Restless Giant: The United States From Watergate to Bush v. Gore (100 page)

42
. The census reported that 48 percent of Hispanics described themselves as white, 2 percent as black, 6 percent as two or more races, and 42 percent as “some other race.”
New York Times
, June 20, Nov. 19, 2003; Hollinger, “Amalgamation and Hypodescent.” By mid-2003, 4.3 million Americans identified themselves as being of more than one race. This was an increase of 10.5 percent over the number that had so self-identified in 2000.
New York Times
, June 15, 2004.

43
.
Providence Journal
, Feb. 2, 2004.

44
. Orlando Patterson, “Racism Is Not the Issue,” Op-Ed,
New York Times
, Nov. 16, 1997.

45
.
New York Times
, Feb. 15, 2003. A study published by the Pew Hispanic Center in the economically unsettled year of 2004 used census data to conclude that the median net worth of black households, at $6,000, was less than one-fourteenth of that of white households ($88,000) and slightly less than that of Hispanic households ($7,900). Inequality of wealth worsened during the late 1990s. Ibid., Oct. 18, 2004. For earlier figures for the 1970s, see note 14,
chapter 1
.

46
. For unemployment rates, see
Stat. Abst, 2002,
36. In the early 2000s, it was estimated that more than 30 percent of eligible Americans were not receiving benefits from food stamps or from Medicaid.
New York Times
, Feb. 21, 2004.

47
. Compared to life expectancy at birth in 1975 of 66.8 for blacks and 73.4 for whites. The racial gap, changing little in twenty-five years, was 6.6 years in 1975 and 6.2 in 2000.
Stat. Abst., 2002
, 71.

48
. See
chapter 8
for discussion of blacks, crime, and imprisonment.

49
. The National Park Service estimated that the number of men who marched was 400,000. The event had no clearly beneficial results.

50
.
Stat. Abst., 2002
, 441. Poverty among white children in 2000 was 12.3 percent, and among Hispanics, 27.3 percent.

51
. Statistics from Hollinger, “Amalgamation and Hypodescent,” 1385–86. See also Christopher Jencks, “Who Should Get In?” 94–112. Other reports, using 2000 census date, said that the percentage of married black men with white spouses was 6, and the percentage of married black women with white spouses was 3. See
New York Times
, March 11, 2001, April 24, 2005.

52
.
Loving v. Virginia
, 388 U.S. 1 (1967).

53
. See sources cited in note 51 for these numbers.

54
. For an extensive exploration of this case, see Haynes Johnson,
The Best of Times: America in the Clinton Years
(New York, 2001), 107–64. Also Hacker,
Two Nations
, 207–22.

55
. This and other information in the above paragraphs is from Johnson,
Best of Times
.

56
. In February 1997, an all-white jury in Orange County, California, found Simpson guilty of the wrongful deaths of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman in a civil suit. Simpson was ordered to pay $33.5 million to the Goldman family, but most of his money could not be taken.

57
. The first two of these decisions were
Board of Education of Oklahoma City v. Dowell
, 489 U.S. 237 (1991), and
Freeman v. Pitts
, 503 U.S. 467 (1992). See James Patterson,
Brown v. Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and Its Troubled Legacy
(New York, 2001), 195–99.

58
. Data from Harvard University Civil Rights Project, reported in
Providence Journal
, Jan. 19, 2004. Other data in this report revealed increases in segregation of Hispanics in schools during these years.

59
. Average math SAT scores increased from 519 in 1993 to 535 in 2003; average verbal SATs increased in the same years from 507 to 514.
New York Times
, Aug. 27, 2003.

60
. A point stressed by David Tyack and Larry Cuban,
Tinkering Toward Utopia: A Century of Public School Reform
(Cambridge, Mass., 1995), 36; and by Neil Howe and William Strauss,
Millennials Rising: The Next Great Generation
(New York, 2000), 167–68.

61
. According to official statistics, 85 percent of white Americans aged twenty-five and over in 2000 had graduated from high school, compared to 79 percent in 1990 and 55 in 1970. Estimated percentages for similarly aged blacks who graduated from high school indicated a closing of this racial gap; these were 79 in 2000, as opposed to 66 in 1990 and 31 in 1970.
Stat. Abst., 2002
, 139.

62
. Ibid.

63
. In 1960, 7.7 percent of Americans over the age of twenty-five had college bachelor’s degrees; by 1998, 24 percent did. Daniel McMurrer and Isabel Sawhill, “The Declining Importance of Class,”
Urban Institute
no. 4 (April 1997).

64
. Michael Berube, “Testing Handicaps,”
New York Times Magazine
, Sept. 21, 2003, 18.

65
. For a review of debates over education of minorities, see Richard Rothstein, “Must Schools Fail?”
New York Review of Books
, Dec. 2, 2004, 29–37. See also John Chubb and Tom Loveless, eds.,
Bridging the Achievement Gap
(Washington, 2002); Abigail Thernstrom,
No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning
(New York, 2003); and Christopher Jencks and Meredith Phillips, eds.,
The Black-White Test Score Gap
(Washington, 1998).

66
. For
A Nation at Risk
, see
chapter 1
. It was this drive for higher educational standards that led to passage in 2001 of the No Child Left Behind Act. See
chapter 7
.

67
. See, for example, Derrick Bell,
Silent Covenants: Brown v. Board of Education and the Unfulfilled Hopes for Racial Reform
(New York, 2004); and Patterson,
Brown v. Board of Education
, 191–223. Other books on the legacy of the
Brown
case, fifty years old in 2004, include Michael Klarman,
From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality
(New York, 2004); and Charles Ogletree,
All Deliberate Speed: Reflections on the First Half-Century of Brown v. Board of Education
(New York, 2004).

68
. Alan Krueger and Diane Whitmore, “Would Smaller Classes Help Close the Achievement Gap?” in Chubb and Loveless,
Bridging the Achievement Gap
, 11.

69
. Jennifer Hochschild,
Facing Up to the American Dream: Race, Class, and the Soul of the Nation
(Princeton, 1995), 56–57; Paul Sniderman and Thomas Piazza,
Black Pride and Black Prejudice
(Princeton, 2002), 110–12; David Whitman,
The Optimism Gap: The I’m OK—They’re Not Syndrome and the Myth of American Decline
(New York, 1998), 102.

70
. Hochschild,
Facing Up to the American Dream
, 214.

1
.
New York Times
, Jan. 21, 1993.

2
. For Clinton’s style and politics, see Joe Klein,
The Natural: The Misunderstood Presidency of Bill Clinton
(New York, 2002), 194–95; Fred Greenstein,
The Presidential Difference: Leadership Style from FDR to Clinton
(New York, 2000), 195–98; Lewis Gould,
The Modern American Presidency
(Lawrence, Kans., 2003), 218; and William Berman,
From the Center to the Edge: The Politics and Policies of the Clinton Presidency
(Lanham, Md., 2001), 5–17.

3
.
New York Times
, Sept. 13, 1998.

4
. Ibid., Jan. 19, 2001. See also Klein,
The Natural
, 206.

5
. For an example of Clinton’s self–pity and hot temper, see David Halberstam,
War in a Time of Peace: Bush, Clinton, and the Generals
(New York, 2001), 316–17.

6
. Morris kept a low profile after 1996, when the media exposed his involvement with a prostitute. News accounts stated that she was with Morris on an occasion when he was talking on the phone with Clinton.

7
.
New York Times
, Sept. 27, 1998.

8
. Haynes Johnson,
The Best of Times: America in the Clinton Years
(New York, 2001), 451.

9
. Gould,
The Modern American Presidency
, 218.

10
. R. Shep Melnick, “Governing More but Enjoying It Less,” in Morton Keller and Melnick, eds.,
Taking Stock: American Government in the Twentieth Century
(New York, 1999), 280–306; Joseph Nye, “The Decline of Confidence in Government,” in Nye et al.,
Why People Don’t Trust Government
(Cambridge, Mass., 1997), 6.

11
. John Scholz and Kara Levine, “The Evolution of Income Support Policy in Recent Decades,” Institute for Research on Poverty,
Focus
21, no. 2 (Fall 2000), 9–16. See also
Stat. Abst., 2002
, 340–47.

12
.
Stat. Abst., 2002
, 343.

13
. Jeffrey Madrick,
The End of Affluence: The Causes and Consequences of America’s Economic Decline
(New York, 1995); Edward Luttwak,
The Endangered American Dream: How to Stop the United States from Becoming a Third World Country and How to Win the Geo-Economic Struggle for Industrial Supremacy
(New York, 1993).

14
. Generalizations in this and following paragraphs derive from the following revealingly titled books about American politics in the 1980s and 1990s. Jonathan Rauch,
Demosclerosis: The Silent Killer of American Government
(New York, 1994); Matthew Crenson and Benjamin Ginsberg,
Downsizing Democracy: How America Sidelined Its Citizens and Privatized Its Public
(Baltimore, 2002); Byron Shafer,
The Two Majorities and the Puzzle of Modern American Politics
(Lawrence, Kans., 2003); and Benjamin Ginsberg and Martin Shefter,
Politics by Other Means: Politicians, Prosecutors, and the Press from Watergate to Whitewater
(New York, 2002).

15
.
Stat. Abst., 2002
, 412. Compared to approximately 35 percent of all workers in the mid-1950s and 20 percent in 1983. Union leaders, however, continued to be effective at getting people to the polls. In the presidential election of 2000, it was estimated that 26 percent of all votes came from members of union households, 63 percent of which went to Al Gore, the Democratic candidate.
New York Times
, March 11, 2004.

16
. David Brooks,
Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There
(New York, 2000), 258–59.

17
. Gould,
The Modern American Presidency
, 216–17.

18
. For Gingrich, Jonathan Franzen, “The Listener,”
New Yorker
, Oct. 6, 2003, 85–99; John Taylor, “Thinking of NEWT,”
Esquire
, Nov. 1995, 64–79; Joe Klein, “Whither Liberalism?”
Time
, Nov. 21, 1994, 56. For the legacy of ideologues such as Gingrich, see Peter Keating, “Wake-up Call,”
AARP: The Magazine
, Sept./Oct. 2004, 55.

19
. The acronym used by Ginsberg and Shefter, in
Politics by Other Means
, 37–45.