Download or read book The Dixification of America written by Stephen D. Cummings and published by Greenwood Publishing Group. This book was released on 1998-08-11 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In mid-July 1997, just as the Dow Jones Industrial Average broke 8,000, the federal government announced that personal bankruptcies were at an all-time high, and Second Harvest, the largest food bank network in America, reported increased demand at half of its distribution centers. But this paradox is not new. Throughout the last decade, economists have extolled the virtues and successes of the U.S. economy, while plants have closed, companies have downsized, and those who remain are fearful about their jobs. Contrary to popular opinion, the free-spending liberals have not driven this country to its current level of economic anxiety; it is, in fact, the conservatives. Current economic policy, Cummings argues, is the product of a union between conservative Republican and conservative Southern economic policy—a union that began in the late 1960s. Before the 1960s, the Southern economy operated as a conservative economic incubator isolated from the rest of the country, and conservative Republicans had to contend with both Democrats and liberal Republicans. After 1969, with Republicans in the White House and with the help of Wallace supporters and later Reagan Democrats, Southern conservative economic policy combined with Republican policy and was gradually exported to the rest of the country. This collaboration and its growing political influence culminated in the Republican control of Congress in the 1990s. Over the decades the South has become more Republican and Southern leaders have had an increasing influence in the Republican Party and in economic policy as a whole. The conservative policy initiatives from this political union have led to some of the same economic problems that have plagued the South since Reconstruction and, fostered by conservative Republicans in the 1920s, ushered in the Great Depression. Current policies, argues Cummings, are leading the country into a similar trap.

Download or read book The Dixification of America written by Stephen D. Cummings and published by Praeger. This book was released on 1998-08-11 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In mid-July 1997, just as the Dow Jones Industrial Average broke 8,000, the federal government announced that personal bankruptcies were at an all-time high, and Second Harvest, the largest food bank network in America, reported increased demand at half of its distribution centers. But this paradox is not new. Throughout the last decade, economists have extolled the virtues and successes of the U.S. economy, while plants have closed, companies have downsized, and those who remain are fearful about their jobs. Contrary to popular opinion, the free-spending liberals have not driven this country to its current level of economic anxiety; it is, in fact, the conservatives. Current economic policy, Cummings argues, is the product of a union between conservative Republican and conservative Southern economic policy—a union that began in the late 1960s. Before the 1960s, the Southern economy operated as a conservative economic incubator isolated from the rest of the country, and conservative Republicans had to contend with both Democrats and liberal Republicans. After 1969, with Republicans in the White House and with the help of Wallace supporters and later Reagan Democrats, Southern conservative economic policy combined with Republican policy and was gradually exported to the rest of the country. This collaboration and its growing political influence culminated in the Republican control of Congress in the 1990s. Over the decades the South has become more Republican and Southern leaders have had an increasing influence in the Republican Party and in economic policy as a whole. The conservative policy initiatives from this political union have led to some of the same economic problems that have plagued the South since Reconstruction and, fostered by conservative Republicans in the 1920s, ushered in the Great Depression. Current policies, argues Cummings, are leading the country into a similar trap.

Download or read book Black Masculinity and the U S South written by Riche Richardson and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2010-01-25 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This pathbreaking study of region, race, and gender reveals how we underestimate the South's influence on the formation of black masculinity at the national level. Many negative stereotypes of black men--often contradictory ones--have emerged from the ongoing historical traumas initiated by slavery. Are black men emasculated and submissive or hypersexed and violent? Nostalgic representations of black men have arisen as well: think of the philosophical, hardworking sharecropper or the abiding, upright preacher. To complicate matters, says Riché Richardson, blacks themselves appropriate these images for purposes never intended by their (mostly) white progenitors. Starting with such well-known caricatures as the Uncle Tom and the black rapist, Richardson investigates a range of pathologies of black masculinity that derive ideological force from their associations with the South. Military policy, black-liberation discourse, and contemporary rap, she argues, are just some of the instruments by which egregious pathologies of black masculinity in southern history have been sustained. Richardson's sources are eclectic and provocative, including Ralph Ellison's fiction, Charles Fuller's plays, Spike Lee's films, Huey Newton's and Malcolm X's political rhetoric, the O. J. Simpson discourse, and the music production of Master P, the Cash Money Millionaires, and other Dirty South rappers. Filled with new insights into the region's role in producing hierarchies of race and gender in and beyond their African American contexts, this new study points the way toward more epistemological frameworks for southern literature, southern studies, and gender studies.

Download or read book Capitalist Punishment written by Alex Friedman and published by SCB Distributors. This book was released on 2010-04-28 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over 100,000 people in the U.S. are incarcerated in prisons owned and operated by private corporations--a booming business. But how are the human rights of prisoners and prison employees affected when prisons are run for profit? An accomplished group of human rights writers and activists explores the historical, political and economic context of private prisons: * How are prisoners' lives affected by privatization? * How does it impact prison labor and prison employees? * How and why are private prisons becoming transnational? * Are women, children, and African and Native Americans affected differently from other populations? * How is privatization connected to the war on drugs, the criminalization of poverty and 'tough on crime' politics? The preface is by Sir Nigel Rodley, Professor of Law at the University of Essex; former United Nations Special Rapporteur for Torture; and knighted in 1999 for recognition of services to human rights and international law.

Download or read book Red States Blue States and the Coming Sharecropper Society written by Stephen D. Cummings and published by Algora Publishing. This book was released on 2008 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Democrats have been frustrated not only by the lack of a clear message by the party leadership in the 2000, 2002, and 2004 campaigns but also by the lack of courage in articulating such a message. This book started as an answer to that persistent weakness. Countering the conservative Red State culture and its result, a quasi-vassal state indebted to foreign interests, the author analyzes Democratic Party politics and lays out a theoretical justification and historic, economic and social framework for advancing a new set of liberal-progressive ideas. Analyzing Red and Blue regions and the links with economic history, he shows how the Democrats can become the majority party again. - Publisher.

Download or read book American Nations written by Colin Woodard and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2012-09-25 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: • A New Republic Best Book of the Year • The Globalist Top Books of the Year • Winner of the Maine Literary Award for Non-fiction Particularly relevant in understanding who voted for who during presidential elections, this is an endlessly fascinating look at American regionalism and the eleven “nations” that continue to shape North America According to award-winning journalist and historian Colin Woodard, North America is made up of eleven distinct nations, each with its own unique historical roots. In American Nations he takes readers on a journey through the history of our fractured continent, offering a revolutionary and revelatory take on American identity, and how the conflicts between them have shaped our past and continue to mold our future. From the Deep South to the Far West, to Yankeedom to El Norte, Woodard (author of American Character: A History of the Epic Struggle Between Individual Liberty and the Common Good) reveals how each region continues to uphold its distinguishing ideals and identities today, with results that can be seen in the composition of the U.S. Congress or on the county-by-county election maps of any hotly contested election in our history.

Download or read book Civic Empowerment in an Age of Corporate Greed written by Edward C. Lorenz and published by MSU Press. This book was released on 2012-04-01 with total page 485 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A thought-provoking investigation of an urgent issue facing American communities today, Edward C. Lorenz’s book examines the intersection of corporate irresponsibility and civic engagement. At the heart of this case study is a group of firms responsible for seven of the most contaminated Superfund sites in the United States, the largest food contamination accident in U.S. history, stunning stock and financial manipulations, and a massive shift of jobs off shore. In the face of these egregious environmental, employee, and investor abuses, several communities impacted by these firms organized to confront and combat failures in corporate and bureaucratic leadership, winning notable victories over major financiers, lobbyists, and indifferent or ineffective government agencies. A critical analysis of public and private leadership, business and economic ethics, and civic life, this book concludes with a stirring blueprint for other communities facing similarly overwhelming opposition.

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Southern Politics written by Charles S. Bullock and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-03-15 with total page 577 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The twenty-three essays included in The Oxford Handbook of Southern Politics present a definitive view of the factors that contribute to the South's distinctive politics, examining these factors in the context of the region's political development since World War II.

Download or read book The Southern Diaspora written by James N. Gregory and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2006-05-18 with total page 463 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between 1900 and the 1970s, twenty million southerners migrated north and west. Weaving together for the first time the histories of these black and white migrants, James Gregory traces their paths and experiences in a comprehensive new study that demonstrates how this regional diaspora reshaped America by "southernizing" communities and transforming important cultural and political institutions. Challenging the image of the migrants as helpless and poor, Gregory shows how both black and white southerners used their new surroundings to become agents of change. Combining personal stories with cultural, political, and demographic analysis, he argues that the migrants helped create both the modern civil rights movement and modern conservatism. They spurred changes in American religion, notably modern evangelical Protestantism, and in popular culture, including the development of blues, jazz, and country music. In a sweeping account that pioneers new understandings of the impact of mass migrations, Gregory recasts the history of twentieth-century America. He demonstrates that the southern diaspora was crucial to transformations in the relationship between American regions, in the politics of race and class, and in the roles of religion, the media, and culture.

Download or read book Capitalist Punishment written by Andrew Coyle and published by Zed Books. This book was released on 2003-04 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Prison privatization is rapidly spreading in many Western countries as governments seek to manage burgeoning prison populations within the constraints of a neo-liberal political agenda. But how is public well-being served when prisons are run for pofit? This volume discusses privatization in its historical and ideological context, and in relation to United nations standards and rules. It examines the adverse effects of private prisons on physical and sexual abuse, health care, education, training and rehabilitation, as corporations seek to maximize profits and describes the impact of cost-cutting on prison staff, paying special attention to the effect on women, children and minorities. It also offers a glimpse into the transnational spread of privatized incarceration, as developing nations, bound by IMF restrictions, are forced into the hands of transnational corporations to the detriment of local alternatives.

Download or read book Reforming Schools written by Jesse Goodman and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2012-02-01 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Reforming Schools, Jesse Goodman discusses the possibilities, struggles, and complexities involved in reforming today's schools. Drawing from his own experiences at the Harmony Education Center—a progressive educational center he helped establish in 1990—Goodman offers a vision of how to persevere at a time when many progressive educators are feeling discouraged. He focuses on practical ideas for reform, such as establishing school autonomy; creating democratic structures, rituals, and values upon which school reform discourse can be generated; and by addressing the current conservative agenda, how to influence what happens in our nation's public schools. By situating school reform within a progressive history of Western society, the author offers valuable insights and ideas that are alternatives to both the conservative and the radical left analyses of schools and society.

Download or read book The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture written by Harvey H. Jackson III and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2014-02-01 with total page 406 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What southerners do, where they go, and what they expect to accomplish in their spare time, their "leisure," reveals much about their cultural values, class and racial similarities and differences, and historical perspectives. This volume of The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture offers an authoritative and readable reference to the culture of sports and recreation in the American South, surveying the various activities in which southerners engage in their nonwork hours, as well as attitudes surrounding those activities. Seventy-four thematic essays explore activities from the familiar (porch sitting and fairs) to the essential (football and stock car racing) to the unusual (pool checkers and a sport called "fireballing"). In seventy-seven topical entries, contributors profile major sites associated with recreational activities (such as Dollywood, drive-ins, and the Appalachian Trail) and prominent sports figures (including Althea Gibson, Michael Jordan, Mia Hamm, and Hank Aaron). Taken together, the entries provide an engaging look at the ways southerners relax, pass time, celebrate, let loose, and have fun.

Download or read book This Corner of Canaan written by Reta Ugena Whitlock and published by Peter Lang. This book was released on 2007 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Textbook

Download or read book Americanism and Americanization written by Mel van Elteren and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2006-09-28 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the current state of foreign affairs, the terms "Americanism" and "Americanization" sometimes take on an unexpected--and an unflattering--connotation. Americanism essentially involves values, beliefs, ideals, goods and practices in local settings outside the United States that are in some way related or attributed to American influence. While the validity of this influence may be under scrutiny, it requires a detailed historical--and sometimes cultural--analysis to understand all the dynamics and implications of Americanization. A variety of factors contributes to this influence, including the preoccupation and reception of the relevant culture itself. For instance, many European countries have at times demonstrated a preoccupation with all things American which was not necessarily swayed by any action of America itself. The overall actualization of Americanization, however, encompasses a number of societal dimensions, including power differentials in the exchange processes concerned. Informed by a history of relevant developments since the early nineteenth century, this volume presents an in-depth critical analysis of the Americanization process. Beginning with a survey of early European preoccupations with things American, the book goes on to discuss European concerns regarding American influence after World War II. The work then looks at Americanism and its influence within the United States itself, especially regarding developments during the New Deal and beyond. The primary goal of the analysis is the construction of an interpretative framework, allowing for a more balanced approach to the study of Americanism abroad. Written from a critical, social-emancipatory perspective, the author's approach blends economic, military, social, political, cultural and psychological dimensions as well as an examination of the ways in which these areas interact. Finally, Americanism is examined as part of a U.S.-style corporate globalization at the current juncture. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.

Download or read book The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture written by M. Thomas Inge and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2014-02-01 with total page 534 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offering a comprehensive view of the South's literary landscape, past and present, this volume of The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture celebrates the region's ever-flourishing literary culture and recognizes the ongoing evolution of the southern literary canon. As new writers draw upon and reshape previous traditions, southern literature has broadened and deepened its connections not just to the American literary mainstream but also to world literatures--a development thoughtfully explored in the essays here. Greatly expanding the content of the literature section in the original Encyclopedia, this volume includes 31 thematic essays addressing major genres of literature; theoretical categories, such as regionalism, the southern gothic, and agrarianism; and themes in southern writing, such as food, religion, and sexuality. Most striking is the fivefold increase in the number of biographical entries, which introduce southern novelists, playwrights, poets, and critics. Special attention is given to contemporary writers and other individuals who have not been widely covered in previous scholarship.

Download or read book Democracy Heading South written by Augustus B. Cochran and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For Cochran, the sense of deja vu is overwhelming - and alarming."--BOOK JACKET.

Download or read book Reflections on People Policy and Practices in Curriculum History written by Deborah L. Morowski and published by IAP. This book was released on 2024-03-01 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: America’s schools are constantly in the news today for safety concerns, contested curricula, teacher quality, test scores, and a variety of other topics. Although most people spend at least 12 years in school systems, they know little of the history or evolution of American schooling. The collection of papers assembled in this book are divided into three categories which greatly impacted American schooling: people, policy, and practices. This work seeks to shed light on what has occurred in curriculum history in the past so as to help readers develop a deeper understanding of how our system of schooling arrived at its current state. The first section of the book examines the stories of people who had an influence on schooling and education. The second section focuses on the curricula and programs that were utilized in schools and districts throughout the country. The final chapter of the book looks at decisions that had long-ranging impact on educational policies. The chapters of this book offer a glimpse into the history of American schooling and those people, policies, and practices that influenced its development. It is the editors’ hope that the work will spark interest in scholars and students of educational history to examine other past, as well as present, stories of educators to expand our understanding of the saga that is the American schooling experience.