Donnelly
APUSH
Chapter 27: Globalization and Its Discontents, 1989–2000- Lecture Transcript
In December 1999, delegates from around the world met in Seattle for a meeting of
the World Trade Organization (WTO), a group of nations formed in 1994 to reduce
barriers to international commerce and settle trade disputes. Surprising many, more
than 30,000 participated in protests, including factory workers criticizing global
free trade for encouraging U.S. corporations to move production to low-wage
countries, and environmentalists complaining of the impact of unregulated
economic development on the ecology. The protestors, hundreds of whom were
arrested, succeeded in disrupting the WTO meeting, which was disbanded.
Seattle was home to Microsoft, the computer company whose software ran most of
the world’s computers. Few companies better symbolized “globalization,” the
process by which people, investment, goods, information, and culture flowed across
national borders. Globalization was called “the concept of the 1990s,” in which some
argued that a new era in human history was at hand, with a global economy and
“global civilization” replacing traditional cultures. Some argued that the nation-state
itself had become obsolete.
Yet globalization was not a new phenomenon. The internationalization of commerce
and culture and mass migrations had occurred since at least the fifteenth century.
But the scale and scope of late-twentieth century globalization was unprecedented.
Thanks to new technologies, information and culture spread instantaneously
throughout the world. Manufacturers and financial institutions searched the world
for profitable opportunities. Perhaps most important, the collapse of communism
between 1989 and 1991 opened the entire world to market capitalism and ideas
that government should interfere as little as possible in the economy. The Free
World had triumphed over communism, the free market over the planned economy,
and the free individual over community and social citizenship. Politicians
increasingly criticized economic and environmental regulation and welfare as
burdens on international competition. In the 1990s, both presidents George H. W.
Bush and Bill Clinton spoke of an American mission to create a single world market
that would raise living standards, spread democracy, and promote greater freedom
in the world.
Soon, more protests at economic summits followed. The media called groups who
organized them the “antiglobalization” movement. Yet these groups did not
challenge globalization but rather its social consequences. They argued that
globalization increased wealth but also widened gaps between rich and poor
countries and between haves and have-nots within societies. Decisions affecting the
lives of millions of people were being made by institutions—the World Trade
Organization, International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and multinational
corporations—that operated without any democratic input. These international
organizations required developing nations seeking financial aid to open their
economies to penetration from abroad while reducing spending on domestic social
concerns. Protests called not for ending global trade and capital flows, but the
creation of global standards for wages, labor conditions, and the environment, and
more investment in health and education in poor nations. And the Battle at Seattle
placed on the United States and world agendas the most pressing concerns of the
new century—the relationship between globalization, economic justice, and
freedom.
The year 1989 was a momentous one in twentieth-century history. In April, tens of
thousands of student demonstrators occupied Tianenmen Square in Beijing,
demanding greater democracy in China. Workers, teachers, and even government
officials joined them and their numbers swelled to almost 1 million. Inspired by
reforms in the Soviet Union and American institutions, the protesters were crushed
by Chinese troops in June. An unknown number, maybe thousands, were killed.
In the fall of 1989, pro-democracy protests spread throughout Europe. But under
Gorbachev, this time the USSR did not suppress dissent. On November 9, crowds
breached the Berlin Wall, since 1961 the Cold War’s greatest symbol, and started to
tear it down. One by one, the region’s communist governments agreed to surrender
power. The rapid and almost entirely peaceful collapse of communism in eastern
Europe became known as the “Velvet Revolution.” But the USSR slipped into crisis.
Gorbachev’s reforms caused economic crisis and brought long-suppressed national
and ethnic tensions into the open. In 1990, the Baltic republics declared their
independence from the USSR. In August 1991, a group of military leaders tried to
seize power to reverse the government’s plan to give more autonomy to various
parts of the Soviet Union, but President Boris Yeltsin organized crowds in Moscow
that restored Gorbachev to power. Gorbachev resigned from the Communist Party,
ending its eighty-four-year rule. Soon the USSR’s republics declared themselves
sovereign states. By the end of 1991, the Soviet Union had ceased to exist and fifteen
new, independent nations existed in its place.
The collapse of communism marked the end of the Cold War and a great victory for
the United States and its allies. For the first time since 1917, a worldwide capitalist
system existed. Even China, still ruled by its Communist Party, embraced market
reforms and secured foreign investments. Other events seemed to make the 1990s
“a decade of democracy.” In 1990, South Africa released Nelson Mandela, the head of
the African National Congress, from prison, and four years later, in that nation’s first
democratic elections, he was elected president, ending South Africa’s apartheid
system and white minority government. Peace came to Latin America, with
negotiations bringing an end to civil war in El Salvador and elections won by
opponents of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. Civilian government replaced military
regimes in much of Latin America and Africa.
The move from a bipolar world to one of U.S. predominance seemed to redefine
America’s role in the world. President George H. W. Bush talked about a “new world
order.” But its characteristics were unclear. Bush’s first major foreign policy action
seemed a return to U.S. interventionism in the Western Hemisphere. In 1989, Bush
sent troops to Panama to overthrow the government of Manuel Antonio Noriega, a
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former U.S. ally who became involved in the international drug trade. Though it cost
more than 3,000 Panamanian lives and was condemned by the United Nations as a
violation of international law, Bush called it a great success. The United States
installed a new government and tried Noriega in the American courts.
A deeper crisis emerged in 1990 when Iraq invaded and annexed Kuwait, an oil-rich
sheikdom on the Persian Gulf. Afraid that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein might
invade Saudi Arabia, a longtime U.S. ally that supplied more oil to the United States
than any other nation, Bush sent troops to defend that country and warned Iraq to
withdraw from Kuwait or face war. The policy caused intense debate. Critics argued
that diplomacy was still possible, and that neither Kuwait nor Saudi Arabia were
free or democratic nations. But Iraq’s invasion so blatantly violated international
law that Bush assembled a large coalition of nations to wage the war, won UN
support and sent half a million US troops and the navy to the region. In early 1991,
U.S. forces drove the Iraqi army from Kuwait. Tens of thousands and 184 Americans
died in the conflict. The United Nations ordered Iraq to disarm and imposed
economic sanctions that caused widespread civilian suffering for the rest of the
1990s, but Hussein retained power. A large U.S. military establishment stayed in
Saudi Arabia, angering Islamic fundamentalists who thought the U.S. presence
insulted Islam. But the U.S. military won quickly and avoided a Vietnam-style war.
President Bush soon defined the Gulf War as the first struggle to create a world of
democracy and free trade. General Colin Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
and Dick Cheney, the secretary of defense, offered two different policy directions.
Powell argued that the post–Cold War world would see conflicts in unexpected
places, and that the United States, to avoid becoming the world’s policeman, should
not send troops without clear objectives and withdrawal plans. Cheney argued that
with the end of the Soviet Union, the United States had the power to reshape the
world and prevent hostile states from assuming regional power. Cheney argued that
the United States had to use force, without world support, if necessary, to maintain
strategic dominance.
In 1991, the economy slipped into a recession. Unemployment jumped and family
income stagnated. Widespread unease about America’s future gripped the public,
and Bill Clinton, the former governor of Arkansas, seized the Democratic nomination
the next year by advocating both social liberalism (support for gay rights, abortion
rights, affirmative action) and conservatism (opposition to bureaucracy and
welfare). Very charismatic, Clinton seemed interested in voters’ economic fears, and
he blamed rising inequalities and job loss on deindustrialization. Bush, by contrast,
seemed unaware of ordinary Americans’ lives and problems. Republican attacks on
gays, feminists, and abortion rights also alienated voters. A third candidate, Ross
Perot, an eccentric Texas billionaire, also ran for president, attacking Bush and
Clinton for not having the economic skills to combat the recession and the national
debt. Enjoying much support at first, Perot’s candidacy waned. But he received 19
percent of the popular vote. Clinton won by a substantial margin, humiliating the
only recently very popular Bush.
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Clinton at first seemed to repudiate the policies of Reagan and Bush. He appointed
several women and blacks to his cabinet, and named supporters of abortion rights
to the Supreme Court. His first budget raised taxes on the wealthy and expanded tax
credits for low-income workers, which raised more than 4 million Americans out of
poverty. But Clinton shared with his predecessors a passion for free trade. Despite
strong opposition from unions and environmentalists, he had Congress in 1993 pass
the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which created a free-trade
zone out encompassing Canada, the United States, and Mexico.
The major policy initiative of Clinton’s first term, however, was the attempt with his
wife, Hilary, to address the rising cost of health care and the increasing number of
Americans who lacked health insurance. In Canada and western Europe,
governments provided universal medical coverage. Yet the United States, with the
world’s most advanced medical technology, had a very incomplete health insurance
system. The Great Society had given coverage to the elderly and poor in Medicare
and Medicaid, and many employers offered health insurance to their workers. But
tens of millions of Americans had no coverage, and in the 1980s, businesses started
to move employees from individual doctors to health maintenance organizations
(HMOs), which critics charged denied procedures to patients. Clinton’s plan would
have provided universal coverage through large groups of HMOs, but doctors and
insurance and drug companies attacked it fiercely, fearing government regulations
that would limit their profits. Too complex and seeming to expand unpopular
federal bureaucracy, the plan expired in 1994. By 2008, some 50 million Americans,
most of whom had full-time jobs, lacked health insurance.
A slow economic recovery and few accomplishments in Clinton’s first two years
turned voters against him. In the 1994 elections, Republicans won control of both
houses of Congress, the first time since the 1950s. They called their victory the
“Freedom Revolution.” Newt Gingrich, a conservative Georgia congressman who
became Speaker of the House, led the campaign. Gingrich devised a platform called
the “Contract with America,” promising to reduce government, taxes, and economic
and environmental regulations, overhaul welfare, and end affirmative action.
Republicans moved quickly to implement the contract’s provisions. The House
deeply cut social, educational, and environmental programs, including the popular
Medicare system. But with the president and Congress unable to compromise, the
government shut down all nonessential operations in late 1995. It became clear that
most voters had not voted for the Republicans and Gingrich’s Contract with
America, but against Clinton, and Gingrich’s popularity dropped.
Clinton rebuilt his popularity by campaigning against a radical Congress. He
opposed the most extreme parts of the Republican program, but embraced others.
In early 1996, he declared that the era of “big government” was over, repudiating
Democratic Party liberalism and embracing the anti-government attitude of
conservatives. He approved acts to deregulate broadcasting and telephone
companies. In 1996, over Democratic protests, he also abolished Aid to Dependent
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Families with Children, commonly known as “welfare.” At that time, 14 million
Americans, including 9 million children, received AFDC assistance. Stringent new
eligibility requirements at the state level and economic growth reduced welfare
rolls, but the number of children in poverty stayed the same. Clinton’s strategy,
called “triangulation,” was to embrace the most popular Republican polices while
rejecting positions unpopular among the suburban middle class. Clinton thus
neutralized Republican charges that the Democrats wanted to raise taxes and assist
the idle. Clinton’s passion for free trade alienated many working-class Democrats
but convinced middle-class voters that the Democrats were not dominated by
unions. In 1996, Clinton, who had consolidated the conservative shift away from
Democratic liberalism, easily defeated Republican Bob Dole in the presidential
elections.
Like Carter, Clinton was most interested in domestic affairs and took steps to settle
persistent international conflicts and promote human rights. He was only partly
successful. He strongly supported the 1993 Oslo Accords, in which Israel recognized
the Palestine Liberation Organization and a plan for peace was outlined. But neither
side fully implemented the accords. Israel continued to build Jewish settlements on
Palestinian land in the West Bank, a part of Jordan that Israel had occupied since the
1967 Six-Day War. The new Palestinian Authority, which shared in governing parts
of the West Bank on the way to full statehood, was corrupt, powerless, and unable to
check groups that attacked Israel. At the end of his presidency, Clinton brought
leaders from the two sides to Camp David to try to work out a final peace treaty, but
the meeting failed and violence resumed. Like Carter, Clinton found it difficult to
balance concern for human rights with U.S. strategic and economic interests and to
form guidelines of humanitarian intervention overseas. The United States did
nothing when tribal massacres in Rwanda killed more than 800,000 people and
created 2 million refugees.
Clinton also faced crisis in Yugoslavia, a multi-ethnic state that started to
disintegrate in the 1990s, after its communist government collapsed in 1989. In a
few years, five new states emerged in the country, and ethnic violence plagued
several of these new nations. In 1992, Serbs in Bosnia, which was on the historic
boundary between Christianity and Islam in southeastern Europe, started a war to
drive out Muslims and Croats. They used mass murder and rape as military
strategies, which came to be known as “ethnic cleansing”— – the forcible expulsion
from an area of a particular ethnic group. More than 100,000 Bosnians, mostly
civilians, had been killed by the end of 1993. After long inaction, The North Atlantic
Treaty Organization (NATO) launched air strikes against Bosnian Serb troops, and
UN troops, including 20,000 Americans, arrived as peacekeepers. In 1998, when
Yugoslavian troops and local Serbs started to revive ethnic cleansing, this time
against Albanians in Kosovo, a Serbian province, nearly a million Albanians fled.
NATO launched a two-month war in 1999 that led to the deployment of U.S. and UN
troops in Kosovo.
Human rights became more prominent in international affairs during Clinton’s
presidency. They emerged as a justification for intervention in matters once
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considered to be the internal affairs of sovereign nations, and the United States
dispatched troops around the world for humanitarian reasons to protect civilians.
New institutions including courts developed to prosecute human rights violators,
such as tribunals and war crimes courts regarding Rwanda and Slobodan Milesovic,
Yugoslavia’s president. Spanish and British courts even nearly charged Chilean
dictator Augusto Pinochet with murder, but he was too ill to stand trial.
Clinton’s popularity greatly rested on America’s remarkable economic expansion in
the mid- and late 1990s after an earlier recession. Unemployment returned to the
low levels of the 1960s, and inflation did not rise, in part due to increasing oil
production and weak unions and global competition that that made it difficult to
raise wages and prices. The boom was the longest uninterrupted economic
expansion in U.S. history. Because Reagan and Bush left behind enormous deficits,
Clinton tried hard to balance the budget, and economic growth actually produced so
much government revenue that Clinton in his second term balanced the budget and
actually produced budget surpluses.
Many in the 1990s hailed the birth of a “new economy” in which computers and the
Internet would create enormous new efficiencies and the production and sale of
information would replace manufacturing as the center of the U.S. economy.
Computers, first developed after World War II, improved remarkably in the 1960s
and 1970s, especially because of miniaturization of parts through the microchip.
Microchips made possible a wave of new consumer products in the 1980s and
1990s, including video cassette recorders, handheld video games, cellular phones,
and digital cameras. Beginning in the 1980s, companies like Apple and IBM sold
computers for business and home use, and soon computers were used in all kinds of
workplaces. They also changed private life, and centers of computer technology
produced local economic booms. The Internet, first developed as a high-speed
military communications network, was simplified and opened to commercial and
individual use through personal computers. The Internet expanded the flow of
information and communications more radically than any invention since the
printing press and democratized information when the ownership of newspapers,
television stations, and publishing was being concentrated into fewer and fewer
hands.
Elsewhere in the world, economic crisis loomed. In western Europe, unemployment
stayed far higher than in the United States. Japan was mired in a long-term
recession. Despite western loans and investment, Russia moved from one crisis to
another. President Boris Yeltsin, relying on U.S. free market economists and the
Clinton administration, used “shock therapy” that privatized state-owned enterprise
and imposed severe cuts in wages and in guaranteed jobs, health care, and housing.
Foreign investors and a new Russian business class reaped fabulous profits, while
most of the population dropped into poverty. Many Third World nations faced large
trade deficits and problems repaying loans from foreign banks and other
institutions. A fiscal crisis rocked Asian governments that were rescued only by
massive loans from the International Monetary Fund. Such bailouts caused
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criticisms that globalization increased social inequalities. Foreign investors had
loans repaid, but nations were required to balance budgets by cutting public
spending, which disproportionately hurt the poor.
Economic growth and the new economy idea in the United States sparked a frenzied
stock market boom. Large and small investors poured funds into stocks, driven by
new firms charging lower fees. By 2000, most U.S. households owned stocks either
directly or through investments in mutual funds and pension and retirement
accounts. Investors heavily put funds into new “dot coms”—companies that did
business on the Internet and symbolized the new economy. Stocks for these kinds of
companies skyrocketed, even if many never turned a profit. But journalists and
stock brokers argued that this new economy had so changed business that
traditional methods could not be used to assess a company’s value. Inevitably, this
bubble burst. On April 14, 2000, stocks suffered their largest one-day drop in
history. For the first time since the Depression, stock prices declined for three years
straight (2000–2002), making billions of dollars in Americans’ net worth and
pensions funds disappear. Only in 2006 did the stock market reach levels of early
2000. By 2001, the U.S. economy had fallen into recession.
After the stock market dropped, it became clear that part of the stock boom of the
1990s was fueled by fraud. In 2001 and 2002, Americans saw almost daily
revelations of extraordinary greed and corruption on the part of brokerage firms,
accountants, and corporate executives. In the late 1990s, accounting firms like
Arthur Anderson, huge banks like J.P. Morgan Chase and Citigroup, and corporate
lawyers reaped huge fees from complex schemes to push up companies’ stock prices
by hiding their true financial condition. Enron, a Houston-based energy company
that bought and sold electricity rather than producing it, reported billions of dollars
in losses as profits. Wall Street brokers urged clients to sell risky stocks and pushed
them on unknowing customers. Insiders jumped ship when stock prices fell, and
individual investors were left with worthless shares. Several corporate criminals
went to jail after highly publicized trials, and even reputable firms like J.P. Morgan
Chase and Citigroup agreed to pay billions of dollars to compensate investors on
whom they had pushed worthless stocks.
At the height of the 1990s boom, free trade and deregulation seemed the right
economic model. But the retreat from government economic regulations, embraced
both by the Republican Congress and President Clinton, left no one to represent the
public interest. The sectors most affected by the scandals, such as energy,
telecommunications, and stock trading, had all been deregulated. Many stock frauds,
for example, stemmed from the repeal in 1999 of the Glass-Steagall Act, a New Deal
law that separated commercial banks, which accepted deposits and made loans,
from investment banks, which invested in stocks and real estate and took larger
risks. This repeal created “superbanks” with both functions. These banks engaged in
huge risks, knowing that the federal government would have to bail them out if they
failed. Conflicts of interest were everywhere. Banks financed new stocks offered by
new Internet firms while their investment arms sold the shares to the public. These
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banks also poured money into risky mortgages. When the housing bubble collapsed
in 2007–2008, the banks suffered losses that threatened the entire financial system.
The Bush and Obama administrations felt they had no choice but to spend billions of
dollars in taxpayer money to save the banks from their own misconduct.
The boom the began in 1995 benefited most Americans. For the first time since the
early 1970s, average real wages and family incomes began to rise significantly. With
low unemployment, economic expansion hiked wages for families at all income
levels, even aiding low-skilled workers. Yet, average wages for non-supervisory
workers, after inflation, stayed below 1970s levels. Overall, in the last two decades
of the twentieth century, the poor and middle class became worse off while the
wealthy became significantly richer. The wealth of the richest Americans exploded
in the 1990s. Bill Gates, head of Microsoft and the nation’s richest person, owned as
much wealth as the bottom 40 percent of the U.S. population put together. In
1965,the salary of the typical corporate chief executive officer was only 26 times
that of the average worker; in 2000, it was 310 times higher.
Companies continued to shift manufacturing overseas. Because of the North
American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), many factories moved to Mexico, where,
just across the border, U.S. firms enjoyed cheaper labor and weak environmental
and safety regulations. Despite low unemployment, companies’ threats to shut down
and move exerted downward pressure on wages. By 2000, the United States no
longer led the world in hourly wages of factory workers and had become the most
unequal society in the developed world. High-tech firms did not create enough jobs
to compensate for the loss of manufacturing, and large employers, the largest of
which was Wal-Mart, a giant discount retail chain, paid very low wages. Wal-Mart
also prevented workers from joining unions. In 2000, more than half of the labor
force worked for less than $14 per hour, and because of the decline of labor unions,
fewer workers had benefits common to union contracts, such as health insurance.
Although the Cold War’s end raised hopes for an era of global harmony, the world
instead saw renewed emphasis on group identity and demands for group
recognition and power. While nationalism and socialism had united peoples of
different backgrounds in the nineteenth century, now ethnic and religious
antagonisms sparked conflict in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and parts of Europe. In
part a reaction to the globalization of a secular culture based on consumption and
mass entertainment, intense religious movements flourished—Hindu nationalism in
India, orthodox Judaism in Israel, Islamic fundamentalism in much of the Muslim
world, and evangelical Christianity in America. The United States, to a lesser degree,
experienced divisions from the intensification of ethnic and racial identities and
religious fundamentalism.
Shifts in immigration made cultural and racial diversity more visible in the United
States. Until the immigration law of 1965, most immigrants came from Europe, but
after 1965, the sources of immigration changed dramatically. Between 1965 and
2000, about 24 million immigrants entered the United States. About 50 percent
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came from Latin America and the Caribbean, 35 percent came from Asia, and
smaller numbers came from the Middle East and Africa. Only 10 percent came from
Europe, mostly from the Balkans and the former Soviet Union. In 2000, 33 million—
11 percent of the U.S. population—was foreign born. This influx of immigrants
changed the country’s religious and racial map. By 2000, more than 3 million
Muslims lived in the United States, and the combined population of Buddhists and
Hindus exceeded 1 million. As in the past, most immigrants settled in urban areas,
but unlike the past, many immigrants quickly moved into outlying neighborhoods
and suburbs. While most immigrants stayed on the East and West Coasts, some
moved to other parts of the country, bringing cultural and racial diversity to
previously homogeneous communities in the American heartland.
The new immigration was part of globalization’s uprooting of labor worldwide.
Migrants to the United States came from diverse backgrounds. They were poor
refugees from economic and political crisis, as well as educated professionals
seeking skilled work in America. For the first time in U.S. history, most immigrants
were women and took jobs in the service and retail sectors. With cheap global
communications and air travel, immigrants retained strong ties with their countries
of origin.
Latinos were the largest single new immigrant group. The term was invented in the
United States and described people from Mexico, South and Central America, and
Spanish-speaking islands of the Caribbean. By 2000, Mexico, with 95 million people,
had become the largest Spanish-speaking nation, and its poverty, high birthrate, and
proximity to the United States made it a source of massive legal and illegal
immigration. More than 45 million in 2007, Latinos became the largest minority
group in the United States, and Latinos were highly visible in entertainment, sports,
and politics. But Latino communities stayed much poorer than the rest of the
country. Most immigrants from Mexico and Central America competed at the lowest
levels of the job market, and many legal and illegal immigrants worked in low-wage
urban or agricultural jobs.
Asian-Americans also became more visible in the 1990s. While there had long been
a small population of Asian descent in California and New York City, immigration
from Asia swelled after 1965. By 2000, there were 11.9 million Asian Americans,
eight times the figure of 1970. Asians were highly diverse in origin, and included the
well-educated from Korea, India, and Japan, as well as poor immigrants from
Cambodia, Vietnam, and China. Once subject to discrimination, Asian-Americans
now achieved success, particularly in higher education, contributing to whites’
characterization of them as a “model minority.” But Asian-Americans showed
increasing income and wealth gaps within their communities.
The growing visibility of Latinos and Asians suggested that a two-race, black and
white racial system no longer described American life. Multiracial imagery filled
television, films, and ads, and inter-racial marriage became more common and
acceptable. Some hailed the “end of racism,” but others argued that while Asians and
Latinos were becoming absorbed into “white” America, the black-white divide
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remained. In 2000, it was clear that diversity was permanent and that whites would
make up a smaller and smaller percentage of the population in years to come.
Compared with earlier in the century, the most dramatic change in American life in
2000 was the absence of legal segregation and the presence of blacks in areas of
American life from which they had once been excluded. Declining overt
discrimination and affirmative action helped introduce blacks in unprecedented
numbers into U.S. workplaces. Economic growth in the 1990s also raised the
average income of black families significantly. Another significant change in black
life was the higher visibility of Africans in the immigrant population. Between 1970
and 2000, twice as many Africans immigrated to the United States had entered
during the entire period of the slave trade, and all the elements of the African
diaspora—from natives of Africa, Caribbeans, Central and South Americans of
African descent, and Europeans with African roots—could be found in the United
States. While some were refugees, many others were highly educated Africans, and
some African nations complained of “brain drain” as highly skilled Africans sought
work in the United States. Yet most African-Americans were worse off than whites
or many recent immigrants. The black unemployment rate remained double that of
whites, and in 2007 their median family income and poverty rate put them behind
whites, Asians, and Latinos. Blacks continued to lag in every index of social sellbeing from health to housing quality, and despite a growing black middle class, far
fewer blacks owned homes or held professional or managerial jobs than whites.
Gaps in wealth between blacks and whites remained enormous.
The Supreme Court gradually retreated from the civil rights revolution, and made it
more difficult for victims of discrimination to win lawsuits and proved more
sympathetic to whites’ claims that affirmative action had discriminated against
them. And despite growing racial diversity, school segregation, now based in
residential patterns and the divide between urban and suburban school districts,
rose, with urban schools overwhelmingly having minority student bodies. By 2000,
nearly 80 percent of white students attended schools, where they met few if any
pupils of another race. School funding rested on property taxes, and poor
communities continued to have less to spend on education than wealthy ones.
In the 1960s, the U.S. prison population declined, but in the next decade, with urban
crime rates rising, politicians of both parties tried to portray themselves as “tough
on crime.” They wanted long prison sentences rather than rehabilitation, and
treated drug addiction as a crime rather than a disease. State governments greatly
increased penalties for crime and reduced parole. Successive presidents launched
“wars” on the use of drugs. The number of Americans in prison rose dramatically,
most of them incarcerated for non-violent drug offenses. In the 1990s, with the end
of the “crack” epidemic and more effective policing, crime rates dropped
dramatically across the country. Yet because of sentencing laws, the prison
population still rose, and by 2008, 2.3 million were in prison, and several million
more were on parole, probation, or under some form of criminal supervision. No
other Western society came close to these numbers. A “prison-industrial complex”
developed, in which communities suffering from deindustrialization built prisons to
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create jobs and income. Convict labor, a practice curtailed by the labor movement in
the late nineteenth century, was revived, with private companies “leasing” prisoners
for low wages.
Racial minorities were most affected by this paradox of islands of unfreedom in a
nation of liberty. In 1950, whites had been 70 percent of the nation’s prison
population, and non-whites, 30 percent. By 2000, these figures were reversed.
Severe penalties for crack convictions, concentrated in urban areas, contributed to
this trend. The percentage of blacks in prison was eight times higher than for whites.
More than one-quarter of all black men could expect to serve some prison time in
their lifetime. Former prisoners found it hard to find work, and in some southern
and western states were disenfranchised, contributing to blacks’ economic and
political disempowerment. Blacks were also more likely than whites to receive the
death penalty. The Supreme Court had suspended capital punishment in 1972, but
soon let it resume. By 2000, the United States ranked with China, Iran, and Saudi
Arabia in the number of prisoners on death row.
Urban blacks’ frustration exploded in 1992 when an all-white suburban jury found
four Los Angeles police officers not guilty in the beating of black motorist Rodney
King (even though the assault had been videotaped). The deadliest urban uprising
since the 1863 draft riots unfolded, with fifty-two deaths and nearly $1 billion in
property damage. Many Latinos, sharing blacks’ frustrations, joined them. This
event suggested that despite the civil rights revolution, the nation had not
addressed the plight of the urban poor.
The rights revolution persisted in the 1990s, especially in new movements for
recognition. In 1990, disabled Americans won passage of the Americans with
Disabilities Act, which banned discrimination in hiring and promotion against
persons with disabilities and required accommodations for them in public buildings.
Gay groups played a greater role in politics, and campaigns for gay rights became
more visible, especially as more people became infected by acquired immune
deficiency syndrome (AIDS), a fatal disease spread by sexual contact, drug use, and
blood transfusions, that first emerged in the early 1980s and quickly became an
epidemic among gay men. A movement emerged to promote “safe sex,” stop
discrimination against those with AIDS, and press the federal government to combat
the disease. By 2000, fewer Americans were contracting AIDS, although it became a
massive epidemic elsewhere, such as Africa.
Efforts by American Indians to claim their rights continued in the 1990s as well. In
the 2000 census, the Indian population reached 4 million, a sign of growth and a
renewed sense of pride, as more people self-identified as native American. More
tribes fought and won campaigns for financial restitution for past injustices. In some
cases, Indians are still American citizens who enjoy a king of quasi-sovereignty.
Some tribes now operate casinos in states that otherwise ban them; the Pequot
tribe, nearly exterminated by the Puritans in 1637, now operate Foxwoods, the
world’s largest casino. Yet many native Americans continue to live in poverty, and
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most of those living on reservations continue to be among the poorest people in the
nation.
One of the most striking developments of the 1990s was the celebration of group
difference and demands for group recognition. “Multiculturalism” came to denote
new awareness about a diverse American past and demands that jobs, education,
and politics reflect that diversity. As more female and minority students attended
colleges and universities, these institutions tried to diversify their faculties and
revise their curriculum. Academic programs dealing with specific groups, such as
Women’s Studies, Black Studies, and Latino Studies, proliferated, and many scholars
now stressed the experiences of diverse groups of Americans. Public opinion polls
showed increasing toleration for gays and interracial dating.
Some Americans were alarmed by the higher visibility of immigrants, racial
minorities, and the continuing sexual revolution, fearing cultural fragmentation and
moral anarchy. Conservatives and some liberals attacked “identity politics” and
multiculturalism for undermining traditional nationhood. The definition of
American nationality became a contentious question once more. Republicans
appealed to those alarmed by non-white immigrants and the decline of traditional
“family values,” but differences over diversity crossed party lines. Harsh debates
unfolded over whether immigrant children should be required to learn English and
immigration should be checked. By 2000 nearly half of all states had made English
their official language. And some aspects of social welfare were barred from
immigrants who had not yet become citizens. Yet overall, in this period the United
States became a more tolerant society, and bigoted politics often backfired. In 2000,
Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush promoted a multicultural, not
exclusionary, conservatism.
Immigration was one front in what became called the Culture Wars—battles over
moral values in the 1990s. The Christian Coalition, founded by evangelical minister
Pat Robertson, became a major force in Republican politics, launching crusades
against gay rights, secularism in public schools, and government aid to the arts.
Sometimes it seemed the nation was refighting older conflicts between traditional
religion and modern secular culture. Some local governments required the teaching
of creationism as an alternative to Darwin’s theory of evolution. And conservatives
continued to assail the alleged effects of the 1960s, including the erosion of the
nuclear family, the changing racial landscape caused by immigration, and a decline
in traditional values.
The 2000 census showed “family values” were indeed changing. Half of all marriages
ended in divorce and over a third of all births were to unmarried women, including
more professional women in their 30s and 40s. Two-thirds of married women
worked outside of the home, and less than one-fourth of all households were
“traditional,” with a wife, husband, and their children. Yet the pay gap between men
and women persisted. In 1994, the Supreme Court reaffirmed a woman’s right to
obtain an abortion. But the narrow vote indicated that the legal status of abortion
rights could change, given future court appointments. By 2000, conservatives had
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not been able to eliminate abortion rights, restore prayer in public schools, or
persuade women to stay at home. More women than ever attended college and
entered professions such as law, medicine, and business.
Some radical conservatives who believed the federal government was threatening
American freedom started to arm themselves and form private militias. Fringe
groups spread a mixture of radical Christian, racist, anti-Semitic, and antigovernment ideas. Private armies vowed to resist enforcement of federal gun
control laws, and for millions of Americans, gun ownership became the highest
symbol of liberty. Militia groups used the symbolism and language of the American
Revolution, and warned that leaders of both political parties were conspiring to
surrender U.S. sovereignty to the United Nations or another shadowy international
conspiracy. Such groups gained attention when Timothy McVeigh, a member of the
militant anti-government movement, exploded a bomb at a federal office building in
Oklahoma City that killed 168 persons. McVeigh was capture, convicted, and
executed.
The intense partisanship of the 1990s, strange because of Clinton’s centrism,
seemed to emerge from Republicans’ feelings that Clinton symbolized everything
conservatives disliked about the 1960s. Clinton had smoked marijuana and
participated in antiwar protests as a college student, married a feminist, led a
multicultural administration, and supported gay rights. Clinton’s opponents and the
media waited for opportunities to assail him, and he provided them.
In the 1980s and 1990s, the scrutiny of public officials’ private lives intensified.
From the day Clinton took office, charges of misconduct dogged him. In 1993, an
investigation began into an Arkansas real estate deal known as Whitewater, from
which Clinton and his wife profited. The next year, an Arkansas woman, Paula Jones,
filed a suit charging that Clinton had sexually harassed her while governor. In 1998,
it became known that Clinton had had an affair with Monica Lewinsky, a White
House intern. Kenneth Starr, the special counsel appointed to investigate
Whitewater, turned to Lewinsky. He issued a long report with lurid details about
Clinton’s acts with the young woman and accused Clinton of lying when he denied
the affair in a deposition. In December 1998, the Republican-controlled House of
Representatives voted to impeach Clinton for perjury and obstruction of justice, and
he became only the second president to be tried for impeachment before the Senate.
But in the Senate, neither charge garnered even a simple majority, much less than
the two-thirds needed to remove him from office. Although Andrew Johnson’s
impeachment in 1868 had revolved around momentous questions of
Reconstruction, Clinton’s impeachment seemed based in what many saw as a
juvenile escapade. Clinton stayed remarkably popular throughout the proceedings.
Clinton might have won a third term in office if he had been able to run, but after
FDR’s presidency, the Constitution was amended to limit presidents to two terms in
office. Democrats nominated vice-president Al Gore to succeed Clinton. Republicans
chose George W. Bush, the governor of Texas and son of Clinton’s predecessor, as
their candidate and former defense secretary Dick Cheney as his running mate.
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The election was one of the closest in U.S. history, and its outcome was uncertain
until after a month after the vote. Gore won the popular vote by a tiny margin of
540,000 of 100 million votes cast: .5 percent. Victory in the electoral college hinged
on who carried Florida, and there, amid widespread confusion at polls and claims of
irregularities in counting the ballots, Bush claimed a margin of a few hundred votes.
Democrats demanded a recount, and the Florida Supreme Court ordered it. It fell to
the Supreme Court to decide the outcome, and on December 12, 2000, by a 5–4 vote,
the Court ordered a halt to the Florida recount and allowed the state’s governor, Jeb
Bush (George W. Bush’s brother), to certify that Bush had won the state and
therefore the presidency.
The decision in Bush v. Gore was one of the strangest in the Supreme Court’s history.
In the late 1990s, the Court had reasserted the powers of states in the federal
system, reinforcing their immunity from lawsuits by individuals who claimed to
suffer from discrimination, and denying the power of Congress to force states to
carry out federal policies. Now, the Court overturned a decision of the Florida
Supreme Court that interpreted the state’s election laws. Many people did not think
the Supreme Court would take the case since it did not seem to raise a federal
constitutional question. But the justices argued that the Fourteenth Amendment’s
equal protection clause required that all ballots in a state be counted by a single
standard, something impossible in Florida’s patchwork election system.
The 2000 decision was most remarkable for how it revealed divisions in the
country. Bush and Gore each received essentially half of the popular vote. The final
count in the electoral college was 271–266, the narrowest margin since 1876. The
Senate was split 50–50 between the two parties. These figures concealed deep
political and social fissures. Bush carried the entire South and nearly all the states of
the trans-Mississippi farm belt and Rockies. Gore won almost all the states of the
Northeast, Old Northwest, and West Coast. Urban-area residents voted mostly for
Gore, rural-area voters for Bush. Racial minorities mostly supported Gore, while
whites preferred Bush. Women favored Gore, while men favored Bush.
Democrats blamed the Supreme Court, Ralph Nader, and bad luck for Bush’s victory.
Nader, the candidate of the environmentalist Green Party, had won tens of
thousands of votes in Florida that otherwise might have gone to Gore. But the
largest reason Gore lost Florida was that 600,000 persons, mostly black and Latino
men, had been disenfranchised for life after being convicted of a felony.
The 2000 elections revealed a political democracy in trouble. The electoral college,
designed by the nation’s founders to enable the nation’s prominent men rather than
ordinary voters to select the president, gave the White House to voters who did not
receive the most votes. A nation priding itself on modern technology had voting
system of computers in which citizens’ choices could not be reliably determined.
Both presidential and Congressional campaigns cost more than $1.5 billion, mostly
raised from wealthy individuals and corporate donors, and this reinforced the
popular belief that money dominated politics. There were signs of a widespread
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disengagement from public life. As governments at all levels turned their activities
over to private contractors, and millions of Americans lived in homogenous gated
communities, the idea of a shared public sphere seemed to disappear. Voluntary
groups like the Boy Scouts and the Red Cross all saw less members and volunteers.
Voter turnout remained much lower than in other democracies; nearly half of
eligible voters did not go to the polls, and fewer voted in state and local elections.
Candidates sought to occupy the center, used polls and media consultants to shape
their messages, and steered clear of difficult issues like health care, race, and
economic inequality.
The twentieth century had seen both much human progress and tragedy. Asia and
Africa had decolonized, women had gained full citizenship in most of the world, and
science, medicine, and technology greatly advanced. New products at cheaper prices
improved daily life for humans more than in any other century in history.
Worldwide life expectancy jumped by more than twenty-five years, and illiteracy
dropped significantly. For the first time in world history, most of mankind pursued
primary economic activities beyond simply securing food, clothing, and shelter. But
the twentieth century also saw the deaths of millions in wars and genocides and
widespread degradation of the natural environment.
In the United States, people lived longer and healthier lives compared to previous
generations and enjoyed material comforts unimaginable 100 years before. Yet
poverty, income inequality, and infant mortality were higher in the United States
than in other industrialized nations, and fewer than 10 percent of private sector
workers belonged to unions. While many changes in American life, such as new
roles for women, suburbanization, and deindustrialization have occurred elsewhere,
the United States was quite different from other nations at the beginning of the
twenty-first century. Here ideas of freedom seemed more associated with individual
freedom than social welfare. Fewer Americans than Europeans thought eliminating
want was an important social goal, and more Americans were religious. America
seemed exceptional in other ways too. The United States had the highest murder
rate using guns. It also lagged behind other nations in providing social rights to
citizens. Europe’s governments guarantee paid vacations and sick days each year for
workers, while U.S. employers are required to offer neither. The United States is one
of only four nations in the world that do not require paid maternity leave for a
woman after she gives birth.
In a speech on January 1, 2000 (a year before the twenty-first century actually
began), President Clinton declared that “the great story of the twentieth century is
the triumph of freedom and free people.” Freedom was a central point of selfdefinition for individuals and the society. Americans cherished freedom and were
more tolerant of cultural differences, and enjoyed freedoms of expression
unmatched anywhere. But their definition of freedom had changed over the century.
The rights revolution and anti-government sentiment had defined as freedom the
ability of the individual to realize their potential and desires free from authority.
Other American ideals of freedom, defined as economic security, active participation
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in government, or social justice for the disadvantaged, seemed in retreat. Americans
appeared to seek freedom within themselves, not through social institutions or
public engagement. And Americans seemed to have less “industrial freedom” than
before. Economic inequalities and globalization seemed to make individual and even
national sovereignty meaningless, and this seemed to endanger the economic
security and rights that had traditionally linked democratic participation and
membership to the nation-state.
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