Widening Economic Gap

In Lyndon B. Johnson’s Commencement Address at Howard University, he said, “In far too many ways American Negroes have been another nation: deprived of freedom, crippled by hatred, the doors of opportunity closed to hope.” All of these things he uses as proof of the widening economic gap that has been growing between black and white Americans. He also said that freedom is “the right to be treated in every part of our national life as a person equal in dignity and promise to all others,” which had not been the case in the United States at the time. He said that thirty-five years prior to his speech the unemployment rate was about the same for blacks and whites, but that at the time it was twice as high for African Americans compared to whites. Also, he said that the rate of African American earnings when compared to the white man declined steadily all around the country. Another example he gave was that the infant mortality rate of nonwhites in 1940 was 70 percent higher than that of whites.
The President gives two main reasons for this gaps existence. The first that he gives is that “Negroes are trapped--as many whites are trapped--in inherited, gateless poverty.” He said that they are going to try and address these issues with bills and policies to enhance their living situations, education systems, and working atmosphere. As his second and biggest reason, Johnson said that it “is the devastating heritage of long years of slavery; and a century of oppression, hatred, and injustice,” and this problem cannot simply be fixed with a policy or forgotten with money.
The cartoon simply shows the results of slavery. It shows the beginning, with a black man enslaved and the white man free. The white man uses the black man to get above him, and when the black man finally gets free refuses to help him. This is exactly what had happened in America. Although the law said that they were free, African Americans were being shown none of the civil liberties they should have been. They were still highly discriminated against and shown a very cold shoulder from most white people they came across. President Johnson said in his address that it is mainly the job of the African Americans to make progress, but there is no way they can do it alone.

Reaction #9: Cheerful Robots

In the 1950s, C. Wright Mills criticized the American people as being “Cheerful Robots.” People in the 1950s had become cookie cutter, just like the houses they were living in. The family became known as the nuclear family, as families all worked together to “benefit” everyone in one. Families became more immediate, rather than putting emphasis on the extended family. This nuclear family almost always included the father being in charge of “bringing home the bread.” Women were left to have his children and take care of them at home. The “Cheerful Robots” comment that Mills made refers to the fact that all the families normally put on a smile and did the same thing every day. Also, with more and more appliances being developed, more was expected of women in the home. Many had been forced to leave their jobs after the war, and had to act happy about being forced to now stay in the home. People can still be considered as a “cheerful robot” today, trying to constantly fill their lives in order to be happy and live a life worth living.

Reaction #8: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights arose from the actions of the Second World War. This document is the first to recognize all of the rights humans have from birth. The approval of the Declaration came on December 10, 1948; with 48 voting in favor and 8 abstaining from the vote. Broken up into two covenants, the United States approved the first in 1992 and has yet to approve the second covenant.
The many principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights conflicted with many US policies and practices. First of which is the known fact of slavery. In many documents, the US has allowed the ownership of and enslavement of other people by people. This conflicted completely with the Declaration because the Declaration refers to all people, no matter their origin. Also, the Declaration allowed for the ownership of property, but within the US it was very hard for minorities to be allowed this right. The lack of equality within the US borders created many of these problems with the Declaration.
Another conflict with the Declaration was the inclusion of women. Women had very little rights still when this was ratified, and it made some people very upset. The Declaration gives the right to equal pay for equal work, and for the protection of employment. Neither of these was seen in the US at the time the Declaration was drafted. Women were forced out of their jobs once the men came back from war, and women were never paid as much as a man for their work.