Essays Berkin Chapter 29
1. The struggle for women’s rights moved to center stage in national political life by the 1980s. Identify and discuss the issues associated with the contemporary struggle to expand the rights of women in American society.
DEVELOPING YOUR ANSWER: Three such issues should be addressed in your essay: abortion, the proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution, and sexual harassment. When discussing each, be sure to provide examples of how it captured public attention and how it became a source of considerable controversy. In connection with abortion, it is essential, for example, to discuss the Right to Life movement, Roe v. Wade, the Hyde amendment, and Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey. For the Equal Rights Amendment, describe both the arguments and the organized movements for and against it, as well as the proposal’s eventual fate. Finally, for sexual harassment, the Senate confirmation hearings for Clarence Thomas’s nomination to the Supreme Court should be cited.
As more women became the single head of the household, the feminization of poverty impacted an increasing number of women and children. You might also want to discuss recent court rulings regarding abortion in your answer.
2. Beginning with the New Deal, conservatives have objected to the expansion of the federal government’s role in economic and social problems. During the 1980s and 1990s, however, conservatives focused perhaps more than ever on changing social values. Identify and discuss the social issues that have assumed great importance in recent years in the thinking of American conservatives.
DEVELOPING YOUR ANSWER: One such issue is greater freedom and openness in sexual behavior. The changing family has also become a source of anxiety: the divorce rate has soared, many women have established careers outside their households, and more single women are bearing children.
The move by more women into careers outside the home raises yet another category of social issues, namely new gender roles. The latter refers not only to women but also to gays, who have become more open and visible, more insistent upon bringing an end to discrimination against themselves, and more assertive about their rights.
Affirmative action has also attracted the concern of many conservatives, who have objected to it as a legitimate means for providing greater opportunity for minorities and women. In this context, be sure to discuss the Bakke case.
You might also want to include a discussion of the Contract with America in your answer.
3. President Barrack Obama was elected as the first African American to the nation’s highest office in 2008 and won re-election in 2012. Review in your text and class notes the progress of the civil rights movement from the 1950s to the present and determine what made it possible for the nation to elect an African American president even though a few decades earlier many African Americans were unable to exercise their right to vote.
DEVELOPING YOUR ANSWER: You might want to start by discussing what role you believe race did or did not play in the 2008 election based on what you have learned in this course and from contemporary sources easily available online through most search engines.
Then, develop a narrative timeline of the most significant events since the 1950s that provided not only a much more formal acknowledgement of the equal rights of African Americans in the United States but also the much freer exercise of those rights. How did those events contribute to the success of an African American president in 2008?