Transcript Chapter 1

Chapter 42
The American People
Face a New Century
The University Without Walls
Students getting their education from
this facility at the Iowa Distance
Learning Center need never enter a
classroom.
Bill Gillette/ Stock Boston
The Rise and Fall of the NASDAQ Composite Index, 1994–2004
In March 2000 the NASDAQ Composite Index, replete with technology stocks,
peaked at its all-time closing high of 5,048 before losing over 75 percent of its market
value in the next three years. The same index had opened in February 1971 with a
base of 100 points.
Source: MSN Money.
Demographic Profile of Women, Minorities, and the Foreign-born in
Nonacademic Science and Engineering Occupations, 1980–2000
Source: Science and Engineering Indicators, 2004, http://www.nsf.gov/sbe/srs/seind04/pdf/c03.pdf.
Women’s World: Something Old, Something New
By the beginning of the twenty-first century, revolutionary changes in the economy
and in social values had opened new career possibilities to women, while not fully
relieving them of their traditional duties as mothers and homemakers. Dramatic
changes in race relations and the redefinition of gender roles at the end of the
twentieth century transformed even tradition-bound institutions like the U.S. Military
Academy at West Point, New York, as this gathering of cadets suggests. Women’s
athletics came into their own in the wake of the feminist revolution. In 1999 the U.S.
Women’s World Cup Soccer Team brought home the trophy to a nation suddenly
enthralled with women’s soccer.
Mark Antman/ The Image Works/A. Ramey/ Stock Boston/Reuters/ Corbis
The Justice Is a Lady, 1981
Herblock hails Sandra Day O’Connor’s
appointment to the Supreme Court.
©Herblock/ The Washington Post
The Modern Family Tree
High divorce rates and the increasing numbers of “blended families” in modern
American society could often be confusing.
©Punch/ Rothco
Senior Power
Living longer and living healthier, older
Americans coalesced into one of
America’s most politically powerful
interest groups as the twentieth century
drew to a close.
Rick Friedman/ Black Star/ Stockphoto
Government Expenditures for
Social Welfare, 1930–2003
“Social welfare” includes unemployment
and old-age insurance, health care, and
veterans’ benefits. The skyrocketing
costs from the mid-1960s onward
reflect new commitments made through
Great Society programs and the
increasing size (and political clout) of
the elderly population, who were the
main beneficiaries of expensive
programs like Medicare. The steep rise
after 1970 is also explained by the
galloping inflation of the 1970s.
Sources: Statistical Abstract of the United States, 2003, and Office of Management and Budget, 2003.
Recent Legal Immigration by Area of Origin, 1961–2000
Source: Yearbook of Immigration Statistics, 2002 Department of Homeland Security.
Changing Colors
A second-grade bilingual class recites the Pledge of Allegiance (in both Spanish and
English) in Austin, Texas. By the end of the twenty-first century, Americans who can
trace their ancestry directly to Europe might well be a minority in the United States.
Bob Daemmrich/ The Image Works
Cuban Refugees Arriving in the United States
These multiracial exiles were among the many thousands of Cubans who fled to the
United States in the years following Fidel Castro’s seizure of power in Cuba in 1959.
One such refugee, six-year-old Elian Gonzalez, caused a diplomatic tug-of-war in
2000 between the Cuban community in Miami, the Cuban government, and the U.S.
Justice Department. Ultimately, Elian was returned to Cuba to live with his father over
his Miami relatives’ objections.
Owen Franken/ CORBIS
Chicana Pride
A Mexican-American girl celebrates her
cultural heritage at the Texas Folklife
Festival in San Antonio.
Bob Daemmrich/ Stock Boston
Percent of Total Population Living in Metropolitan Areas and in Their
Central Cities and Suburbs, 1910–2000
Copyright (c) Houghton Mifflin Company. All Rights Reserved.
Still Fighting to Vote
This African-American father and
daughter are participating in a rally in
downtown Miami several weeks after
the November 2000 election to demand
a recount of dismissed presidential
election ballots. Many Florida blacks
complained that election officials had
disproportionally disqualified their votes
and unfairly turned them away from the
polls, resurrecting the kind of obstacles
that long had kept blacks from voting in
the South.
Luis Alvariz/ AP Wide World Photos
(left) Author Toni Morrison; (right) Author Jhumpa Lahiri
With the rapid increase of both liberal arts degrees awarded as well as cultural and
commercial globalization, the scope of popular literature has continued to widen in the
twenty-first century.
AP/ Wide World Photos/Shonna Valeska
MECHA Mural, by Student Artists Directed by Sergio O’Cadiz, 1974
People have scribbled on walls since time immemorial, but in the 1960s and 1970s,
mural painting emerged as a new form of American folk art. Drab buildings and bare
fences, often in minority inner-city neighborhoods, were turned into huge canvases.
This mural incorporates many Mexican American and Mexican themes, including the
United Farm Workers’ bird symbol and a skeleton, a frequent motif in Mexican art.
Rancho Santiago College