Suchergebnisse

Part One: the Early Years of the Twentieth Century -- The Progressive Era Begins: 1901-1912 -- Success and Backlash of Progressive Policy: 1913-1920 -- The Return to "Normalcy" and the Onset of the Depression: 1921-1932 -- The New Deal: 1933-1941 -- Part Two: the War Years, Post-war and Modern America -- War, Recovery and Readjustment: 1941-1952 -- America at Midcentury: 1953-1960 -- The New Frontier and Great Society: 1961-1968 -- Watergate, Distrust and Malaise: 1969-1980 -- Part Three: Polarization, Growing Inequality, and Difficult Choices -- Conversative Dominance: 1981-1992 -- Coming Into the Twenty-first Century: 1993-2000 -- Vulnerable America: 2001-2008 -- Polarized America: 2009-2016 -- Democracy Challenged: 2017-2022 -- The Arduous Road Ahead.

This work analyzes the public policy focus of The Bell Curve, suggesting that the objective of the authors in attempting to empirically validate the theorized intellectual inferiority of African Americans is to substantiate their unworthiness for governmental support in the form of such programs as affirmative action. Drawing on previous research related to the American eugenics movement and the biological inferiority ideologies of the Nazi era, I draw parallels to modern attempts by those involved in a current "White nationalists" movement to engage in racial scapegoating and to discipline the distributive functions of government in ways that disempower those they consider to be members of "unworthy" populations. I conclude that this course will logically result in increased social/racial tensions, leading perhaps to a renewal of racial violence.

AbstractThere are persistent and pervasive disparities in the health of Black people compared to non‐Hispanic Whites in the United States. There are many reasons for this gap; this article explores the role of "Blacks' diminished gain" as a mechanism behind racial health disparities. Diminished gain is a phenomenon wherein the health effects of certain socioeconomic resources and psychological assets are systematically smaller for Blacks compared to Whites. These patterns are robust, with similar findings across different resources, assets, outcomes, settings, cohorts, and age groups. However, the role of diminished gain as a main contributing mechanism to racial health disparities has been historically overlooked. This article reviews the research literature on diminished gain and discusses possible causes for it, such as the societal barriers created by structural racism. Policy solutions that may reduce Blacks' diminished gain are discussed.

In Troubled Waters, Paul F. Paskoff offers a comprehensive examination of the federal government's river improvements program, which aimed to reduce hazards to navigation on the great rivers of America's interior during the early and mid-nineteenth century. Danger on the rivers came in a variety of forms. Shoals, rapids, ice, rocks, sandbars, and uprooted trees and submerged steamboat wrecks lodged in river beds were the most common perils and accounted for the largest number of steamboat disasters. This daunting array of river hazards required a similarly broad range of efforts to remove or at least ameliorate them. Against a variety of obstacles -- natural, political, and technological -- the river improvements program succeeded in reducing the rate of steamboat loss, even as steamboat traffic dramatically increased. Its success, Paskoff argues, demonstrates that the federal government was far more active than generally thought in promoting economic growth and development in the years leading up to the Civil War. The river improvements program was one of the most volatile issues in national, sectional, and state politics, touching on questions of economic development, constitutional law, partisan politics, and sectional rivalry. Paskoff examines the controversial program from its beginnings during the early republic to 1844, giving careful attention to the policies of Andrew Jackson's administration. He explores the array of objections to the program -- some grounded in a strict interpretation of the Constitution and others in a concern over alleged federal wantonness, corruption, and waste -- and follows the political story through the administration of James K. Polk forward to secession. Paskoff also explains the fiscal, economic, and technological aspects of the hazard problem and its solution, analyzing the federal government's fiscal