with the world through immigration, trade, and the exchange of popular culture. Inspired by the civil rights movement, a variety of groups sought to expand their rights.

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BJeCtives

After reading the text materials, participating in the workshop activities, and watching the video, teachers will understand

• how the processes of globalization have changed labor, trade, and American culture;

• why and how conservatives came to power;

• the factions prevalent in the conservative movement; • the signiﬁ cance of the “rights revolution” in furthering

egalitarianism in American society.

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• Textbook excerpts (sections of U.S. history surveys, written for introductory college courses by history professors)

• Primary sources (documents and other materials created by the people who lived in the period) including photographs and a speech

• A timeline at the end of the unit, which places important events in the context of contemporary America

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Unit 21 Global America

Theme 1:

The rise of conservatism has limited the role of the federal government, promoted the market forces driving globalization, and raised issues of morality and religion in the public sphere.

Theme 2:

Cultural diversity and egalitarianism continue to shape American society through globalization, immigration, and an emphasis on individual rights and non-discrimination.

Theme 3:

As the United States emerged from the Cold War in the early 1990s, the processes of globalization—such as immigration, trade, and the sharing of popular culture—have linked Americans closely to the rest of the world.

Following the turmoil of the 1960s and early 1970s, the conservative movement in the United States achieved its long-term goal of returning to power. The bitter divisions precipitated by the Vietnam War, the economic effects of the oil crisis, and a general malaise with the nation’s standing in the world presented an opportunity for conservatives. With the victory of Richard Nixon in 1968 and his sweeping reelection in 197, the tide began to turn against liberalism in post-Industrial America.

Conservatives expressed serious and genuine beliefs about moral corruption, a rise in the divorce rate, and disrespect for traditional authority. They also emphasized national power and the importance of the United States in playing a dominant role in world affairs. Focusing on private enterprise, “economic conservatives” sought to reduce the role of big government, lower taxes, and limit regulation that hindered business competition; “social conservatives” promoted a return to a faith-based society. Both economic and social conservatives became adept in fundraising, the use of electronic communication to mobilize supporters, and the establishment of conservative “think tanks” to provide an intellectual apparatus to strengthen the conservative agenda.

Originating in the civil rights movement of the 1960s, the “rights revolution” aspired to include all Americans in a fully equal citizenship. A variety of groups worked to expand their rights. The rights revolution came to embrace peoples of color, women, homosexuals, and people with disabilities.

Globalization—the accelerating phenomenon of worldwide technological, economic, political, and cultural exchange—accompanied the social integration occurring with the rights revolution. Though the changes it brought altered the world, the concept of globalization was far from new: It was created through modern communication, improved transportation, and political decision-making to expand international trade and finance.

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Historical Perspectives

During the 1970s, Americans experienced job loss and a decline in public services, which presented an opportunity for conservatives to gain political power by emphasizing the failure of the liberal movement. By 1980, Ronald Reagan had ascended to the presidency, and the Republican Party gained control of the Senate. Behind these right-wing political gains existed internal disagreements between economic conservatives, who advocated minimal government regulation, and social conservatives, who pressed for morality in public life.

Paralleling the conservative movement, a burgeoning rights revolution emerged that focused on group identity. Originating in the civil rights movement of the 1960s, it came to include a plurality of groups whose unifying characteristic extended beyond race or gender, such as homosexuals or people with disabilities. By the 1990s, a reevaluation of the notions of race and culture took place in the United States as more and more immigrants entered the country from Latin America and Asia.

Changes in labor, trade, and business practices from within and without the United States reflected the technological, economic, political, and cultural

exchanges produced by globalization.

Faces of America

During the last quarter of the twentieth century and the early years of new millennium, the examples of Phyllis Schlafly, a conservative activist; Shareda Hosein, an Islamic immigrant; and Tulio Serrano, a political refuge, demonstrated the paradoxical forces of divergence and commonality at play in the modern United States.

In response to feminism, Phyllis Schlafly founded the Eagle Forum in an effort to appeal to American women who identified themselves as wives and mothers. Schlafly saw it as her moral duty to espouse family and tradition, and stymie the efforts of feminists to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment.

Shareda Hosein emigrated from Trinidad after the 1965 reforms that welcomed immigrants from non-European countries. Hosein was an active member of the United States Army since 1979, but her moral and spiritual beliefs fostered an interest in becoming a chaplain. She applied to become the first female Muslim chaplain in the U.S. military but was denied.

In 1989, Tulio Serrano came from a small village in El Salvador. He sought political asylum in the United States from a civil war—funded by U.S. dollars and ammunitions—that displaced millions. Serrano’s efforts to obtain citizenship reflected the contradiction the United States presents as both military giant and bastion of political freedom.

Hands on History

How do scientists balance ethics and science when studying DNA?

Theodore Schurr, professor of molecular anthropology at the University of

Pennsylvania, has spent the last twenty years gathering DNA samples from indigenous peoples from around the world. He has concentrated his efforts on people who have historically lived on the landmasses surrounding North America. Schurr explains how the issue of tribal consent has both hindered and enlightened his research.

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Theme One:

The rise of conservatism has limited the role of the federal

government, promoted the market forces driving globalization, and

raised issues of morality and religion in the public sphere.

Overview

Over the past quarter of a century, political conservatism has gathered momentum as a reaction to the liberal policies of the 1960s and 1970s. As the economy turned downward in the 1970s, the working class began to identify less with the Democratic Party on economic and political issues.

In 1976, the election of Jimmy Carter represented a transitional moment for Democrats. Carter became the first born-again Christian elected president, and his election

demonstrated the emerging role of evangelism in politics. Carter also differed from New Deal Democrats in that he was a fiscal conservative who advocated a balanced budget and remained uncommitted to liberal social-welfare programs.

Job loss, a shrinking tax base, and a decline of public services culminated in a crisis in most American cities, which largely impacted minorities. Economic decline intersected with a dissatisfaction with the civil rights movement when the gains promised failed to materialize. During times of unemployment, some white workers resented affirmative action programs for non-whites and women.

Conservatives gained political power by emphasizing the failings of the liberal

movement and the fears of mainstream America. Through their critique of liberal values, conservatives persuaded many Americans that the Democrats’ system was not working and the federal government should not play a prominent role in forming social policy.

Questions to Consider

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5 Unit 21 Global America

1.

“Reaganomics” and the Assault on Welfare

Taxes played a crucial role in the Reagan administration’s efforts to reduce government involvement in the economy. Compared with America’s closest allies in Europe, U.S. tax rates were already low because of the country’s smaller welfare provisions. But a tax revolt had begun brewing in the 1970s, exemplified by California’s Proposition 1 (1978), which cut property taxes by more than half. In 1981, Reagan proposed a new tax law to lower federal income tax rates by 5 percent over three years. Congress passed the legislation, and the top individual rate—paid only by the wealthiest Americans—dropped from 70 percent to 8 percent. Congress also slashed taxes on corporations, capital gains, and inheritances, further benefiting the most affluent Americans.

As taxes shrank, federal spending on the military soared. The Pentagon bolstered its conventional and nuclear arsenals and gave service personnel a morale-boosting salary increase . . .

With less money coming in from taxes but more money flowing out to the military, the government did not seem to be on the path to fiscal responsibility touted by the Republican party. The funds for the weapons build-up could come from only one source: social programs at home. However, most domestic spending went to popular programs, such as Social Security and Medicare, which primarily benefited the middle class. Leaving those in place, Reagan instead reduced funding for welfare programs, including food stamps, school lunches, job training, and low-income housing . . . The assault on welfare had links to racial issues as well. Reagan portrayed welfare recipients—most of whom were white and lived in rural areas—as primarily urban and African American. The president had made a blunt appeal to white southern voters in 1980. He had campaigned in Philadelphia, Mississippi, a tiny town but a national symbol of antiblack violence since three civil rights workers had been murdered nearby in 196. There, Reagan spoke of his support for “states’ rights”—the same language that those who supported the killers had used . . .

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the world’s largest creditor nation, the United States became its largest debtor nation. Between 1981 and 1989, the national debt ballooned to almost $ trillion. Moreover, during 1 years of Republican rule, annual budget deficits jumped from $59 billion to $00 billion. Paying the interest on the new debt pushed interest rates higher and siphoned off funds that could have been used for any number of productive purposes.

Despite these problems, “Reaganomics” helped the national economy recover somewhat from the traumas of the 1970s. The tight money policies of the Federal Reserve Board after 1979 eventually tamed inflation, which dropped from 1 percent in 1980 to less than percent in 198. The Fed’s high interest rates also choked off the nation’s cash flow and provoked a severe recession in 1981–198, with unemployment reaching above 10 percent. However, the economy revived again in 198 and was growing at a robust annual rate of 6.8 percent by 198 . . .

Peter H. Wood et al., eds. Created Equal: A Social and Political History of the United States (New York: Pearson Education, 2003), 944–45.

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An Embattled Environment

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The officials Reagan appointed to oversee these lands and assume

responsibility for protecting them had little respect for the agencies they ran. Critics described the situation as “foxes guarding the chicken house.” The officials openly disdained environmentalists, including those in the moderate wing of the Republican party . . . The administration’s reversal of federal environmental policies alarmed a wide range of citizens and stimulated a powerful backlash . . . Membership in environmental organizations soared, in such traditional groups as the Sierra Club and the Audubon Society, as well as in more radical ones, such as Greenpeace . . . The public also took alarm at the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident in the USSR. Three years later, concerns intensified when the oil tanker Exxon Valdez ran aground in Prince William Sound in Alaska, coating 1000 miles of pristine coastline with crude oil. Reagan’s Republican successor in the White House, George Bush, caught on and tried to portray himself as an environmentalist.

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The Rise of the Religious Right

Some of the Americans most troubled by the state of American society were conservative white Protestants. Disproportionately from the South, they had long avoided political involvement and sought to keep church and state separate. They had particularly distrusted Roman Catholicism and state aid for religious education that would include parochial schools. But anti-Catholicism declined sharply among these conservative Christians after the Supreme Court banned organized school prayer in 196 and legalized abortion in 197. Increasingly, conservative white Protestants saw secularism as their real enemy and conservative Catholics as allies.

Together these groups bemoaned the post–1960s shift in mainstream values away from respect for traditional authorities—the church, political leaders, and the military—and toward freer sexual expression and general self-indulgence. What the nation needed, they believed, was a return to reverence for God. The growth of this Christian fundamentalism also paralleled rising religious fundamentalism around the globe, whether among Jews in Israel, Hindus in India, or Muslims in Iran and the Arab Middle East. For all their differences, religious people in these cultures shared a common quest: preserving spiritual purity and cultural traditions in an increasingly secular, integrated world.

Conservative Protestants were not a fringe group. As many as 5 million Americans—0 percent of the population—considered themselves

fundamentalist Christians in 1980. In combination with a similar number of Catholics, they represented a vast potential force in American politics. And their ranks were growing . . .

Conservative Christians mobilized in the 1980 campaign to support Reagan’s candidacy. Critics noted that Reagan himself attended church only occasionally . . . They contrasted the divorced candidate with his born-again, Sunday-school–teaching opponent, Jimmy Carter. But Reagan’s conservative views on abortion and gay rights and his support for school prayer resonated with fundamentalists. They flocked to the Republican party and to new right-wing religious organizations, such as the Moral Majority, founded in 1979 in Lynchburg, Virginia, by Reverend Jerry Falwell. More than 60 million people each week watched—and many sent money to—“televangelists,” including Falwell, Robertson, and Jim Baker.

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tension between social conservatives, who emphasized community and tradition, and free marketeers, who promoted entrepreneurial capitalism. In its quest for profits, unrestrained capitalism had no inherent respect for tradition . . . Reagan managed to keep the two wings of the party together, often referring to his “11th Commandment” to “speak no ill of another Republican.” But tensions persisted. When Falwell called on “all good Christians” to oppose the 1981 Supreme Court nomination of Arizona’s conservative Sandra Day O’Connor on the grounds that she was insufficiently hostile to abortion, Arizona senator and party elder Barry Goldwater—a staunch proponent of small

government and personal privacy—retorted that “every good Christian ought to kick Jerry Falwell right in the ass.”

Gender and sexuality issues particularly aroused the ire of religious conservatives. They blamed feminism for weakening male authority in the family and for increasing divorce rates. A growing anti-abortion movement gained national visibility by 1980; “Operation Rescue” even borrowed the tactics of civil disobedience from the civil rights movement. During the 1970s, states repealed their sodomy laws, reflecting a slowly increasing acceptance of gays and lesbians. But the religious right, which viewed

homosexuality as an abomination, fiercely resisted this trend. Dismayed by the prevalence of casual sexual relationships in the 1970s, church conservatives urged abstinence on young Americans . . .

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pat BuChanan’s “Culture war” speeCh

Question to Consider

How does Buchanan’s speech appeal to the new right wing of the Republican Party?

One year ago, my friends, I could not have dreamt I would be here. I was then still just one of many panelists on what President Bush calls “those crazy Sunday talk shows.”

But I disagreed with the president; and so we challenged the president in the Republican primaries and fought as best we could. From

February to June, he won primaries. I can’t recall exactly how many we won.

But tonight I want to talk to the million Americans who voted for me. I will never forget you, nor the great honor you have done me. But I do believe, deep in my heart, that the right place for us to be now—in this presidential campaign—is right beside George Bush. The party is our home; this party is where we belong. And don’t let anyone tell you any different.

Yes, we disagreed with President Bush, but we stand with him for freedom to choose religious schools, and we stand with him against the amoral idea that gay and lesbian couples should have the same standing in law as married men and women.

We stand with President Bush for right-to-life, and for voluntary prayer in the public schools, and against putting American women in combat. And we stand with President Bush in favor of the right of small towns and communities to control the raw sewage of pornography that pollutes our popular culture.

We stand with President Bush in favor of federal judges who interpret the law as written, and against Supreme Court justices who think they have a mandate to rewrite our Constitution.

My friends, this election is about much more than who gets what. It is about who we are. It is about what we believe. It is about what we stand for as Americans. There is a religious war going on in our country for the soul of America. It is a cultural war, as critical to the kind of nation we will one day be as was the Cold War itself. And in that struggle for the soul of America, Clinton & Clinton are on the other side, and George Bush is on our side. And so, we have to come home, and stand beside him . . .

Patrick J. Buchanan, keynote address, 1992 Republican National Convention, 1992; available at www.buchanan.org (accessed April 3, 2007).

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Audience:

Purpose:

Historical Significance: Creator:

Context:

Patrick J. Buchanan 199 keynote address at the Republican National Convention in support of George Herbert Walker Bush

Republican National Convention

To rally his supporters around George Bush

This excerpt draws from Pat Buchanan’s “culture war” speech. The fiery rhetoric appealed to the right wing of the Republican Party; at the same time it went contrary to the more moderate image that President George H. W. Bush had hoped to convey to the national television audience. Election analysts concluded that Buchanan’s inflammatory

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The New Politics

Conservatism gained respect in the 1980s, not just in the United States but in other parts of the world as well. In Great Britain, for example, the Labour Party had gained power in the latter part of the 1960s, as the nation underscored its commitment to the welfare state. A national health plan provided medical care for all, and a comprehensive educational system opened up opportunities for people limited by the class-bound strictures of the past. But problems with both inflation and unemployment plagued Britain, like other nations, and in the 1980s, the Conservative Party was back in power, with Margaret Thatcher as prime minister. Elsewhere in the late 1980s, particularly as communism began to crumble in Eastern and Central Europe, Christian Democratic movements became increasingly popular. Founded in the early twentieth century to capture the middle ground of moderate conservatism, midway between the Left and the Right, they occasionally came to power, sometimes alone and sometimes in coalitions with other groups. Now, as socialism deteriorated, they seemed a more viable alternative.

In the United States, conservativism attracted countless new adherents after the turbulence of the 1960s and the backlash of the Vietnam War. Innovative advertising and fundraising techniques capitalized on national disaffection with liberal solutions to continuing social problems . . . and made the conservative movement almost unstoppable . . .

The new conservative coalition covered a broad spectrum. Some followers embraced the economic doctrines of University of Chicago economist Milton Friedman, who promoted the free play of market forces and a sharp restriction of governmental activism in regulating the economy. Others applauded the social and political conservatism of North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms, a tireless foe of anything he deemed pornographic and a fervent campaigner for a limited federal role. Still others flocked to the Republican fold because of their conviction that civil rights activists and “bleeding heart liberals” practiced “reverse racism” with affirmative action, job quotas, and busing to promote equal opportunity.

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bothered by a sizable increase in crime. They were likewise troubled by spiraling drug use. Marijuana was not simply a youthful fad but a recreational drug for a broad segment of society. Cocaine use was increasingly common. In short, fundamentalists objected to what they viewed as the liberalizing tendencies they saw all around them and sought to refashion society by reaffirming scriptural morality and the centrality of religion in American life.

Many of these activists belonged to the so-called Moral Majority . . . Moral Majority money began to fund politicians who demanded reinstituting school prayer, ending legalized abortion, and defeating the Equal Rights Amendment . . .

Conservatives from all camps capitalized on changing political techniques more successfully than their liberal opponents. They understood the importance of television in providing instant access to the American public. Politicians became increasingly adept at using “sound bytes,” often lasting no more than 15 or 0 seconds, to state their views. They also relied on new electronic systems such as e-mail, fax machines, and the Internet to mobilize their followers . . . Conservatives likewise led the way in refining their appeal to voters. Polls, sometimes taken daily, showed which part of a candidate’s image needed polishing or where an opponent was vulnerable. “Spin doctors” put the best possible gloss on what politicians said. It was small wonder that Americans became increasingly cynical about politics and avoided voting booths in record numbers . . .

At the same time, conservatives understood the need to provide an intellectual grounding for their positions. Conservative scholars worked in “think tanks” and other research organizations such as the Hoover Institution at Stanford University or the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., that gave conservatism a solid institutional base. Their books, articles, and reports helped elect Ronald Reagan and other conservative politicians.

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nanCy reagan and “Just say no”

How did the “Just Say No” campaign show the conservatives’ view about the role of the federal government in people’s private lives?

Item 4362 Marty Lederhandler/Associated Press, NANCY REAGAN SHOWS OFF HER “JuSt SAY NO” ButtON AS SHE StANDS WItH 18-YEAR-OLD ASHtON MCFADDEN

(1983). Courtesy AP/Wide World.

See Appendix for larger image – pg. 48

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Historical Significance:

Marty Lederhandler /The Associated Press In 198, Nancy Reagan lent her support to the Reagan Administration’s drug-abuse-prevention program.

Young adults To promote a public advertising campaign to persuade young adults ‘to “just say no” to drugs.’

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Conclusion

The rise of economic conservatism emphasized private enterprise and initiative. It also sought to reduce the role of government in people’s lives, lower taxes, and limit government regulation. Social conservatism raised moral issues and brought religion into the political sphere. Conservatives figured out how to communicate a simple message directly to the average person; and succeeded in furthering their movement through e-mail campaigns, talk radio, and other forms of electronic communication. They also laid the foundation for their ideas by establishing “think tanks” to articulate the conservative ideology.

Questions to Consider

1. What factors fueled the rise of the religious right?

2. How was the rise of conservatism related to worldwide political trends?

3. What did religious conservatives and free-market conservatives have in common? How did they differ?

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Cultural diversity and egalitarianism continue to shape American society

through globalization, immigration, and an emphasis on individual rights and

non-discrimination.

Overview

While political conservatism surged, an emphasis on individual rights and non-discrimination continued to shape American society. In 1990, federal legislation extended rights to

Americans with disabilities, but other groups made progress during this period as well. Homosexuals received more rights in the form of company-provided healthcare benefits for partners. Vermont recognized same-sex relationships through civil unions, and Massachusetts legalized gay marriage.

After the passage of the Immigration Act of 1965, new immigrants from Asia and Latin America came to the United States and further diversified American culture. With a larger population, Latinos pushed for greater equality. The cultural influence of Latinos was evident through the increasing use of the Spanish language, the growth of Latino-owned businesses, and politics. In 1981, Henry Cisneros became the first Mexican American mayor of a major U.S. city—San Antonio.

On the census form of 000, the emphasis on individual rights and non-discrimination intersected with immigration through a reevaluation of the notions of race and culture. In 1990, the U.S. Census form listed more than 1 mutually exclusive racial categories; in 000, however, the census form allowed citizens to identify themselves by more than one racial classification.

Questions to Consider

1. How did the emphasis on individual rights and non-discrimination intersect with immigration after 1965?

2. How does the post-1965 immigrant experience compare with that of earlier waves of immigrants?

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1.

The New Pilgrims

The second great wave of immigrants in the twentieth century changed the face of America. The number of immigrants to the United States in the 0-year period from 1981 to 000 was approximately 17.5 million, making it the most voluminous period of immigration in American history. In the decade of the 1990s, close to 10 million immigrants were counted, just less than the 10.1 million immigrants recorded in the 10 years from 1905 to 191, which stands as the all-time record for that span of time. Altogether, nearly one-third of the population growth in the 1990s stemmed from immigration.

Immigrants settled in the 1990s in a pattern resembling that of the previous several decades. Whereas most immigrants around the turn of the preceding century remained near the East Coast, or in contiguous states, in 000, 9.9 percent of the foreign-born settled in western states, with only .6 percent of the foreign-born living in the Northeast. The shift was a result of larger demographic shifts in the United States. As the twentieth century began, the Northeast still dominated the economic and cultural life of the nation. New York City served as a magnet for immigrants, who often ventured no further after getting off the boat at Ellis Island. A hundred years later, the West was increasingly dominant. California had surpassed New York as the most populous state, and Los Angeles International Airport, known as LAX, had replaced Ellis Island as the port of entry for many immigrants.

The sources of recent immigration were similar to those of the 1970s and 1980s. In 000, just over one-third of all immigrants—legal and illegal—came from Central America, while just over one-quarter came from Asia. The continuing influx was the result of factors that led immigrants to want to leave their home countries as well as factors that drew them to the United States. Faltering economies in many countries in Latin America led people living on the fringe to look toward the United States, where a better life might be possible. Inhabitants of African nations, equally poor and faced with a crumbling infrastructure— as water and power sources deteriorated and roads sometimes became impassable—likewise saw hope for a brighter future in America, just as earlier immigrants had years before . . .

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iMMigration: voluMe and sourCes, 1945–1998

The chart below shows the changing pattern of immigration to the United States between 195–1998. How has immigration changed during these years? What accounts for this changing pattern?

Item 6217 Nash et al., 1076.

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2.

Minorities and Women Face the Twenty-First Century

Americans fighting for equality made gains in the 1990s. For African Americans, home ownership and employment figures rose. The numbers of murders and other violent crimes that involved blacks dropped. A record 0 percent of African Americans attended college in 1997, up from percent in 1991. Yet African Americans faced constant reminders that Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream of a color-blind America was not yet a reality. Incremental improvements often failed to erode racist ideas that were a legacy of American slavery. Incidents like the beating of black motorist Rodney King in Los Angeles in 1991 and the rioting that occurred the next year . . . made many people wonder just how much progress the civil rights movement had made . . . The 000 census revealed that the nation was more racially and ethnically diverse than ever before, yet it pointed out that people still lived in neighborhoods inhabited by people like themselves . . .

Affirmative action was one area where blacks faced a backlash . . . Energized by their political victories in 199, conservatives launched a powerful attack on the policy of giving preferential treatment to groups that had suffered discrimination in the past. Arguing that government leaders had never intended affirmative action to be a permanent policy, they pushed ballot initiatives and pressured public agencies to bring the practice to an end . . .

The increasingly conservative Supreme Court also waded into the controversy. In 1995, the Court let stand a lower court ruling prohibiting colleges and universities from awarding special scholarships to African Americans or other minorities. In 1996, it declined to hear an appeal of a U.S. District Court decision two years before in Hopwood v. Texas that prohibited the use of affirmative action in higher education. Meanwhile, other cases moved through the legal system. At the end of 000, a federal judge ruled that the University of Michigan could use race in undergraduate admissions in the effort to promote diversity on campus. But early the next year, another federal judge ruled that the use of race in admissions at the University of Michigan Law School was unconstitutional. That decision was then overturned on appeal in mid-00, setting the stage for another Supreme Court ruling, as both proponents and opponents waited anxiously to see what the court would decide.

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19 moving back into the economic mainstream at a faster rate than their white

counterparts, and crime levels were falling in areas where joblessness was declining. The jobless rate for young black men was still twice that for young white men, but the improvement was encouraging. Even so, tensions that had existed throughout the twentieth century persisted . . .

In early 00, African-American television correspondent Ed Bradley pointed to changes he had seen in the course of his career. “When asked about progress,” he said, “I’m often reminded of the old lady sitting in the church who says, ‘It ain’t what it ought to be, but thank God it ain’t what it used to be.’ ” Bradley was right, but many African Americans wondered when further change would come.

Women likewise made steady progress in the 1990s. They were increasingly involved in academic programs and professions that had been closed to them several decades earlier. In 001, for example, women made up 9. percent of all first-year law students, compared to 10 percent in 1970; that pattern was reflected in other segments of society as well. In the academic world that same year, women held percent of all entry-level college teaching jobs, though they had only 1 percent of the most senior positions, revealing another common pattern. In addition, women worked as pilots on commercial planes and served on the front lines fighting the forest fires that broke out in the West in the summer of 00. At the same time that there was substantial gender change in nearly every segment of the job market, there was still continuing resistance to inclusion at the top. Women started to become the heads of major firms (such as Carly Fiorina at computer giant Hewlett-Packard) as the glass ceiling, preventing women from rising to the top of the corporate ladder, began to crack in the 1990s, yet most leaders were still men . . .

The abortion debate was just one measure that created a backlash against the feminist label, even as men and women both accepted the changes brought by the women’s movement. Women hesitated to be associated with what they still considered a radical fringe, and that affected how they identified themselves. In 1998, only 6 percent of working women said “To me, a career is as important as being a wife and mother,” down from 6 percent in 1979. While young women took for granted the gains fought for and won by their mothers and grandmothers, fewer wanted to call themselves feminists.

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0 of 5 percent since 1990. Still, despite problems, efforts to bring about equal

rights continued.

Latinos likewise pushed for greater equality and had demographic change on their side. The 000 census and subsequent studies based on the data provided noted that the Latino population spread farther and faster than any previous immigrant wave, even exceeding the influx of eastern Europeans in the early twentieth century. The Latino population increase of 8 percent since 1990 dwarfed the national rise. Metropolitan areas such as New York, Los Angeles, El Paso, and Miami still accounted for the largest numbers of Latinos, but many now gravitated to suburban areas, where they found homes and jobs. In 000, 6 percent of all Latinos owned their own homes, compared to percent a decade before, though that figure still lagged behind the national number of 66 percent.

The emergence of a sturdy middle class gave Latinos a greater voice in social and political affairs. In 199, Henry Cisneros became secretary of housing and urban development, and Federico Peña became secretary of transportation in Bill Clinton’s administration. At the end of the decade, with Latinos projected to become the nation’s largest minority by 005, Latino political figures became even more numerous and visible. In California, for example, both the lieutenant governor and the speaker of the assembly were Chicano, as was the mayor of San Jose. Democrat Loretta Sanchez, who defeated eight-term congressman Robert Dornan in Orange County, served in the U.S. House of Representatives. In the administration of George W. Bush, White House counsel Alberto Gonzales played a major role in making judicial appointments.

As the nation’s overall unemployment rate dropped in the mid-1990s, the rate for the 1 million Latino workers likewise fell—from 9.8 percent in 199 to 7. percent in 1997. Despite that drop, the rate remained higher than the rate for white workers. Meanwhile, median Hispanic household income fell, even as it rose for every other ethnic and racial group. Many Latinos found it difficult to make ends meet.

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1 Native Americans found they had less influence, in part because of their smaller

numbers. In the 000 census, only .1 million people, or 1.5 percent of the

population, identified themselves as American Indian or Alaska Native. Yet Indians still managed to keep the causes that concerned them before the public.

Indians continued their legal efforts to regain lost land. In 1999, the federal government joined the Oneida Indians in a lawsuit arguing that state and local governments in central New York had illegally acquired 70,000 acres of land from them in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and wanted restitution. Now it was the turn of 0,000 landowners to be worried about the fate of their property . . .

Native-American women became increasingly active in the reform effort. Ada Deer, who had successfully fought the government’s termination policy in the 1970s . . . served as Assistant Secretary of the Interior in the 1990s. Winona LaDuke, an environmental activist, directed the Honor the Earth Fund and the White Earth Land Recovery Project, fought needless hydroelectric development, and was singled out by Time magazine as one of the nation’s 50 most promising leaders under 0 years of age. In 000, she served as Ralph Nader’s vice presidential running mate on the small Green Party ticket.

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the Bones of the KennewiCK Man

1. How was the decision in the Kennewick man case relevant to the advancement of individual rights in the United States? 2. How does this case reflect a loss of identity for tribes in

challenging the legality of forensic anthropologists to analyze the bones?

Item 4367 Kevin P. Casey/Associated Press, DOuGLAS W. OWSLEY EXPLAINS

tHE EXACt MODEL FROM tHE KENNEWICK MAN (2005). Courtesy of AP/Wide World.

Creator: Context: Audience: Purpose: Historical Significance: Kevin Casey/The Associated Press

The scientific discovery of the complete skeleton of a man who inhabited the Columbia River basin 9,000 years ago near Kennewick, Washington

Readers of Associated Press newspapers To examine the legal case over the rights of scientists to study the bones for the advance-ment of knowledge versus the individual rights and group rights of Native Americans to claim the remains as a member who belonged to the tribe

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. . . An important symbolic gesture occurred in the last months of the Clinton administration. As the Bureau of Indian Affairs celebrated its 175th anniversary, Kevin Gover, head of the agency, reversed the pattern that had been so

predominant in the past when he apologized for the nation’s repressive treatment of Native Americans. “In truth, this is no occasion for celebration,” he said. It was, rather, a time “for sorrowful truths to be spoken, a time for contrition.” He spoke of “the decimation of the mighty bison herds, the use of the poison alcohol to destroy minds and body, and the cowardly killing of women and children.” The suffering inflicted on the Indians “made for tragedy on a scale so ghastly that it cannot be dismissed as merely the inevitable consequence of the clash of competing cultures.” Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt called the bureau “a work in progress” and noted that now most of its 10,000 employees were Indians themselves.

Asian Americans enjoyed real success in the 1990s. With about 11 million

people—approximately four percent of the national population—of Asian descent in the United States in 000, there was a now critical mass. They came from a variety of cultures, to be sure, and Filipinos often had different experiences than Chinese or Koreans or Japanese, yet together they had an increasingly important impact on American society. Many of the children enjoyed remarkable educational achievements, making up a disproportionate share of the students at the most prestigious universities. In 000, the student body at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was 8 percent Asian American; at the University of California at Berkeley, the figure was 9 percent. In the middle of that year, President Clinton appointed Norman Y. Mineta as secretary of commerce, making him the first Asian American to hold a cabinet position.

Yet Asian Americans in the 1990s found themselves in an ambiguous position. While they had higher median incomes than whites, due in part to a dedicated work ethic, newcomers faced serious economic problems. Sometimes Asian Americans competed with African Americans and Latinos, as affirmative action programs limited the number of Asians who could be admitted in order to give other groups a chance . . .

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Teaching Asian American History

I ask my students each year in my introductory Asian American history course to survey U.S. history textbooks to note their coverage of Asian Americans. They invariably report that Asians are largely absent from those texts, and when present they appear as the objects of America’s foreign relations or domestically as victims and contributors. Among the usual suspects are U.S. expansion into the Philippines in the late-nineteenth century, the Pacific theatre of World War II, and the Korean and Vietnam wars. Notably, all of those topics position Asians in opposition to Americans as both foreigners and the enemy “over there.” Despite having settled in North America since at least the eighteenth century, Asians have typically been portrayed as immigrants and aliens—perpetual foreigners . . .

I retain at least two concerns about my students’ findings from their surveys of those texts. There is a remarkable and persistent disinterest in thinking about race and race relations in terms other than black and white, a mind set that is by no means limited to history textbook authors . . .

On the face of it, and because of the limitations of space in textbooks and time in classrooms, many might wonder about considering Asians when they comprise a mere three percent of America’s peoples and when a majority of them have arrived in the U.S. only since the liberalizing immigration law of 1965. Including Asian Americans in our teaching and writing appears a luxury that few can afford.

For some, the changing demographies of their classrooms, where increasing numbers of Asian American students are filling the seats, might provide an incentive for including an Asian American component to their courses. Asian American students constitute more than half of the students at several California institutions of higher learning, and they commonly represent over ten percent—and the largest minority group—of students on many campuses across the country. There is, no doubt, much to be said for the notion of educational relevance in that the curriculum should reflect, in part, the social realities and aspirations of students . . .

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Unit 21 Global America 5

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I think, therefore, that the Asian racial subject is indispensable to both an understanding of race and an intervention in the politics of race . . .

Asians can be “racially” yellow, black, brown, and white, insofar as those colors constitute discrete phenotypes. Asians derive from West Asia, Central Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and East Asia, but also from Africa, South America, Europe, the Caribbean, Pacific Islands, and North America. Asians not only settled North America before the American Revolution, but they also came just yesterday. The political borders of the U.S. don’t contain the boundaries of Asian America because the Asian American identity and position within the American social relations are regional and national but also transnational in compass. Asian American families might be fractured by geo-political alignments, but their identities, constitutive of self, kin, and society, are not necessarily limited by the divide of the nation-state . . .

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4.

The struggle for gay rights also continued, and slowly gays began to achieve their demands. In a major change in 000, the Big automakers—General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler—announced health-care benefits for partners of gay employees, in a move that covered 65,000 workers. That same year, Vermont recognized same-sex relationships through civil unions, though stopped short of permitting gay marriages. In 00, the American Academy of Pediatricians announced its support of the right of gay men and women to adopt the children of their partners. The definition of a family was becoming broader as a result of gay activism . . .

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gay Marriage in the states

Questions to Consider

1. Why has gay marriage become such a polarizing issue? 2. Do rights struggles by groups identified by sexual orientation

differ from previous race-based movements?

Item 4368 Winslow townson/Associated Press, JuLIE GOODRIDGE AND HER SPOuSE, HILLARY GOODRIDGE, CROSS tHE StREEt AFtER BEING MARRIED (2004). Courtesy of AP/Wide World.

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Winslow Townson /The Associated Press Legalization of gay marriage in Massachusetts Readers of Associated Press newspapers To show the expansion of legal rights for gay couples

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Globalization, immigration, and an emphasis on individual rights spread cultural

diversity and egalitarianism in the decades following the 1960s. The availability of rapid global communication networks allowed immediate access to other ways of life, while the expansion of international markets further exposed Americans to the cultures of other nations. A large increase in immigration from Central America and Asia gave rise to greater diversity in the United States as newcomers brought their language, traditions, and culture. Through legislative victories and legal challenges, individual rights came to include many Americans previously denied equal access under the law.

1. How can individual rights, such as freedom of speech, intersect with group rights, such as affirmative-action policies?

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Theme Three:

As the United States emerged from the Cold War in the early

1990s, the processes of globalization—such as immigration, trade, and the

sharing of popular culture—have linked Americans closely to the rest of

the world.

Overview

During the 1990s, the United States was a key part of globalization: Worldwide

communication and transportation networks brought about technological, economic, political, and cultural exchanges. At the close of the twentieth century, technological innovations, such as the Internet and e-mail, sped up global communications. Increased international trade and communication spread American popular culture abroad, while a rising tide of immigrants from Latin American and Asian countries infused the nation with the newcomers’ cultural and religious attributes.

For the American consumer, globalization meant more access to the best goods at the lowest prices; for workers, however, it often meant reduced wages or lost jobs. By 000, environmentalists, labor unions, and human rights activists spoke out against the globalization of the U.S. economy out of a concern that multinational corporations would relocate anywhere in the world to find the lowest cost of production. For these groups, the global assembly line brought few environmental and workplace regulations. Multinational corporations, with the political support from the increasingly popular Republican Party, continued their drive for cheap labor, new international markets, and the weakening of federal environmental laws and regulations.

Questions to Consider

1. How has the United States integrated its economy into the larger global or international economy?

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The American Place in a Global Economy

Mollie Brown grew up in a small Virginia town of Cartersville, 5 miles west of Richmond. In 1950, at age 19, she moved to Paterson, New Jersey, joining the broad river of black Southerners who sought better economic opportunities and greater personal freedom in the North. There she married Sam James, another migrant from Virginia who worked at a foundry in Paterson, and together they raised four children. An employed mother like most African American women, Mollie James took a job in 1955 with the Universal Manufacturing Company in Paterson with wages and decent treatment unlike what had been available to her in Virginia. She stayed with Universal for years, becoming its first female union steward and one of its first black union stewards. With union-negotiated wages, overtime work, and company-paid health insurance, she helped pull her family into the middle-class world of owning their own home and car and saving for retirement. But the peace of mind that came from a secure job vanished in 1989 when Universal closed the Paterson plant and moved its manufacturing operations to Matamoros, Mexico, just across the Rio Grande River from Brownsville, Texas.

James’s job did not disappear. It moved and was inherited by 0-year-old Balbina Duque Granados. She, too, had grown up in a small town located in an agricultural area, in the Mexican province of San Luis Potosí, and she, too, had moved 00 miles north to find better-paying work in a booming manufacturing city. She was thrilled to land the difficult, repetitive job—her “answered prayer”— at a maquiladora, one of the foreign-owned assembly plants along Mexico’s border with the United States that wed First World engineering with Third World working conditions. Her employer was also satisfied, paying her $.65/hour to do what James had been paid $7.91/hour for. But Granados’s job was no more secure than James’s had been. The beginnings of successful worker organizing in Matamoros encouraged the company to shift many of its operations 60 miles upriver to Reynosa, where the union movement was weaker. A journalist asked whether she would move there if her job did. “And what if they were to move again?” she replied. “Maybe to Juarez or Tijuana? What then? Do I have to chase my job all over the world?”

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The Logic and Technology of Globalization

Like many other workers in the United States and abroad, Mollie James and Balbina Duque Granados learned first-hand the relentlessly international logic of the economic system known as capitalism . . . The technological innovations facilitating the integration of the U.S. economy into the world economy in the late 1900s were not so much a new force as an acceleration of an older trend. Just as the telegraph and telephone had helped create a nation unified by rapid communication, the spread of personal computers and the Internet linked Americans even more closely to other nations . . .

Computers boosted American productivity (the amount of work performed by a person in a given time period), which had declined between 197 and 1996, and the U.S. economy enjoyed its longest-ever expansion during the presidency of Bill Clinton . . . Americans were also speeding up their daily routines as the new millennium approached. The desire for immediate gratification and efficiency that had nurtured fast food and microwave ovens encouraged the spread of cell phones, beepers, fax machines, overnight package delivery, and constant news headlines scrolling across TV screens. Computers processed more information faster on ever-smaller silicon chips. Cell phones proliferated among businesspeople, students, and drivers. As prices dropped, they even reached into poorer areas, such as the vast Navajo nation on the Arizona–New Mexico border, where traditional phones were scarce. International air travel for business and pleasure quadrupled between 1980 and 1998, and international tourism vied with oil as the world’s largest industry. The spread of the Internet and the use of electronic mail (e-mail) after the early 1990s best represented the shift toward instant global communication. Though still in its infancy, the Internet was already shaping patterns of personal and commercial interactions, even as access to the Internet remained disproportionately available to those with greater wealth and education. Just as the Berlin Wall had long symbolized the divided world of the Cold War, the Internet became the emblem of the post–Cold War era of an increasingly unified global economy.

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Free Trade and the Global Assembly Line

The ideology of free trade underpinned the tighter meshing of Americans’ lives with the world economy. Free trade meant the reduction of tariffs, or taxes on imported and exported goods. Nations that supported free trade had industries that were eager to expand and were strong enough to compete successfully in a global market; nations with less competitive industries used tariffs to protect those industries from less expensive and higher-quality imports. As a new nation in the late 1700s and 1800s, the United States had enacted high tariffs to protect its domestic producers, but England, the world’s leading economic power at the time, had sought to reduce tariffs and increase trade with America . . . The minimal tariffs associated with most-favored-nation status became standard for almost all U.S. trading partners. In 1965, the sum of all exports and imports amounted to 10 percent of the U.S. gross national product (GNP); by 1990, it had surpassed 5 percent and continued to climb.

Advocates of free trade argued that global markets unhindered by national tariffs benefited consumers everywhere by giving them access to the best goods at the lowest prices. America’s NAFTA treaty with Canada and Mexico reflected this belief . . . as did the European Union with its newly unified currency, the Euro. [The North American Free Trade Agreement eliminated tariffs and trade barriers in the United States, Mexico, and Canada and formed the world’s largest free trade zone.] In the United States, by the start of the new millennium most leaders of both major political parties, corporate executives, bankers, and most other elites supported free trade. But others objected to this internationalist economic ideology. Post-195 British leaders, sensitive to their country’s decline relative to American power, called the U.S. promotion of free trade “freedom of American trade” to emphasize that greater international exchanges of goods disproportionately benefit the more powerful of the trading partners. Larger, more efficient manufacturers could undersell smaller, more labor-intensive local producers. By 000, environmentalists and labor unions led the forces opposing unregulated globalization of the U.S. economy. Environmentalists warned of the pollution costs to the world’s environment of U.S. factories relocating to poorer and less regulated nations, such as Mexico and China. Labor organizers decried the flight of American jobs as manufacturers sought less expensive and more compliant—often desperate—workers abroad. Human rights activists spotlighted the grim working conditions in many overseas plants, including the prevalence of child labor . . .

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world trade organization (wto) protests

How does the photograph show protest against America’s involvement in the World Trade Organization?

Item 4267 Ralph Radford/Associated Press, PROtEStERS HOLD POLICE At BAY NEAR tHE

CONVENtION CENtER DuRING WORLD tRADE ORGANIZAtION tRADE tALKS (1999). Courtesy of AP/Wide World.

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Ralph Radford/The Associated Press 1999 World Trade Organization trade talks in Seattle

Readers of Associated Press newspapers To show the protests at the World Trade Organization trade talks

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Free Trade and the Global Assembly Line

In 1999, in Seattle, and in 001, in Genoa, Italy, thousands of antiglobalization protesters disrupted meetings of the World Trade Organization and the leaders of the largest industrialized nations.

A “race to the bottom” for labor and environmental standards resulted from the development of a global assembly line. With capital able to move swiftly around the world and take its factories with it, nations and localities felt that they had little choice but to compete in offering multinational corporations the most advantageous terms possible. Such terms meant minimal government regulation, little protection for workers, nonexistent pollution standards, and even local subsidies in place of corporate taxes. Just as in the 1890s, industries had formed national trusts to evade state regulations on commerce, a century later, multinational corporations escaped the reach of national governments . . . Corporate income taxes, which had been dropping since the 1950s, shrank by another third between 1986 and 000. The maquiladoras on the Mexican border were part of a broader pattern of the corporate search for efficiency and profit, as companies, like Mollie James’s Universal Manufacturing Company and RCA, took their production lines first to the American South and then abroad.

As a result, corporations and their products became less identifiable by nationality. Boeing Aircraft had long been the largest employer in the Seattle area, but was its new Boeing 777, manufactured piece by piece in 1 different countries, an “American” airplane? Japanese companies also moved many manufacturing plants overseas, including to the United States, to be closer to important markets. Was a Toyota made by American workers in Georgetown, Kentucky, a “foreign” car? A worker sewing the “American” company label on a trendy piece of clothing might be in Malaysia or Taiwan. Or she might be a Mexican American working in a southern California garment factory—and have a sister across the border in Mexico sewing for the same company at still lower wages. In an age of globalization and international commerce, insistence on purity of product lineage—”Buy American” campaigns—seemed to make little more sense than discredited notions of “racial purity.”

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sweatshop laBor in the nineties

1. What does the photograph suggest about the extent of media coverage regarding Kathie Lee Gifford’s testimony?

2. How did the Kathie Lee Gifford’s embroilment in this controversy play a larger role in raising awareness about the unintended consequences of globalization?

Item 4360 Wilfredo Lee/the Associated Press, ENtERtAINER KAtHIE LEE GIFFORD (1996).

Courtesy of AP/Wide World.

Creator: Context: Audience: Purpose: Historical Significance: Wilfredo Lee/The Associated Press Kathie Lee Gifford testified before the House International Relations Subcommittee about lending her name to Wal-Mart for a line of clothing made by children in Honduran sweatshops.

The House

International Relations Subcommittee and television viewers

To show child-labor-law violations by American companies

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5.

The Expansion of American Popular Culture Abroad

Just as the U.S. economy and American environmental problems could not be separated from the outside world, the nation’s cultural life grew more closely tied to that of other nations at the dawn of the new millennium. During the Cold War, from the 190s through the 1980s, American foreign relations hinged on problems of national security and the projection of military might abroad. The dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the retreat of communism ended the bipolar division of the world and left the United States the sole remaining superpower. But by 000, American popular culture rather than armed strength had emerged as the leading edge of U.S. influence around the world . . .

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aMeriCan Culture aCross the gloBe

What does the photograph convey about the influence of American culture abroad?

Item 4361 Hasan Jamali/Associated Press, A REFLECtION OF AN uNIDENtIFIED SAuDI MAN

APPEARS IN tHE WINDOW OF A MCDONALD’S REStAuRANt (2002). Courtesy of AP/Wide World.

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Hasan Jamali/The Associated Press

McDonald’s in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Readers of Associated Press newspapers To show how the process of globalization has linked the American corporations with the rest of the world

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The Expansion of American Popular Culture Abroad

. . . Over the first half of the twentieth century, the United States slowly replaced Great Britain as the dominant force in international affairs. The economic and military aspects of this shift of influence were clear by the end of World War II, and its cultural elements soon followed. American power extended the preeminence of English as the global language of commerce and diplomacy, and ambitious and privileged youth from beyond Europe aimed no longer for an education at England’s Oxford and Cambridge but rather at prestigious U.S. universities. American culture had become less regionally distinctive and more nationally homogeneous in the twentieth century because of improvements in transportation and communication. By the end of the century, this same process of homogenization of popular consumer culture was at work on a worldwide scale. American themes and products stood out in an increasingly global popular culture, although they were resisted by some abroad who preferred more local identities and traditions, often rooted in ethnicity or religious conviction.

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U.S. Influence Abroad Since the Cold War

Cultural influences flowed both ways for Americans, with immigrants in particular bringing with them traditions and perspectives that refreshed the cultural mix of life in the United States. Japanese Pokémon trading cards, Thai cuisine, and Cuban salsa music pervaded daily routines for many Americans. The rapidly growing popularity of American-style pizza outside the United States suggested the complexity of cultural exchange, as fast-food chains Domino’s and Pizza Hut sold from Hong Kong to the Congo a food originally brought to New York by Italian immigrants. But increased trade and communication since the end of the Cold War above all enabled the further spread of American popular culture. American-accented English straddled the globe, the language of international commerce and of 80 percent of listings on the World Wide Web. The informality and individualism of the Internet made it feel quintessentially American in style. The U.S. dollar remained the world’s primary trading currency and became the de facto and even the de jure currency of many other nations. Mickey Mouse’s empire expanded to EuroDisney outside Paris and Tokyo Disneyland; Kodak even sold film in Antarctica. American studies became a major field of scholarship at universities around the world.

America’s most popular eatery served 0 million customers a day at its ,000 franchises across the globe. McDonald’s Golden Arches appeared everywhere, from Japan and France to Russia and China. Even Mecca in Saudi Arabia, the holiest site in Islam and the destination of millions of Muslim pilgrims, had a McDonald’s. The company generated half of its revenues from non-U.S. operations.

Nor did only U.S. material interests spread abroad swiftly in recent years. American religious missionaries worked in poor countries around the world, combining their spiritual mission with a commitment to improving daily life in concrete ways involving health care, education, and agriculture. Pentecostalists gained millions of converts in Latin America since the 1970s, and mainstream denominations, such as the Lutherans, Episcopalians, and Roman Catholics, saw their numbers rise sharply in Africa. The most fully home-grown American religion was especially active in proselytizing abroad. As a result, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormons), headquartered in Salt Lake City, had 5 million members in the United States and another 5 million worldwide . . . (Salt Lake City’s rapid growth made its population half non-Mormon by 000.)

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0 technological sophistication, and bipartisan commitment to a vast armed force

ensured that its power on the battlefield was unlikely to diminish any time soon. But the difficulties of unconventional warfare, from Vietnam in the 1960s to Somalia in 199, combined with the apparent disappearance of a major threat to the nation’s security after the demise of the Soviet Union, made U.S. policymakers and citizens reluctant to put American troops in harm’s way abroad, at least until after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 001. Instead, the expansion of American culture abroad seemed a safer and more effective way to influence other nations. A generation earlier, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev had threatened to “bury the West,” but in 1999 his son Sergei became an American citizen. His decision epitomized the continued allure of life in the United States.

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Unit 21 Global America 1

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The Emergence of Human Rights Politics in the United States

In the article below, Kenneth Cmiel examines how human rights politics was a significant aspect of globalization that emerged during the 1970s and used the politics of information an

AmHst21_Global.pdf

Table of Contents

Unit Themes 2

Theme 1:

Historical Perspectives

Faces of America

Hands on History

Theme One:

Questions to Consider

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Cultural diversity and egalitarianism continue to shape American society

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Questions to Consider

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