Transcript
One or More
1790 · 1990 · 2000
In the spring of 2000, a form from the Census Bureau landed on kitchen tables across the country.
In 1990, the race question said to fill ONE circle. In 2000, it said to mark one or more.
About 6.8 million people marked more than one race. Four in ten of them were children.
In Hawaii, it was one person in five.
The first census, in 1790, had five columns. A marshal's assistant decided which one you went in. The last column was headed 'Slaves.'
Until 1960, census takers usually wrote down your race for you. In 2000, you could answer that you were more than one thing.
The Claim
Boston, July 27, 2004 · Washington, January 11, 1989
Four summers later.
In Boston, an Illinois state senator gave the keynote speech at the Democratic convention.
Most of the country had never heard of him.
There is not a liberal America and a conservative America; there is the United States of America. There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America; there's the United States of America.
He was answering a map. The 2000 election, decided by 537 votes in Florida, had painted the country red and blue.
Source it. His purpose: to sell a party. His audience: undecided voters at home. His point of view: the son of a father from Kenya and a mother from Kansas.
Fifteen years earlier, Ronald Reagan said goodbye with the same kind of hope.
And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here.
A Republican in 1989, a Democrat in 2004: open doors, one people. Was that a description, or a hope?
Eight Objects
1980–2016
Here's Period 9 as evidence: eight objects in a gallery, ten minutes before closing.
In 1980, a conservative movement won the White House. It cut taxes and regulations, and fought over faith, family and abortion. Voters still wouldn't let it cut Social Security.
The Cold War ended, and the one superpower left argued over what its power was for. After September 11 came two long wars and new powers to track suspects at home. There was a sharper fight over oil and climate.
Computers and the internet made workers more productive. Factory jobs and union cards disappeared, most paychecks stalled, and the top pulled away. Americans fought over free trade and, after the 2008 crash, over how to police Wall Street.
New Americans came from Latin America and Asia. Millions more moved south and west. The country argued about immigration, diversity, gender roles, and what counts as a family.
Historians test a claim three ways. Corroborate it: find evidence that supports it. Qualify it: show where it stops being true. Modify it: rewrite it so it fits the evidence.
The evening guard We close at nine. Take your time. I've got one more round.
Which Change?
1850 · 2044
That's a complex argument.
Now the exam's question: which change after 1980 did the most to remake who Americans are?
One answer: the people themselves. They moved south and west, and more came from abroad. In 1970, fewer than one American in twenty was born abroad. By 2015, more than one in eight.
That's close to 1910's share, when Congress answered with quotas. National-origin quotas lasted until 1965.
In 2015 the Census Bureau projected that by 2044, non-Hispanic whites would be under half the country. Check the fine print. A child marked white and Asian counted on the other side. The 2000 boxes changed the headline.
A classmate could argue politics mattered more. Republicans to the right of the median Democrat: 64 percent, then 92. Democrats went from 70 to 94, the other way. Yet only one American in five was consistently liberal or conservative.
The man who made the claim became evidence. Elected in 2008: the first African American president. By 2014 the parties were further apart than in twenty years.
Immigration and the move south and west changed who Americans were more than anything else after 1980. Much of the period's politics was an argument about that change.
So, description or hope? For American families, more and more a description. For American politics, still a hope.
E Pluribus Unum
1776 · 1989 · dawn
The guard starts at the door.
Reagan's farewell gave the reason for rooms like this one. If we forget what we did, we won't know who we are.
Obama's speech had quoted the motto on the Great Seal. E pluribus unum. Out of many, one.
A painter from Geneva suggested it in 1776. John Adams wrote home about him.
John Adams This Mr. Du simitiere is a very curious Man. He has begun a Collection of Materials for an History of this Revolution.
The committee's design put six emblems on the shield, England to Holland, for the countries 'from which the States have been peopled.' Nothing for Africa. Nothing for the nations already here.
Every generation since has argued over who else belongs in the many.
In April 1775, about seventy-seven men stood on this grass and claimed their rights as British subjects.
Who counts as "the people" is the country's oldest argument. It is still going.