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AP®︎/College US History
Course: AP®︎/College US History > Unit 8
Lesson 14: Continuity and change in Period 8Continuity and change in the postwar era
How much did the events of the tumultuous postwar era reshape American national identity? Kim discusses the extent to which developments like the Cold War, the Civil Rights Movement, Vietnam, and student protests of the 1960s changed core beliefs around citizenship, cultural values, and the proper US role in the world.
Want to join the conversation?
- Why did the postwar era have several problems in it?(8 votes)
- Great question!
Social problem -
Black Americans were still directly and indirectly suppressed and deprived of fundamental human rights.
Political problems -
1) The U.S.S.R became a big threat to capitalism in Europe, Asia etc.
2) The U.S.S.R had become an atomic power.
3) Threat of USSR taking over Korean and Vietnam indirectly.
4) Cuba’s becoming USSR’s close ally.
Other issues
Youngsters had to be drafted in order to fight wars 1000’s of miles away from USA to protect ‘American ideology’.
These are only a few points; of course there are a heap of more issues!(8 votes)
- 1) What’s the sexual revolution? 8:19
2) What’s Beat generation? 8:35(6 votes)- Good questions. You might want more information on these, but here's a general summary.
1) the sexual revolution was a movement in the 1960s towards sexual liberation, such as love outside of traditional values such as heterosexual marriage, and the beginnings of the normalization of contraception, such as in Roe v. Wade.
2) The Beat generation was a movement of authors in the 1950s who believed in, among other things, jazz, free sexuality, and recreational drugs.
Hope this helped!(5 votes)
- Would you say we are in a cold war with China?(4 votes)
- At, she says that America was trying to figure out whether it's possible for someone to succeed. Don't think we have, but have we? 1:29(2 votes)
- It depends on how you think. I personally think the United states have succeed over the years(4 votes)
- Why did the nuclear drills require children to hide under desks? Not like desks are supreme at deflecting radiation...(2 votes)
- You are absolutely right. By hiding under desks, though, children were thought to be protected from things like ceilings falling on their heads.(2 votes)
- why they didnt think they succeed?(2 votes)
- What changed and what stayed the same from the beginning to the end of the post war era?(1 vote)
- That's what the lesson was all about. Listen to or read it again. The answer to your question is there.(2 votes)
- she mentions the nuclear family and sexual revolution, what is the nuclear family and sexual revolution? 8:20(1 vote)
- The nuclear family is defined generally as two parents and their direct offspring residing as a household. Compare this to a "multi-generational" family (add in grandparents or grandchildren); an "extended family" (add in uncles, aunts and cousins); or a "blended family" (add in children from parents' other marriages or relationships).
Historically in the West, in order to keep the passage of a man's property and wealth confined to his own children, though men were free to have sex with whomever they wished, women were supposed to have sex with only the man to whom they were married. Men might be free to purchase birth control (condoms) without opprobrium, but women purchasing them, even if it was for use with their husbands, were frowned upon.
When, in the 1960s, the birth control pill became available, women were freed from the fear of becoming pregnant by someone other than the man to whom they were married, or, if unmarried, by any man. Things "loosened up". It was as if a revolution had happened.
I hope these two short paragraphs are sufficient responses to your questions.(1 vote)
Video transcript
- [Woman] The era from 1945 to 1980 was action packed, to say the least. During this period, the
United States experienced the baby boom, the Civil Rights Movement, the tumultuous 1960s, and
the quagmire of Vietnam. This era was also riddled
with contradictions. A sense of optimism in the
future and a conviction that American economic
prosperity was endless was tempered by fears
of nuclear annihilation and a war on poverty. A foreign policy based on democracy and anti-communism, abroad, was undermined by the
suppression of civil rights and civil liberties, at home. Material comforts and
Leave It To Beaver visions of suburbia clashed with growing calls for young people to tune
in, turn on, and drop out. Would the generation
that fought World War II even recognize the generation
that protested Vietnam? That's the question I'd like
to explore, in this video, taking a high-level look at the impact the events of the postwar era had on reshaping American
national identity. How much did American
national identity change, and how much did it stay the
same, over this time period? To answer this question,
first, we have to define what we mean by American
national identity. In other videos, we've
looked at a few aspects of American identity as
core ideological beliefs about things like who
counts as an American, whether the United States is exceptional, or whether it's possible
for anyone to succeed, so long as they work hard enough. So if we're trying to
track continuity and change in American identity, over
the period from 1945 to 1980, what might be a few beliefs
we should trace, over time? I encourage you to pause the video and see if you can come up with a couple, based on your knowledge of the
events in this time period. Some big events that jump
out to me are the Cold War and the Civil Rights Movement, as well as the protests of the 1960s. So with that in mind, the core beliefs I'd like to look at are ideas
about the United States' role in the world, who counts
as an American citizen, and the country's cultural values. You might have come up with a totally different set of
beliefs, which is great. Try out this same process
I'm about to model, using the beliefs that you've chosen. Now that we've got a few
aspects of national identity we wanna track, let's compare each of them at the beginning of this period
to the end of this period. Remember, we're doing a super,
high-level overview, here. So I'm not gonna take a whole lot of time to explain events in detail. But if something comes up
that you're unfamiliar with, just make a note, and you can look it up when you've got time. All right, let's see what
changed and what stayed the same, over this period, in beliefs about the United States' role in the world. In 1945, the United States
emerged as a world superpower, having abandoned isolationism
as a foreign policy. Instead, the United States
became a leading member of the United Nations and
the NATO defensive pact. The U.S. government was determined to contain the spread of communism and the influence of the Soviet Union through providing military
and financial support to nations fighting communism, which would lead to American
military engagements in Korea and Vietnam. The United States also
had a lot of confidence in its economic role in the world as the only country whose industrial might hadn't been compromised
by World War II bombings. Immediately after the
war, the United States was the world's leading
exporter of steel, cars, consumer goods, and oil. How does that compare to beliefs about America's proper
role in the world in 1980? Well, the United States was
still a world superpower at the end of this era. And it was still pursuing anti-communism as a foreign policy. But in the 1970s, the Cold War
entered a period of detente, a relaxation of tensions
and increase in cooperation between the United States
and the Soviet Union. You could see this as the U.S. government accepting peaceful coexistence
with the Soviet Union. This approach will
change when Ronald Reagan comes into office in 1981. But the period of detente lasted
until the end of the 1970s. The Vietnam War shook American confidence in its interventionist foreign policy. After the war, there was more reluctance to commit U.S. troops, abroad, in what's been called Vietnam Syndrome. Likewise, the Nixon Doctrine
called for U.S. allies to take primary responsibility
for their own defense. Lastly, U.S. economic world
dominance was threatened, in the late 1970s, as well, as Japanese and German automobile makers began competing internationally. And the energy-dependent United States found that its energy needs
were increasingly tied to the oil exporting
countries of the Middle East. So in terms of what changed
and what stayed the same, from the beginning to the
end of the postwar era, I would say that although
the United States remained a world superpower,
committed to supporting its allies and opposing
the spread of communism, by the end of the 1970s, the
country looked to establish some limits to its
intervention in world affairs. Next, let's look at how
beliefs about citizenship changed during this period. After the shared experience
of G.I.s in World War II, European immigrants who
had been looked upon as dangerous others,
in the 1920s and 1930s, were accepted as U.S. citizens and categorized as simply white, not Polish or Irish or Russian. But African American soldiers, who had served in segregated
units during the war, weren't afforded the same courtesy. Despite Truman's executive
order desegregating the military in 1948, black veterans
encountered racial discrimination after the war, along
with difficulty accessing the government subsidies
for education and home loans that white G.I.s took advantage of. The immigration restrictions that set national origin quotas in the 1920s were still largely intact, although the Chinese Exclusion
Act had been repealed during the war as China was a U.S. ally. Chinese Americans were then eligible to become U.S. citizens. However, the new quota
for Chinese immigrants was just 105 individuals per year. What were the beliefs around citizenship at the end of the postwar era? A lot changed during this time period, thanks to the Civil Rights
Movement, Supreme Court decisions like Brown versus Board of Education, and legislation like the
the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. At the end of the '60s,
African Americans were able to access more citizenship rights than they ever had, before. And, in 1965, Congress repealed the old national origin quotas and
passed new immigration laws, allowing Asians to enter the country as well as prioritizing
family reunification and the entrance of skilled immigrants. But in the late 1960s and 1970s, there was a backlash against
the civil rights policies set by the Supreme Court, in
the Johnson administration. With many conservatives arguing that the federal intervention
to advance civil rights had gone too far, and with
some left-leaning organizations arguing that it hadn't gone far enough, to address issues like housing
and job discrimination, looking at the changes and continuities in beliefs about citizenship
over this period, I'd say there was an enormous
expansion, over time, in who was considered a citizen or eligible to become a
citizen of the United States. But there was also a growing antagonism toward the federal government intervening on behalf of civil rights. Last, let's look at
American cultural values, at the beginning and
end of the postwar era. In the years after the war,
there was an emphasis on domesticity and family life. And women were expected to
give up their war time jobs and seek fulfillment through
motherhood and consumption. The United States began
a postwar economic boom that looked virtually unstoppable. In fact, the American
standard of living doubled in the 25 years after World War II. There was also a lot of pressure for Americans to conform to
a homogenous, mass culture, idealizing the white,
suburban, nuclear family. Fear of communist infiltrators led to witch hunts, like McCarthyism. But few people people
questioned the wisdom of the U.S. government or
authority figures, in general. Compare that to the end of this period, after the tumult of the 1960s had turned American culture on its head. In the 1960s and 1970s,
the sexual revolution and women's rights movement challenged the idealized, nuclear family, allowing for a more
permissive sexual culture and the advancement of
women in jobs and education. Starting as early as the 1950s, the Beat Generation began
to question the emptiness of the single-minded pursuit of wealth that was the American Dream. In the 1960s, students
began to protest the draft and the military industrial
complex, more generally, wondering what the United States was even doing in Vietnam. They vowed not to trust anyone over 30. By the 1970s, public confidence
in the U.S. government was also at an all-time low, after revelations about
presidential misdeeds exposed by the Pentagon Papers
and the Watergate scandal. To add insult to injury,
the endless economic boom finally seemed to be at
an end, by the 1970s, with deindustrialization and stagflation, increasing prices and unemployment. So it seems like American cultural values changed a great deal, from 1945 to 1980, from a culture of suburban conformity to one of greater personal freedom but also greater cynicism. But it is important to note that the people of the United States didn't fully reject the
premise of the American Dream. Despite the counterculture of the 1960s, by the 1970s, most
people were still looking for a good job and hoping
to buy a nice home. If we return to our question, then, how much did the events of the postwar era reshape American identity? I think we can respond that
they reshaped it quite a bit. The Civil Rights
Movement, the Vietnam War, and the protest movements of the 1960s led to a U.S. national identity that was considerably more
inclusive and socially free, but also a good deal less confident about its government or
its role in the world. To see how these forces played out, in the next stage of U.S. history, we'll have to look to the 1980s.