Capitalism CaseEssay Preview: Capitalism CaseReport this essayLaw, courts, and lawyers played increasing roles in the central social and political conflicts of the 1970s. There was a ton of attention paid to rising crime rates, the rights of the accused, and the death penalty. The growing prison populations and prison riots raised difficult questions about prison conditions and if stricter sentencing should be used to stop the rising crime rate. Intense debates about school busing and school desegregation were carried on in courtrooms and in the streets. The Supreme Court established a womans right to abortion and changed the course of national politics. Legal disputes over the presidents executive privilege and custody of the White House tapes played a pivotal role in the Watergate crisis. And environmental groups and business firms fought out the battles of environmental policy in courtrooms across the country.
Education was also undergoing a radical change in the 1970s. Even with the small amount of activism in the 1960s, fewer than 5 percent of college students nationwide, the principles of inclusion and equal opportunity became the norm in education during the 1970s. Some schools and colleges were run by those who believed that the success of any institution and any teacher should be instead by the treatment of those not achieving. Education policy in the 1970s was also significantly influenced by changes that had been brought about in the prior decade. An extraordinary change of federal education policy was accomplished during the 1960s the Democratic presidents Kennedy and Johnson. Enrollments were up, funding was pouring in from federal sources, student attitudes were optimistic, and jobs were plentiful after graduation. Unfortunately with the troubled economy, enrollments began to fall in the 1970s. Total enrollment at U.S. colleges rose less than 2 percent between 1972 and 1974, with minority attendance rising 11.7 percent during those years. As much as the white majority was discouraged with the job market after graduation because of the struggling economy, minorities such as blacks saw it as their opportunity to receive an education and possibly advance their social standing.
American race relations entered yet another contentious period in the mid-1970s. The civil rights revolution of the 1960s had produced a number of significant gains. A greater number of blacks voted, attended colleges and universities, and had access to better-paying jobs–but significant problems still remained. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the nations northern cities, where the flight of white, middle-class city dwellers that had begun in the late 1940s accelerated. In many northern cities, middle-class whites lived in the suburbs, while working-class white ethnics, middle-class and working-class African-Americans, and new immigrants lived in urban neighborhoods. The result was rigid segregation by neighborhood and school.
The Supreme Court attempted to solve the persistent problem of school segregation by mandating in 1971 that communities could and should bus students to achieve racial balance between schools (Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg County School District). The Courts decision meant that white students would be bused to predominantly black schools and black students to predominantly white schools.
The gains won by the womens movement in the first half of the 1970s were very real and transformed American life. The primary job for women at the time had been to care for the household while their husbands went to work but due to the Feminist movement things changed. Female politicians won offices at the local, state, and national levels, and by the mid-1970s women were playing a larger role in both the Democratic and Republican parties. Women were also enrolling in medical and law school in larger numbers. At the same time, the womens movement fought tirelessly to win greater protections for victims of sexual abuse. Throughout the early 1970s, feminists won a series of court decisions that made it easier to prosecute rapists. At the grass-roots
level, they achieved a major breakthrough that forced the nation to re-look at the role of women in our society. For many women activists, the shift was as painful and liberating for a woman as it was liberating for a man. In order for us to hold up our own, we had to act on our ideas, create new approaches and make sure that our ideas would still be relevant for any generation. At times, feminists failed to do this. By the time of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, women made up a large proportion of the workforce, so the focus and leadership of women’s organizations and rights organizations shifted from the black public-sector leadership to other black and white men. Some of this political change, including this article, may not have been at all surprising to most feminists. But it was especially surprising to many women. It may have been due to a combination of lack of knowledge and poor decision-making ability. By the 1980s, there was a great deal of talk about how the women needed to get more out of the marriage and the economy. The issue of economic inequality, combined with a growing number of Americans being born into relatively affluent families, was one of the topics of discussion in the first half of the 1970s. A group of researchers who specialize in the early 1970s argued at the time that there was an enormous shift in American economic interests to male over-production. Men are increasingly the driving force behind the industry and manufacturing of products like automobiles and refrigerators. These are goods that can sell in more expensive countries and less cheaply in foreign markets. These products will sell even better internationally if they can compete with products in the domestic market. Today’s low-cost-of-living countries have more women in their workforce who work outside the home. Because of these high demand, we are seeing a widening problem of both men and women living in poverty, or without the security or education that the men and women deserve. Women of color and other minority groups are taking the lead as a critical force in this movement. Their leadership in their field provides a foundation for this kind of action that is needed now as we learn who we are and who we need to be. There are a number of ideas for this action, but the major breakthrough we have found during the last year and a half was that there are huge numbers of women who identify as feminists. They are all women from diverse backgrounds, and they are becoming increasingly recognized as key drivers in this movement. More work is needed to create more visibility. For decades, it has been the responsibility both of individual women and government entities to develop policies and actions to protect women’s rights. But there is room for us to work on how to organize on both the federal, state and local levels to do the same. Since the 1980s, efforts have been made to increase women’s roles in politics and the workplace by promoting an increased emphasis on the feminist community. In addition, policies and actions have included the creation of national feminist leadership groups to promote the