Gather round kids under 35... I have a story for you
Last edited Wed May 9, 2012, 02:40 PM - Edit history (4)
We still live within the mythology of Progress where the world gets better day by day. We are raised to think of things like rights as a one-way ratchet. First nobody got to vote, then white men with property got the vote, then white working men, then black men, then women, then people 18-21... Progress like filling in the periodic table of elements—we only add new elements, never losing the old ones. But today we see a reduction of the vote through coat-to-coast voter suppression. It is probably harder for minorities to vote today than it was in, say 1995.
We have made a lot of legal and policy gains since 1970. A lot. No question about it. HUGE gains. But a thing once gained is not then automatically permanent.
In many ways our society is less progressive in character, and less expecting of progress. Ever since Reagan we are a more tonally repressive society. (And often more literally repressive too. TSA? Sobriety check-points? NSA?)
Case in point... the recently departed Maurice Sendak. In 1970 he put out IN THE NIGHT KITCHEN. The book was controversial in that people debated whether it was appropriate for children. It was, however, a big award winner and not burned in bonfires and nobody said that Maurice Sendak should be imprisoned as a pornographer. Librarians who voted awards for the book did not fear it might be a career ending move.
Such would not be the case today!
Please other examples you might have of ways the 1970s was surprisingly wide-open by today's standards.
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