Forced Justice

1995 ◽  
Author(s):  
David J. Armor
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
School Desegregation ◽  
Community Support ◽  
Urban Systems ◽  
Educational Choices ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Minority Children ◽  
Public School Systems ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S

School desegregation and "forced" busing first brought people to the barricades during the 1960s and 1970s, and the idea continues to spark controversy today whenever it is proposed. A quiet rage smolders in hundreds of public school systems, where court- ordered busing plans have been in place for over twenty years. Intended to remedy the social and educational disadvantages of minorities, desegregation policy has not produced any appreciable educational gains, while its political and social costs have been considerable. Now, on the fortieth anniversary of the Supreme Court's epic decision, Brown v. Board of Education, the legal and social justifications for school desegregation are ripe for reexamination. In Forced Justice, David J. Armor explores the benefits and drawbacks of voluntary and involuntary desegregation plans, especially those in communities with "magnet" schools. He finds that voluntary plans, which let parents decide which school program is best for their children, are just as effective in attaining long-term desegregation as mandatory busing, and that these plans generate far greater community support. Armor concludes by proposing a new policy of "equity" choice, which draws upon the best features of both the desegregation and choice movements. This policy promises both improved desegregation and greater educational choices for all, especially for the disadvantaged minority children in urban systems who now have the fewest educational choices. The debate over desegregation policy and its many consequences needs to move beyond academic journals and courtrooms to a larger audience. In addition to educators and policymakers, Forced Justice will be an important book for social scientists, attorneys and specialists in civil rights issues, and all persons concerned about the state of public education.

Margaret A. Simons, Rebel at Heart

2021 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 317-335
Author(s):  
Margaret A. Simons ◽  
Erika Ruonakoski
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Political Activism ◽  
Simone De Beauvoir ◽  
Women’S Liberation ◽  
Male Dominated ◽  
Liberation Movements ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Radical Ideas

Abstract In this interview, Margaret A. Simons describes her path to philosophy and existentialism, her struggles in the male-dominated field in the 1960s and 1970s, and her political activism in the civil rights and women’s liberation movements. She also discusses her encounters with Simone de Beauvoir and Beauvoir’s refusal to own her philosophical originality, suggesting that Beauvoir may have adopted a more conventional narrative of a female intellectual to circumvent the public’s resistance to her radical ideas in the 1950s.

The Antielitist Elite

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clifton Hood
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Lower Class ◽  
Class Groups ◽  
Victorian Culture ◽  
Cultural Transformations ◽  
Corporate Elites ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
New Yorkers

The cultural transformations of the 1960s and 1970s created problems and opportunities for elites. In these decades the upper- and middle classes went from being seen as the wellspring of social virtue in Victorian culture to being perceived as repressed, stuffy, and out of touch; after all, they were the prime beneficiaries of a status quo that was now found wanting. From lording it over commoners in the eighteenth century, to loathing the dangerous classes in the nineteenth century, many elite New Yorkers came around to romanticizing African-Americans and other lower-class groups as exemplars of human spirit and social justice. These actions were in many cases genuine, yet in espousing civil rights causes and tackling discrimination and poverty, in exposing the falseness and superficiality of genteel society, upper-class New Yorkers also established their own heightened sensitivity as anti-elitists and their own legitimacy. Corporate elites thus championed achievement and diversity as the foundation of a more democratic, anti-elitist elite.

Prison autobiographical narratives: Making sense of personal and social (racial) transformation

2019 ◽  
pp. 174165901988011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vanessa Lynn
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Civil Rights Era ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Racial Solidarity ◽  
Autobiographical Accounts ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
Mainstream Society ◽  
The 1960S

This article investigates autobiographical public narratives of people who are, and were, incarcerated during different regimes of injustices in the United States—from the civil rights era to the current era of mass incarceration. People make sense of their experiences with race and racism through time, from a present standpoint of incarceration or freedom, in retrospect via proximate and distant memories of injustices, and toward a vision of the future. I juxtapose mainstream autobiographies from Malcolm X to Shaka Senghor with public blog posts from individuals incarcerated who provide autobiographical accounts to the world. I find that generations of incarcerated people who came of age during the height of the War on Drugs of the 1980s and 1990s project a narrative of a neoliberal subject who has a more individualistic and de-racialized idea of transforming their moral self and community. This contradicts with the way they portray prison as being a conduit for creating communities of racial solidarity and racial consciousness. Highly influenced and inspired by other narratives of radical prisoners of conscience of the 1960s and 1970s who were prone to view their liberation, and of the Black community, through vanquishing White supremacy, the new generation speaks to the color-blind narratives that pervade mainstream society and possible in narrative interventions correctional program.

Television News and the Making of the Boston Busing Crisis

2017 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 218-234
Author(s):  
Matthew Delmont
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Television News ◽  
School Desegregation ◽  
News Coverage ◽  
Department Of Health ◽  
Local Television News ◽  
Production Techniques ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Television Coverage

People outside of Boston came to know and care about the city’s “busing crisis” because television news featured the story regularly and this essay examines how television news framed this story for national audiences. This essay illuminates the production techniques of a medium that framed the “busing crisis” in Boston for millions of national viewers. First, I examine how the television coverage of Boston busing in the mid-1970s focused on reports, analysis, and predictions regarding antibusing protests and violence. This day-to-day focus on current and emergent scenes of crisis ignored the history of desegregation efforts since the 1960s, including those that received television coverage in earlier years, like the community-funded Operation Exodus program to bus black children to schools in other neighborhoods and the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare’s suspension of federal school aid to Boston for violating the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Second, I consider how television news framed the use of force in the Boston busing story. Much of the footage from Boston focused on confrontations between antibusing protestors and authorities from the Boston Police and other law enforcement. Third, I look at how television news offered viewers background reports on two of the places at the center of the busing story, South Boston and Charlestown. Finally, I analyze how local television news programs in other cities presented busing in Boston as a failed policy and regularly replayed the archived footage from Boston to underscore efforts to educate viewers on the importance of upholding the law and avoiding violence. Boston was neither the first nor the last city to witness violent resistance to school desegregation, but extensive television news coverage fixed Boston as the emblematic busing crisis and shaped popular conceptions of the history of busing for school desegregation.

5. Absurdism, protest, and commitment

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kirsten E. Shepherd-Barr
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Gay Rights ◽  
Modern Drama ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
Post War ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Many Sources ◽  
The Cold War

The decades 1960–80 witnessed a seismic shift in modern drama. The rage that came to define, and fuel, much of the drama in the 1960s and 1970s is directed at the audience. ‘Absurdism, protest, and commitment’ shows it is a post-war rage stemming from many sources: the Vietnam War, the Cold War, a feeling of betrayal by government and politicians, the Civil Rights Movement, Black Power, gay rights, feminism, the growing gap between rich and poor, and ethnic oppression. It is all about denying the audience what it expects of a play, provoking it out of real or perceived complacency, startling, and offending it. The plays of Pinter, Shepard, Beckett, Stoppard, Friel, and Fugard are discussed.

“Alone in a Sea of Rib-Tips”: Alvenia Fulton, Natural Health, and the Politics of Soul Food1

2019 ◽  
Vol 74 (3) ◽  
pp. 292-315 ◽  
Author(s):  
Travis A Weisse
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Black Americans ◽  
Black Communities ◽  
Natural Food ◽  
Health Food ◽  
Star Power ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Food Movement

Abstract While the intersection between alternative medicine and the natural food movement in radical white communities of the 1960s and 1970s is well known, the connection between these traditions and the simultaneous revolution in the black foodscape has not received adequate attention. This paper addresses this gap by exploring how an alternative healer and minister from the rural South, Alvenia Fulton, rose to prominence in Chicago during the 1960s and 1970s as one of the major figures in the transformation of the black diet by harnessing the star power of her celebrity clients. Fulton hybridized her apprenticeship in slave herbalism with concepts from white Protestant health food lectures into a corrective nutrition program to bring health and renewal to black communities that were struggling under the burden of structural and medical racism. When, in the 1960s, coronary heart disease peaked for black Americans, soul food became the iconic diet of the civil rights movement. To help her community while respecting their culture, Fulton struck a careful bargain to encourage more black Americans to eat raw, natural, vegetarian food by subtly reimagining the historical contents of the slave diet.

Education in the Eighties

1980 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-153 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francis Keppel
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Federal Government ◽  
State Government ◽  
Minority Groups ◽  
State Governments ◽  
Federal Programs ◽  
State And Local ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Right

In the 1980s individual states will probably continue to have the major responsibility for education in this country. While the federal government may increase the percentage it contributes to the total costs of education, it will continue to be the junior partner in the enterprise, though one with increasing influence. This junior partner today places more demands on state government than its financial contribution seems to warrant. Conventional wisdom acquired in the 1960s and 1970s suggests that the federal government has set the right agenda on such issues as civil rights, poverty, and policies for minority groups and the handicapped—issues which state governments have generally neglected. But, under the Constitution, the federal government has not had the power to carry out its wishes for education without state and local cooperation. In fact, we often forget that a state's willingness to administer programs effectively is the key to the success of federal programs.

The case for reinvigorating quality of working life research

2016 ◽  
Vol 70 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-167 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gudela Grote ◽  
David Guest
Keyword(s):  
Working Life ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Policy Advocacy ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Quality Of Working Life ◽  
Normative Approach ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S

The quality of working life became an important topic in the 1960s and 1970s, helping to stimulate an early approach to evidence-based policy advocacy drawing on interdisciplinary research by social scientists. Over the years it fell out of the limelight but much relevant, albeit fragmented, research has continued. We present a case for rekindling an integrated and normative approach to quality of working life research as one means of promoting workers’ well-being and emancipation. We outline an updated classification of the characteristics of quality of working life and a related analytic framework. We illustrate how research and practice will benefit from following this renewed quality of working life framework, using work design as an example. Concluding, we aim to stimulate debate on the necessity and benefits of rebuilding a quality of working life agenda for marrying academic rigour and practical relevance in order to support interventions aimed at fostering worker emancipation and well-being.

Strategic Sisterhood

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Tuuri
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
The United States ◽  
National Council ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Feminist Movements ◽  
Radical Activism ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

When women were denied a major speaking role at the 1963 March on Washington, Dorothy Height, head of the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW), organized her own women's conference for the very next day. Defying the march's male organizers, Height helped harness the womanpower waiting in the wings. Height’s careful tactics and quiet determination come to the fore in this first history of the NCNW, the largest black women's organization in the United States at the height of the civil rights, Black Power, and feminist movements of the 1960s and 1970s. Offering a sweeping view of the NCNW's behind-the-scenes efforts to fight racism, poverty, and sexism in the late twentieth century, Rebecca Tuuri examines how the group teamed with U.S. presidents, foundations, and grassroots activists alike to implement a number of important domestic development and international aid projects. Drawing on original interviews, extensive organizational records, and other rich sources, Tuuri’s work narrates the achievements of a set of seemingly moderate, elite activists who were able to use their personal, financial, and social connections to push for change as they facilitated grassroots, cooperative, and radical activism.

Localising the Social: The Rediscovery of Urban Poverty in Western European ‘Affluent Societies’

2015 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 555-576 ◽  
Author(s):  
CHRISTIANE REINECKE
Keyword(s):  
Western Europe ◽  
Social Deprivation ◽  
Urban Poverty ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Housing Crisis ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Apparent Paradox ◽  
Urban Problem ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S

AbstractConcentrating on the production of knowledge of poverty and homelessness, this article discusses how particular spatial settings influenced the construction of social problems in the 1960s and 1970s. Exploring the practices of three kinds of knowledge producers – social scientists in academic circles, ‘practitionerscumactivists’ engaging in advocacy research and experts in governmental committees – the analysis focuses on the early stages of a rediscovery of poverty in Western Europe as it was debated in international fora as well as in West Germany and France. It shows that the way in which poverty was represented as a new challenge to Western ‘affluent societies’ was in many respects an urban story, as the ongoing housing crisis and newly defined problem areas served as major points of reference for the revived interest in social deprivation. Moreover, urban actors – locally active NGOs and municipal authorities – played a preeminent role in launching debates on the apparent paradox of poverty in affluence. With their own work often grounded in particular urban problem zones, many contemporary observers tended to spatialise poverty. For them, poverty was bound to particular places; it was an exceptional sphere that helped generate a particular behaviour that made it difficult for ‘the poor’ to rise. While a growing part of the population had access to housing of a standard previously reserved to the middle class and had become able to choose where to live, life in peripheral shantytowns or dilapidated inner cities became the ultimate signifier of a social position beyond the established class structure.

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