Mr. DeMarco's History Classes



U.S. History and Government II

1950’s – Was the “American Dream” fulfilled?

Directions: Read the following passage and pause to discuss the questions with your pair partner. Take notes in your notebook based on your discussion.

Voices against Conformity

Many in the 1950s strove for the comfort and conformity depicted on such TV shows as Father Knows Best and Leave It to Beaver (See the picture ().

But despite the emerging affluence of the new American middle class, there was a poverty, racism, and alienation in America that was rarely depicted on TV.

Minorities seemed to be shut out from the emerging American Dream.

Poverty rates for African Americans were typically double those of their white counterparts. Segregation in the schools, the lack of a political voice, and longstanding racial prejudices stifled the economic advancement of many African Americans. In 1952, Ralph Ellison penned INVISIBLE MAN, which pinpointed American indifference to the plight of African Americans. "I am an invisible man," he wrote. "I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me ..."

Latino Americans languished in urban American barrios, and the Eisenhower Administration responded with a program — derisively named Operation Wetback — designed to deport millions of Mexican Americans.

Reservation poverty increased with the Eisenhower policy of "TERMINATION," designed to end federal support for tribes. Incentives such as relocation assistance and job placement were offered to Native Americans who were willing to venture off the reservations and into the cities. Unfortunately, the government excelled at relocation but struggled with job placement, leading to the creation of Native American ghettos in many western cities.

Ethnic minorities — Jews, Italians, Asians, and many groups — all struggled to find their place in the American quilt.

Questions:

1. Based on what you just read, which groups of people were shut out from the “American Dream”? Why? Discuss and write in your notebook.

2. Do you see any connections to today? Discuss and write in your notebook.

The Beat Generation

In the artistic world, dozens of beat writers reviled middle-class materialism, racism, and uniformity. Other intellectuals were able to detach themselves enough from the American mainstream to review it critically.

The writers of the BEAT GENERATION refused to submit to the conformity of the 1950s. GREENWICH VILLAGE in New York City was the center of the beat universe. Epitomized by such Columbia University students such JACK KEROUAC and ALLEN GINSBERG, the beats lived a bohemian lifestyle.

The beats were a subculture of young people dissatisfied with the blandness of American culture and its shallow, rampant consumerism.

While mainstream America seemed to ignore African American culture, the beats celebrated it by frequenting jazz clubs and romanticizing their poverty. The use of alcohol and drugs foreshadowed the counterculture of the following decade. Believing that American society was unspeakably repressed, the beats experimented with new sexual lifestyles.

In 1957, Kerouac published On the Road, the definitive Beat Generation novel. In ON THE ROAD, Kerouac's hero travels around the nation, delving into America's fast-living underside. In "HOWL," Allen Ginsberg assails materialism and conformity and calls for the unleashing of basic human needs and desires.

As the media helped create a single notion of an idyllic American lifestyle, a vocal minority of social critics registered their dissenting voices. The notion of the white-collar, executive-track, male employee was condemned in fiction in SLOAN WILSON's THE MAN IN THE GRAY FLANNEL SUIT and in commentary in WILLIAM WHYTE's THE ORGANIZATION MAN.

The booming postwar defense industry came under fire in C. WRIGHT MILLS'THE POWER ELITE. Mills feared that an alliance between military leaders and munitions manufacturers held an unhealthy proportion of power that could ultimately endanger American democracy — a sentiment (opposing the military industrial complex) echoed in PRESIDENT EISENHOWER'S FAREWELL ADDRESS.

And teen alienation and the neurosis of coming-of-age in postwar America was examined in J.D. SALINGER's THE CATCHER IN THE RYE.

|[pic] |

|[pic] |If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was |[p|

| |born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they |ic|

| |had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you |] |

| |want to know the truth. In the first place, that stuff bores me, and in the second place, my | |

| |parents would have about two hemorrhages apiece if I told anything pretty personal about them. | |

| |They're nice and all — I'm not saying that — but they're also touchy as hell. | |

| |– Holden Caulfield, from The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger (1951) | |

| | | |

| |[pic] | |

|[pic] |

Source:

Questions:

1. Based on what you just read, how did artists and writers of the Beat Generation try to overcome conformity of the 1950’s? Discuss and write in your notebook.

2. Do you see any connections to today? Discuss and write in your notebook.

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