The Consumers’ Republic began in 1933 when Franklin Roosevelt launched the New Deal to fix the American economy after the Great Depression. The New Deal allowed more government intervention to strategically invest in industries which created more production and jobs opportunities. The New Deal was slow to fix the Great Depression, but when World War II came into play in 1937 production was booming and many jobs were created due to the need for military production. This era, called the age of mass consumption or “The Golden Age of Capitalism”, revitalized the health of the American economy, but was also an ideological weapon in the political struggle of the Cold War era. The United States explained how the mass consumption of cars, new homes, …show more content…
The exclusion of African Americans from the GI bill of rights to obtain a new job, education, and adequate housing shows how the Consumers’ Republic was not truly a free and equal society to consume because they were unable to live the “American Dream”. Another inequality that African Americans faced in the Consumers’ Republic was during the 1950s and 1960s, when African Americans were discriminated against from accessing housing in suburbia. After the postwar period, suburbia saw a 45 percent increase in growth because American citizens wanted to live the “American Dream” by living in a fancy neighbourhood with white picket fences, cars, and children, demonstrating the status of a middle class citizen (p. 195). White Americans left major metropolitan cities and went to the suburbs because African American veterans were overcrowding these areas after the war. White Americans viewed African Americans as beacons of greater poverty and crime and continued this fear as they moved to the suburbs because they believed that if their neighbourhood became racially intermixed then their property value would fall (p. 213). The first sort of
Originally published in 1999, Mary Pattillo’s Black Picket Fences explores the circumstances and conventions of the Black middle class, a group that has experienced both scholarly and popular neglect. In the Acknowledgments section of this work, Pattillo details the mentorship she received as a graduate student from William Julius Wilson at the University of Chicago. She recounts that Wilson often encouraged his students to extend, and even challenge his scholarly works, and that this urging provided the impetus for her research on the Black middle class (xiv). The challenge Pattillo (2013) refers to, becomes quite apparent when comparing her work to Wilson’s 1980 piece, The Declining Significance of Race. In this work, Wilson (1980) contends that in the industrial/modern era of the United States, class has surpassed race to be a salient factor of social stratification. He supplements his argument by referencing the progress and achievements of the Black middle class, relative to the “economic stagnation” of the Black underclass (p. 2). Pattillo (2013) offers a
Wilson created the atmosphere of not only binding black race with economical and social issues when there are other contributing factors as well. The plight of low-skilled inner city black males explains the other variables. He argues “Americans may not fully understand the dreadful social and economic circumstances that have moved these bla...
A three generation African American family of five living in a small, substandard apartment in the city of Chicago faced many obstacles in order to thrive. Blacks often felt that they could “be somebody” when they saw the growing shopping districts, parks and lake side beaches as well as theaters, ballrooms and fancy hotels (Mays). While great strides had been taken in ...
While whites lived comfortable lives in their extravagant mansions and driving their fancy cars blacks had to live in a disease infested neighborhood with no electricity or in door plumbing. Approximately one thousand people lived in shacks that were squeezed together in a one-mile zone. The alleys were filled with dirt, rats, human wasted and diseases. Blacks lived in houses made of “old whitewash, a leaking ceiling of rusted Inx propped up by a thin wall of crumbling adobe bricks, two tiny windows made of cardboard and pieces of glass, a creaky, termite-eaten door low for a person of average height to pass through...and a floor made of patches of cement earth”(31). Living in such a degrading environment kills self-esteem, lowers work ethic and leaves no hope for the future.
The country is no longer in the midst of a depression nor involved in a brutal global conflict. Wartime production had helped pull the American economy out of the depression it was in, and from the late 1940s on, young adults saw a rise in their spending power (PBS). At this time, jobs were abundant, wages were higher, and Americans had money to spend. During this time, modern American consumerism started. Consumer spending no longer means just satisfying an indulgent material desire (PBS).
The decade following the Reconstruction Era in American history is brilliantly and descriptively named; the Gilded Age was coated with superficial prosperity which buried its hardships that laid within its core. The rise of big business grabbed American’s attention---whether it was in a positive or negative notion--- and the United State’s focus on minorities declined. Women in the Gilded Age were continuous victims to inequality in contrast to their male counterparts, and the opportunity to pursue their own economic quickly turned into another element of inequality between the genders. On the other hand, the general working class quickly were slaves to big business and the new factory system. Working conditions and wages were unbearable,
The downgrading of African Americans to certain neighborhoods continues today. The phrase of a not interested neighborhood followed by a shift in the urban community and disturbance of the minority has made it hard for African Americans to launch themselves, have fairness, and try to break out into a housing neighborhood. If they have a reason to relocate, Caucasians who support open housing laws, but become uncomfortable and relocate if they are contact with a rise of the African American population in their own neighborhood most likely, settle the neighborhoods they have transfer. This motion creates a tremendously increase of an African American neighborhood, and then shift in the urban community begins an alternative. All of these slight prejudiced procedures leave a metropolitan African American population with few options. It forces them to remain in non-advanced neighborhoods with rising crime, gang activity, and...
The author applies a blend of personal experience as historical research to approach the complex and unique ‘donut effect’ the city of Detroit is facing. Safransky summarizes the hardships that the predominantly African-American population face in inner city Detroit. Citizens are forced to squat in abandoned homes where others must grow their own food in gardens because grocery stores gouge basic commodity prices. She faults current conditions back to the 1950’s, when the automotive industry began to decline. The “white flight” of white families left for the suburbs and the poorer blacks were stuck in central locations. This in turn created the ‘donut effect’, where white people amalgamated in the outer ring through the suburbs, and African-Americans
Reed, Veronica M. Civil Rights Legislation and the Housing Status of Black Americans. Review of Black Political Economy. Volume 19.
The bureaucratization of business in the 1920’s meant that more people could be employed in higher paying white-collar jobs than before, including, for the first time, housewives. This new income combined with the reduced prices for goods that resulted from mechanized production, assembly lines and a general decrease in the cost of technology created a thriving consumerist middle class that went on to fuel the economy in all sectors, especially the upper classes. Likewise, during World War II Americans saved up around 150 billion dollars, and this sum combined with the income of the GI Bill allowed normal people to buy expensive things, from houses to cars to electronics to education at a rapid rate, fueling the trademark prosperity of the 1950’s. The new automobile culture of the 50’s spawned new businesses that catered to mobile Americans, such as nicer and more standardized hotels like Holiday Inn, and drive-up restaurants like McDonalds. Just as the culture of the 1920’s was transformed by modernist ideas, the world of the 1950’s was reinvigorated by the introduction of the automobile to the middle class....
After World War II, Americans viewed their nation as an example for the world of what society that was committed to mass consumption looked like. Mass consumption transformed American life leading Americans to buy a lot of material goods and while this was good for the American economy, it also led to troubles. Lizabeth Cohen in her book “A Consumers’ Republic the Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America”, argues that after World War II, there was a shift in Americas economic, political, and cultural system. Mass consumption was beginning to be a common action taken by many Americans during this time. Some of the shifts in the American system were good and some bad.
The census data shows the negative effects on residential properties in the US that that ultimately affects the economic progress of the United States of America. However it had badly affected the black-owned properties the social economic status of African American populations during those times was very poor with higher unemployment rates among these groups often one of the causes of riots in 1960s and 1970s era. The rioters constantly targeted the black property values that results in creating long-lasting and potentially self-transmitting negative effects, as described by Massey and Denton (1993). The individual actions, institutional practices, and governmental policies are results in creating this middle and lower class citizen’s results in economic downturn.
At the turn of the Twentieth Century America is one generation removed from the civil war. For African Americans times are supposed to be improving following the Reconstruction of the south and the ratification of the 15th amendment. Except, in actuality life is still extremely tough for the vast majority of African Americans. Simultaneously, the birthing of the industrial revolution is taking place in America and a clear social divide in daily livelihood and economic prosperity is forming across the country. This time is known as the Gilded Age because as the metaphor emphasizes, only a thin layer of wealth and prosperity of America’s elite robber barons is masking the immense amount of impoverished American laborers. Among the vast majority
The Gilded Age was a time period of rampant development in the American Economy with a policy that minimized the intervention of the government in economic matters. In the late 1800’s starting with railroads, small businesses evolved to the point where the nation’s economy was monopolized by wealthy industrialists and financiers.1 With all this control in the hands of few wealthy individuals critics began to point out several inequalities among Americans.
The United States faced the worst economic downfall in history during the Great Depression. A domino effect devastated every aspect of the economy, unemployment rates were at an all-time high, banks were declaring bankruptcy and the frustration of the general public led to the highest suicide rates America has ever encountered. In the 1930’s, Franklin D. Roosevelt introduced the New Deal reforms, which aimed to “reconcile democracy, individual liberty and economic planning” (Liberty 863). The New Deal reforms were effective in the short term but faced criticism as it transformed the role of government and shaped the lives of American citizens. A competitive market makes a country stronger, but without regulation it can threaten the country’s democracy.