Module 27: The Rise of Conservatism

We left off Module 26 with kind of a cliff hanger! 😜 Who was the "silent majority"? Were they "silent"? In Module 27, we'll find out!

[Wow, are you intrigued or what?!]

In Module 27, we'll also look at Ronald Reagan's political coalition in the 1980s, and how the terms of political debate changed as a whole.

Reagan's 1980 Campaign

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Four questions will guide this module blog post:

1. Who were the “silent majority” and were they actually silent?

2. What were the factors contributing to the 1970s “crisis of confidence”?

3. How did the Reagan administration shift conceptions of American citizenship?

4. How did the conservative grassroots movement, the media, and politicians in the 1980s frame national discussions of sex, morality, and personal responsibility?

Let's get started.

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Part I: The "Silent Majority" and Events Leading to the Crisis of Confidence

At the end of Module 26, you answered a word cloud with ideas about who the "silent majority" was.

The “great, silent majority” was supposedly all of those Americans who were not participating in anti-war demonstrations and urban uprisings. Nixon ran his campaign promising to end the war, but also promising a renewed commitment of “law and order.” President Nixon gave a name to the swath of the population that supposedly was not questioning the status quo. These people were certainly members of the conservative movement, but also were people who supported the rhetoric and ideals of equality being advocated by freedom movements, but who perhaps viewed their tactics or their spokespeople as “too radical.”

What kinds of issues did the "silent majority" get loud about?

Busing

One of the most divisive and controversial issues confronting the so-called “silent majority” was the continued effort to desegregate schools all over the country. In the debates over desegregation, we can clearly see the tension between rhetoric of “color-blind” equality and freedom of choice and opposition to federal oversight.

Anti-busing Rally, South Boston, 1975 Source: Boston Public Library

In Module 22, we examined Brown II, which specified that states must desegregate their schools with “all deliberate speed.” In the early 1970s, the Supreme Court weighed in on the particular methodology that certain districts were using to desegregate.

Although segregation was illegal, most schools remained segregated. Where you attend public school is determined by where you live. Module 21 examined suburbanization and noted that it was mostly whites who were able to leave cities and move into suburbs. Public schools in the inner cities were often much poorer quality than those in suburban areas, mainly because schools are funded from property taxes. More poor people in the city mean a less healthy tax base to fund schools for poor children.

In 1971, the Supreme Court case Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education upheld a decision made by a lower court to approve a plan that required extensive transportation of students to achieve school integration. Basically children would be bused to schools outside of their neighborhoods, essentially achieving what Stokely Carmichael was arguing in our module on Black Power—two-way integration.

Many white parents objected to this plan. However, they did not use explicitly racial terms to object. On the contrary, they asserted that they were not segregationists. Rather they used the language of color-blind meritocracy. By refusing to acknowledge that residential segregation was the product of structural racism, and asserting it was the class-based outcome of meritocratic individualism, they upheld their right to send their children to neighborhood schools. [1]

This correlates with the conservative worldview—the idea that their success was due only to their own entrepreneurial efforts, and they should be allowed to enjoy those efforts by sending their children to a school close by.

Boston Busing Desegregation Protests, 1976

People complained about increased traffic and the disruption of family schedules. However, it wasn’t just the distance that parents were worried about. Parents objected to sending their children to inferior schools in the inner city. In other words, they were willing to accept Black students into white schools, but not willing to send their children to Black schools. Framing their struggle in the language of rights and freedom of choice, parents who were opposed to the judge’s ruling in Swann sang verses of the civil rights anthem “We Shall Overcome” outside the court room. As much as they wanted to differentiate themselves from the radical movements of the 1960s, the challenges that those movements had posed was integrated into their own conflicts. [2]

One of the most bitter fights over busing took place in Boston. Residents of the tightly-knit Irish-American community of South Boston demonstrated loudly and violently against a busing plan decreed by a local judge there. In 1974, the Supreme Court issued another significant ruling about busing. Milliken v Bradley overturned an order that required Detroit’s prominently white suburbs to enter into a regional desegregation plan with the city’s heavily minority school system. By absolving suburban districts of responsibility for assisting in integrating public schools, the decision ultimately guaranteed that housing segregation would be mirrored in public education.

Poll #1

In your opinion, was the activism of the 1970s as a whole more radical or more conservative? Answer in the embedded poll below, or access it here.

Nixon and Abuse of Power

Since FDR, US presidents in the 20th century had wielded a lot of power—in the context of international crises, like the Great Depression, World War II, and the Cold War, the American people were willing to grant the executive branch quickly and energetically to foreign threats. Nixon’s presidency is where that trust and power began to unravel.

In 1971, Dr. Daniel Ellsberg, a former Pentagon expert on Vietnam, made public the secret “Pentagon Papers,” a damning documentation of American policy in Vietnam between 1945 and 1968.

Daniel Ellsberg, testifying before the Senate in 1973

The Nixon administration attempted to block the publication of the papers in newspapers, even after the Supreme Court ruled that the government had failed to prove that releasing them would injure the nation. Ellsberg was indicted for stealing government property.

The White House also created a group of secret agents known as the “plumbers,” to “stop security leaks and to investigate other sensitive security matters.” One of the group’s first tasks was to discredit Ellsberg. Watch the short video below for more background on the plumbers:

Watergate and Nixon's Resignation

In June 1972, five former employees of Nixon’s reelection committee, the Committee to Re-Elect the President, were caught burglarizing the Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate apartment complex in Washington, DC. Congressional hearings after the break-in revealed a wider pattern of wiretapping, break-ins, and attempts to sabotage political opposition. It was discovered that Nixon had made tape recordings of conversations in his office. The Supreme Court ordered Nixon to provide the tapes. The scandal continued to unfold week after week.

Whether or not Nixon actually knew about the Watergate break-in, he became involved immediately afterward by authorizing payments to the burglars to remain silent or commit perjury, and had ordered the FBI to stop its investigation of the crime.

Watch the brief clip below which goes through what happened after the “Saturday Night Massacre,” the series of events which started when Nixon fired the special prosecutor who had been appointed to investigate the Watergate incident.

In August 1974, the House Judiciary Committee voted to recommend that Nixon be impeached for conspiracy to obstruct justice. His political support evaporated. He became the only president in US history ever to resign.

Infringement on Civil Liberties

After Nixon’s resignation, Senate hearings led by Frank Church of Idaho laid bare a history of abusive actions involving every administration since the beginning of the Cold War. In violation of the law, the FBI had spied on millions of Americans and had tried to disrupt the civil rights movement. The COINTELPRO papers, which I quoted from when we examined the Black Panthers, were discovered as a result of the Church hearings.

President Jimmy Carter with Senator Frank Church

The CIA also had a program called Operation CHAOS, which compiled dossiers on American citizens, especially antiwar demonstrators. By 1974, the CIA had dossiers on 7,200 American citizens, stored the names of 300,000 individuals and groups in a computerized index file, opened over 200,000 first-class letters, placed wiretaps on telephones, bugged people’s homes, and burglarized the offices of dissident groups.

End of the "Golden Age" of Capitalism

During the 1970s, the economic expansion and consumer prosperity of the postwar period came to an end, as the US began to experience stagnant economic growth and high inflation (known as “stagflation.”) In 1971, for the first time in the twentieth century the US imported more goods than it exported. By 1980, nearly three-quarters of goods produced in the US were competing with foreign-made products, and the number of manufacturing workers had fallen from 38 percent in 1960 to 28 percent.

In addition, due to conflict in the Middle East, the price of oil rose drastically and the export of oil to the US was suspended for a few months. Gas stations ran out of fuel or limited the amount of fuel Americans could buy, leading to lines of cars at gas stations and an energy crisis. Americans were more and more aware that the US was not the great nation it was supposed to be after WWII. We had lost the war in Vietnam, were experiencing economic problems and the decline of manufacturing, and it was now clear that we were dependent on Middle Eastern oil.

Cars lined up at a gas station, 1973

Rising oil prices rippled through the world economy, contributing to stagflation. As oil prices rose, many Americans shifted from large, domestic cars to smaller, more fuel-efficient imports. By the end of the 1970s, Japan had become the world’s leading automobile producer. The decline in large industrial sectors like automobiles and steel, the shedding of jobs within the US and the relocation of assembly-line plants abroad, and the rise of a service and information based economy where men and women of all races and ethnicities would be competing for the same jobs pointed to the fact that the old idea of one male breadwinner being able to bring home a “family wage” from a blue-collar job was gone. To bring home the same kind of wage that a male industrial breadwinner had brought home in the 1950s and 1960s it would increasingly take two wage earners in the family. [3]

"Crisis of Confidence"

President Jimmy Carter

In 1979, President Jimmy Carter (elected in 1976) delivered his famous “Crisis of Confidence” speech. The speech was based on the premise that the energy crisis was material, psychological, and spiritual in origin. Gasoline lines, energy shortages, inflation, and recession were the outward symptoms of a deeper psychological and spiritual condition, an internal “crisis in confidence.” It was this “crisis” that threatened American society more than any external military or economic challenge. Carter claimed that because Americans had lost faith in the future, they had turned to consumption as a form of false compensation.

Carter argued,

“Too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. But we have discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning. We have learned that piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose.”

Carter argued that conserving energy and making material sacrifices would enable people to take control over their own lives, to conquer the crisis of spirit in the country, and to “rekindle our sense of unity.” The speech was ripped apart in the press, and ultimately contributed to Carter’s defeat in the election of 1980.

Poll #2

In your opinion, which phenomenon contributed more to the "crisis in confidence"? Distrust in the government? Or economic problems? Answer in the embedded poll below, or access it here.

Into the 1980s: Iranian Hostage Crisis

In addition to the energy crisis, the decline in manufacturing, and the sense of “crisis in confidence” that Carter had illuminated in his speech, another key event pushed Carter out of office and elected Republican Ronald Reagan in 1980—the Iranian Hostage Crisis.

In 1979, a popular revolution in Iran overthrew the shah. Carter allowed the deposed shah to seek medical treatment in the United States, and in response, a group of Iranians invaded the American embassy in Tehran and seized fifty-three hostages.

The hostages were released in January 1981, after months of secret talks and US economic pressure. Carter had attempted a secret rescue mission in April 1980, which resulted in several US helicopters crashing in the Iranian desert, killing 8 American soldiers.

The crisis dominated American television news, and Carter’s popularity sank even lower. As the 1980 presidential campaign progressed, Carter’s inability to free the hostages became a particular talking point. Reagan argued that Carter’s foreign policy was based on “vacillation, appeasement, and aimlessness,” characterizing Carter as weak.

Hostages return, 1981

Using the hostage crisis as a metaphor for the nation itself, Reagan argued that it was one more example of how the Carter administration had made foreign policy decisions which compromised the US’ position in the world. However, he also reasserted the idea that the United States was an “island of freedom” ordained by Divine Providence:

“Can we doubt that only a Divine Providence placed this land, this island of freedom, here as refuge for all those people in the world who yearn to breathe freely: Jews and Christians enduring persecution behind the Iron Curtain, the boat people of Southeast Asia, of Cuba and Haiti, the victims of drought and famine in Africa, the freedom fighters of Afghanistan, and our own countrymen held in savage captivity.”

Americans throughout the nation identified with the hostages, wearing yellow ribbons to show their support, and flying American flags everywhere. The hostages returned in January 1981, to ticker-tape parades, the torch lit on the Statue of Liberty, and the Empire State Building lit up red, white, and blue.

The day they returned home was the same day of Reagan’s inauguration. Reagan came into his presidency buoyed by a sense of national pride and unity—a new era in foreign policy, where “vacillation” would be replaced by “vigilance,” and the joyful reunions of the hostages with their families.

Reagan's Election

Fears surrounding national decline in the wake of the US’ loss in Vietnam were crucial to Reagan’s election. Reagan responded strongly to Carter’s “crisis of confidence.” He asserted in his announcement for his presidential candidacy:

“In recent months leaders in our government have told us that, we, the people, have lost confidence in ourselves; that we must regain the spirit and our will to achieve our national goals. Well, it is true there is a lack of confidence, an unease with things the way they are. But the confidence we have lost is confidence in our government’s policies.”

Campaign button for Reagan, 1980

Later he again attacked the message of Carter’s speech, which called on citizens to limit their own consumption. He argued that “We do not have inflation because—as Mr. Carter says—we have lived too well.” Instead, he said, “I believe it is clear our federal government is overgrown and overweight. Indeed, it is time for our government to go on a diet.”

In addition to calling out Carter for sanctioning and reprimanding the American people, Reagan pitched his campaign in the language of a “spiritual” mission. Although he was probably the least religious out of all three of the candidates for president in 1980 (Carter and independent John Anderson were, like Reagan, both born-again Christians, but were more outspoken about their particular beliefs), he represented his campaign as a “spiritual revival designed to bring political salvation to the nation.” It was “humility before God” that was the source of America’s strength as a nation.

He spoke in terms of moral absolutes, and thought that the American people held “a belief that law must be based on a higher law,” and wanted “a return to traditions and values that we once had.” Speaking in these terms garnered Reagan the support of the religious right, as fundamentalist ministers and religious-right organizations engaged their grassroots bases to campaign on his behalf. This contingent was an ardent supporter of “family values."

Reagan also used the language of “states’ rights” in his campaign, speaking out against federal intervention on behalf of civil rights. He condemned welfare “cheaters,” school busing, and affirmative action. The Republican party platform also reversed its long-standing support for the Equal Rights Amendment and condemned “moral permissiveness.”

Reagan won the election of 1980 with 51% of the popular vote and 489 electoral college votes. Carter only received 41% of the popular vote and 49 electoral college votes.

Poll #3

In your opinion, which of the following was most influential in securing Reagan’s win over Carter in 1980?

• Carter’s “Crisis of Confidence” speech

• the Iranian Hostage Crisis

• Reagan’s rhetoric of spiritual mission and morality

• Reagan’s stated mission to limit the reach of the federal government

Answer in the embedded poll below, or access it here.

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Part II: Reagan's Revolution

Reagan maintained support from a diverse coalition, including suburbanites from the Sunbelt (the southern US from Florida to California), ethnic working-class voters, antigovernment activists, advocates of a more aggressive foreign policy, libertarians who believed in freeing individuals from restraint, and the Christian right.

In Part II, we’ll examine how Reagan’s political coalition changed the terms of political debate, placing its opponents on the defensive. For example, feminists, lesbians and gay men, and civil rights activists had to defend the legislative gains of the previous two decades as well as the framework of “rights” in which those gains were embedded.

President Ronald Reagan

Reagan critiqued what he saw as an overreach or intrusion of government into peoples’ lives. Many of the gains made in the 1960s and 1970s resulted in more federal oversight to enable more people to access the rights of full citizenship. In his first inaugural address, Reagan argued that “government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” He continued, “It is time to check and reverse the growth of government, which shows signs of having grown beyond the consent of the governed.”

Reagan made conservatism seem progressive, rather than an attempt to turn back the tides of progress. Invoking the concept of “freedom” more than any other president before him, he reshaped the nation’s agenda and political language more effectively than any president since FDR.

Reaganomics

One of the most significant ways Reagan transformed American government and citizenship was through his economic ideology. Reagan wanted to reverse the direction that social policy had taken ever since the New Deal, but especially since the Great Society. He announced that his administration was prepared to slice federal welfare spending and adopt “supply-side economics.”

Reagan outlines plans for tax reductions in televised address, 1981

The idea was that government could stimulate business growth, create new jobs, and ensure widespread prosperity by giving everyone greater incentives—by rewarding entrepreneurial risk taking, by increasing opportunities for profit making, by enlarging take-home pay, and ultimately by expanding the supply of goods, which would then create a greater demand for them. The centerpiece of supply-side economics was a large tax cut. In 1981, taxes were cut across the board by 5 percent, and by an additional 10 percent for each of the succeeding 2 years. The policy assumed that cutting taxes would inspire Americans at all income levels to work harder, because they would be able to keep more of the money they earned.

Tax reduction was popular, and it did seem to benefit all taxpayers, but not equally. Although the real disposable family income was on average 3.5% higher in 1984 than it was in 1980, the averages don’t reflect the major disparity in gains across class.

Over the four year period (1980-1984), the disposable income of the poorest fifth of Americans declined by nearly 8 percent, while that of the middle fifth rose by about 1 percent, and that of the wealthiest fifth rose by almost 9 percent. See the table below for data from 1980-1990.

Source: Eric Foner, Give Me Liberty

In addition to cutting taxes, the Reagan administration increased spending on defense. This led to a massive increase in the total national debt, which stood at $800 billion in 1981, and grew to $1.5 trillion in 1985. Nearly as much debt accumulated in Reagan’s first term as in the nation’s entire history prior to his election.

The amount of debt created more pressure to reduce federal spending for the social programs Reagan wanted to reverse. In fact, under Reagan’s first term, Congress agreed to a $38 billion cutback in welfare spending, a 9 percent reduction. The most severe cuts were made to programs that directly benefited the poor, including food stamps, Aid to Families with Dependent Children, school lunches, housing assistance, and Medicaid. By 1982, the poverty level rose to 15 percent, the highest since LBJ had launched the war on poverty.

Reagan also wanted to curb inflation, even if it meant temporarily increasing unemployment. In 1982, the unemployment rate was 10.8 percent, which was the highest level it had been since the late 1930s, creating a severe recession. After the downturn of 1981-1982, a period of economic expansion followed. Companies became more profitable as they “downsized” their workforces, shifted production overseas, and took advantage of new technologies. The unemployment rate also fell as the recession ended.

Reagan on the Cover of Time, 1981

Air Traffic Controllers Strike

In 1981, a massive strike by the nation’s air traffic controllers illustrated Reagan’s policies on organized labor. The Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) struck in August 1981 in an attempt to win improved wages and working conditions (namely, a shortened work week) from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Twelve thousand (75 percent) of air traffic controllers walked off their jobs. This was in violation of an Executive Order that restricted organizations representing federal government employees from collective bargaining and prohibiting their ability to strike. Both their attempts to negotiate a new agreement and the strike were illegal.

In response, Reagan stated that if the air traffic controllers did not return to their jobs within 48 hours, they would be fired and not allowed to be reemployed once the dispute was resolved. The workers continued their strike, and Reagan fired them all. (See a timeline and hear audio clips from news coverage here.)

The dispute with PATCO is important for two broader reasons. First, it was seen as a defining moment for Reagan to show he was a steadfast conservative who would not wilt or make concessions when the going got tough. Second, the dispute represented a turn in the American labor movement. Employers in the private sector learned that unions could be taken on in a strike and defeated, and it stripped the strike of some of its power as a political tactic. Employers started hiring workers to permanently replace those on strike, which was a rare occurrence prior to 1980.

Dwayne A. Threadford, striking air traffic controller

Poll #4

In your opinion, which aspect of Reagan-era domestic policy had the most lasting effect on American society? The idea that cutting taxes could stimulate the economy (one of the ideas behind “supply-side economics”)? The accumulation of national debt? Or, the decline of the power of the strike and of unions as a whole? Answer in the embedded poll below, or access it here.

Deindustrialization and Income Inequality

The 1980s also saw the continuation of deindustrialization as a result of the decline in manufacturing. This affected workers of color in particular ways. For example, as racial segregation had finally ended in many workplaces and unions, hundreds of thousands of Black workers lost their jobs when factories closed their doors. In 1981, when the national unemployment rate was at 8.9 percent, the figure for Blacks exceeded 20 percent.

By the mid-1990s, the richest 1 percent of Americans owned 40 percent of the nation’s wealth, twice their share twenty years earlier. Although supply-side economists had promised that tax cuts would free up money to be invested in new production and charity, many of the richest 1 percent instead spent their money on luxury goods, real-estate speculation, and corporate buyouts. The income of middle-class families stagnated, while the income of the poorest one-fifth of the population declined.

In the 1980s, we also see the rise of a specific population of “young urban professionals” or “yuppies.” Yuppies earned a high income working in professional or managerial roles. They were represented as people only concerned with their own lives, careers, and images, and by their willingness to “define themselves by what they own.” They wore designer clothes, shopped at gourmet food stores, and lived in newly gentrified districts. A Newsweek article about yuppies depicted them as conservative on economic issues, but liberal on social issues, and overwhelmingly supported Reagan in 1984.

Newsweek, "The Year of the Yuppie"

Reelection in 1984

Reagan won a triumphant reelection in 1984. One of his campaign commercials, “Morning Again in America,” showed a sense of peace and prosperity that were the goals of his economic plans. Watch the ad below.

Many people criticized this particular campaign for being too happy and upbeat, without any real substance. presenting a glossy look at the United States, from a president who was viewed by some as too shallow and superficial. A quote from the reporter in the Washington Post read that Reagan was “the man from Glad, a candidate in a Baggie, hermetically sealed and gingerly lifted into one perfect-for-television setting after another.” However, the imagery Reagan used and the fact that the economy was in an upswing made the campaign extremely effective. [4]

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Part III: Religion and Morality in the Conservative Grassroots

In Part III, we’ll examine how American politics in the 1980s were influenced by evangelical Christianity in new ways. Both Jimmy Carter and Reagan were born-again Christians. The late 1970s and early 1980s saw a burgeoning of the movement, as books by evangelists became best-sellers, radio stations proliferated, and television shows like Pat Robertson’s 700 Club became immensely popular.

Evangelicalism was characterized by social conservatism and political activism.

The Religious Right and the "Moral Majority"

Born-again Christians in the late 70s and 1980s mobilized against the ideology of secular humanism, meaning the view that truths were relative, moral values situational, and ethnical judgements tentative. Rather, they adhered to a belief system grounded in moral absolutes.

They opposed the Equal Rights Amendment, the gay rights movement, and legalized abortion. They also favored reintroducing school prayer, and teaching creationism as an alternative to evolution. One million children attended Christian elementary and high schools where subjects were taught from an evangelical perspective. Most of all, they attributed moral decay and permissiveness to politicians who were insensitive to “family values.”

A significant evangelical political activist was the Reverend Jerry Falwell, who had his own television program, The Old Time Gospel Hour. Falwell founded the Moral Majority in 1979, and within two years, was claiming 4 million members. Using technology, Falwell was able to target potential contributors and evaluate candidates for office on the basis of their votes on issues like the ERA, federal funding for abortions, and school prayer. From there he urged voters and churches to get involved in politics, endorsing the candidates who embraced “family values.”

Jerry Falwell Sr. and Ronald Reagan

White born-again Christians overwhelmingly supported Reagan in 1980, as he received 63 percent of their votes. In 1984, he received 80 percent of the votes of white born-again Christians. [5]

However, although he used language of moral absolutes that appealed to his evangelical followers, Reagan actually did not institute any of the Moral Majority’s social programs.

He deferred congressional consideration of antiabortion and school prayer proposals in favor of his tax and budget policies. In 1984, the Senate turned down a constitutional amendment permitting voluntary individual or group prayer in public schools. However, he did provide a White House audience to right-to-life marchers, pronounced 1983 the “year of the Bible,” and endorsed the evangelical platform.

Anti-Abortion Activism

The anti-abortion movement became extremely influential in the 1980s. Prior to the early 1980s, a politician’s stance on abortion had not been a marker of their political party. Many conservative Democrats opposed abortion rights, while there were also pro-choice Republicans. Likewise, many average Americans leaned towards the center on the issue, and in surveys taken in 1981 and 1982, fewer than one-third of Americans stated that they thought abortion should be illegal. However, during the 1980s, anti-abortion activists changed the terms of the political debate surrounding abortion.

Grassroots activism led to a shift in elected officials, as many Senate liberals were ousted in favor of politicians who were pro-life. By the mid-1980s, more than fifty antiabortion political action committees were spending tens of millions of dollars each election cycle in state and national campaigns mustering up battalions of volunteer activists to campaign on the single issue of abortion. This established a basic pattern that continues to this day in American politics — conservative candidates can’t risk not seeking a right-to-life endorsement. [6]

Anti-abortion protest, Washington, DC, 1990

Although Reagan himself was pro-life, gave numerous antiabortion speeches, and appointed right-to-life leaders to his administration, he also was pragmatic about implementing any changes that would leap too far ahead of public opinion.

For example, Reagan appointed Sandra Day O’Connor to the Supreme Court—the first woman ever appointed to the Supreme Court—even though she had voted to repeal Arizona’s abortion law as a state senator there in 1970.

However, by the end of Reagan’s first term, the nation’s reproductive policies had decisively shifted towards the right. The Hyde Amendment banned federal Medicare payments for abortions and the Helms Amendment banned direct US funding of abortions overseas. In addition, the Mexico City Policy denied US government funding to any overseas birth control or family planning programs that counseled about, provided, or encouraged abortions. These political gains for the antiabortion movement increasingly put women’s movement activists on the defensive. [7]

Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor

Reagan's Working Group on the Family

In 1986, Reagan formed a Working Group on the Family, which merged family-centered conservatism and his tax-cutting economic principles. The group issued a report, entitled The Family: Preserving America’s Future. The report advanced two claims, which shifted the terms of the welfare debate away from rights and onto the terrain of government provision:

1. The welfare state had been bad for families—especially through programs that “undervalued” the traditional family structure like payments to poor mothers and government-supported child care.

2. A revamped tax policy ought to be the principal means to preserve and protect the American family—through things like tax credits for couples with children and dismantling any federal programs which promoted any form of “sexual immorality.”

HIV/AIDS Crisis

The response to the appearance of AIDS in the early 1980s emphasized the conservative narrative of the threat of sexual immorality. Conservatives asserted that the emphasis on the individual rights of gay men had essentially endangered children and threatened an innocent population. In 1981, the first cases of AIDS were diagnosed among gay men. By 1983, 1,000 cases had been diagnosed. By 1985, 9,000 cases. By 1990, 150,000 cases, and by 1996, nearly 515,000 cases.

Males accounted for approximately 85% of those who contracted the disease, women for 13% and children for less than 2%. It also exacted a disproportionate toll on people of color. Fifty percent of the victims were white, but 33 percent were Black, and 17 percent were Latino.

The disease was spread largely through sexual contact (though not exclusively). In the early years, it was found most prominently among gay men, which complicated their position in society even further than it already was. As the gay rights movement progressed, “coming out of the closet” and claiming sexual difference but also common humanity was argued to be the only way that human rights and full citizenship could be secured. However, coming out as gay and with AIDS or HIV risked confirming popular notions of homosexuality as wrong and unnatural. There was such an association between danger and disease with homosexuality that AIDS was originally officially named “gay-related immune deficiency.”

Protestors in favor of AIDS Research

Gay rights activists feared that testing for HIV could lead to invasions of peoples’ privacy and could lead to invasions of peoples’ privacy and could make it easier to enforce discriminatory measures. They needed to find a way to craft a public discourse about the disease that would address homophobia coming from the larger society as well as the louder voices of the religious right.

A significant campaign for “safe sex” emerged, as well as a call for a more concerted government and scientific response to the crisis. Grassroots response to the AIDS epidemic was robust, and by 1987 there were more than three hundred local AIDS organizations. Within the Reagan administration and Congress, there were two sides to the AIDS public policy debate. On one side, liberals, joined by the Surgeon General and the office of Health and Human Services favored a massive safe-sex public education campaign, government-supported access to confidential, voluntary HIV testing, anti-discrimination protections for those carrying HIV, and more AIDS-related health and education services.

Conservatives pressed Reagan to treat the epidemic in terms of moral questions of personal responsibility. They favored mandatory testing of at-risk populations, reporting the names of all HIV-positive individuals to public health authorities, and abstinence-oriented sex education.

When the Surgeon General issued a report urging the use of condoms, backlash from conservatives and the religious right ensued. They asserted that that approach would encourage young people to have illicit sex, and that it essentially endorsed homosexuality as “an acceptable alternative lifestyle.” [8]

The 1986 Supreme Court decision in Bowers v. Hardwick added more fuel to the fire. In this case, the Court upheld the constitutionality of a Georgia sodomy law, claiming that “proscriptions against homosexuality have ancient roots.” The Bowers decision wouldn’t be overturned until 2003.

Two significant activist enterprises were formed in response to the HIV/AIDS crisis: ACT UP, a guerrilla protest organization which staged militant confrontation and street theater; and the AIDS Memorial Quilt, which acted as a memorial and a political statement about gay humanity.

AIDS Memorial Quilt

In 1987, Regan finally delivered his first speech on AIDS and appointed a Presidential Commission on AIDS which called for massive funding for research and education and anti- discrimination legislation to protect HIV/AIDS victims. Conservatives in Congress still insisted that no federal dollars be spent on sex education. The nation remained more divided than ever over whether American citizens were entitled to rights that protected sexual difference.

Poll #5

In your opinion, which of the following represented the biggest threat to “family values” in the minds of conservatives and members of the religious right?

• abortion rights

• the welfare state

• gay and lesbian activism

Answer in the embedded poll below, or access it here.

Drug Crisis

The 1980s also saw increased attention on drug use in the United States. In 1985, a new form of cocaine, crack, began to be sold. Crack was relatively cheap and readily available. It was viewed as dangerous, because it created chronic, compulsive users, and was associated with violent crimes.

In a 1986 speech from the White House, Ronald and Nancy Reagan informed the nation that:

“drugs are menacing our society. They’re threatening our values and undercutting our institutions. They’re killing our children…Today there’s a new epidemic: smokable cocaine, otherwise known as crack. It is an explosively destructive and often lethal substance which is crushing its users. It is an uncontrolled fire.”

(Watch more of the speech here.) At the end of the speech, Reagan urged media organizations to help fight the so-called “War on Drugs” to use their “enormous influence” to “send alarm signals across the nation.”

Time Magazine, May 1991

In 1986, more than a thousand crack stories appeared in the press, with more than four hundred reports on NBC alone. Time and Newsweek made crack cocaine a cover story ten times between 1986 and 1992. Media coverage like this was instrumental in producing the perception that crack was an epidemic.

One of the most dangerous parts of crack use was the so-called “epidemic” of “crack babies” which was spread throughout the American consciousness through a proliferation of media stories.

An article published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1985 suggested that prenatal exposure to cocaine could have a “devastating effect” on infants. The article lead to more studies where researchers reported that infants born to women using cocaine typically had lower birth weights, abnormal heart rates, and were more likely to be neglected by their mothers or placed in foster care.

Popular news sources ran with this information, with articles painting an alarming picture of mothers who would abandon their children for the next crack fix, and babies who were born with such deficiencies in mental emotional, and developmental capacity that they were permanently damaged.

In 2001, a meta-analysis of earlier research studies on the impact of cocaine use during pregnancy published in the Journal of the American Medical Association revealed that the idea of a “crack baby” as it had been understood in the 1980s actually had no scientific standing. The journal stated, “Many findings once thought to be specific effects of in utero cocaine exposure are correlated with other factors, including prenatal exposure to tobacco, marijuana, or alcohol, and the quality of the child’s environment.” The article also cites serious methodological flaws in the bulk of the research conducted studying the impact of prenatal cocaine exposure.

Please note—this is not to say that cocaine use during pregnancy had no damaging effects! Just that the media frenzy surrounding crack cocaine oversimplified and in some cases misrepresented the “crack babies” crisis.

Newsweek, 1989

Namely, the media frenzy surrounding crack cocaine had significant effects for the low-income, urban population of mostly Black and Latina mothers with which crack babies were associated. Hospitals, especially emergency rooms, began testing expectant women for cocaine, often secretly, and reporting positive results to police. Many women were jailed and thousands of children put into foster care. The crack baby epidemic seemed to reinforce the “pathological” characteristics of Black women that Moynihan had raised in his 1965 report.

War on Drugs

In response to the crack epidemic, the Reagan administration generated a new campaign that focused on the individual users of drugs, emphasizing that substance abuse was an issue of personal responsibility. The goal of the new campaign would be to cause drug users to stop their destructive behavior and prevent others from ever starting. (Watch a clip from Nancy Reagan below, explaining this "Just Say No" campaign.)

The Omnibus Drug Abuse Acts of 1986 and 1988 were the policy results of this ideology.

The 1986 act emphasized punishment and incarceration over treatment and educational awareness. It authorized billions of dollars in new funding for the drug war, increased mandatory sentencing for sales and possession, eliminated probation or parole for certain sellers and repeat offenders, and instituted an automatic sentence of death for any murder committed by a person involved in the drug enterprise. It framed drugs as a threat to national security.

The 1988 act went even further, stipulating that any person convicted of a drug offense could be deemed ineligible for federal benefits, including federally subsidized student loans, Social Security, and Medicare—and authorized the withholding of federal highway funds to any state that did not revoke the driver’s licenses of drug offenders. It also allocated $200 million for new prison construction and $600 million in international aid as conditional grants for source countries to eradicate drug crops.

Perhaps most significantly, the law set a distinction between crack and powder cocaine (two forms of the same drug), establishing a 100-to-1 ratio of mandatory minimum sentencing for cocaine offenses. This meant that:

• Possession of 5+ grams of crack carried a mandatory 5-year minimum sentence, while 500 grams of cocaine received a 5 year sentence.

• Possession of 50+ grams of crack carried a ten year sentence, while 5,000 grams of cocaine carried the mandatory ten year sentence. [9]

The differences in sentencing laws reflect intense racial bias, as the overwhelming majority of those prosecuted for crack cocaine offenses were Black. By 1989-90, twenty-three states had a racial disparity in drug arrest rates of more than five Black person to every one non-Black person.

The War on Drugs was the main contributor to the largest exponential growth of prison inmates in US history. Since the War on Drugs began, the US jail and prison population has grown to eleven times its size in 1971, from about 200,000 inmates to more than 2.3 million. Roughly 60% of people now incarcerated are drug-related convictions. Blacks and Latinos are disproportionately affected by mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses. [10]

Source: US Census Bureau, Bureau of Justice Statistics

The War on Drugs represents several significant aspects about the Reagan era. It represented the close of the social upheaval of the 1960s-1970s, with a new discourse of being “tough on crime,” and getting back to “family values.” It represented a new way of looking at urban poverty and unrest—as an issue of personal responsibility, not one rooted in larger sociological or structural problems.

Word Cloud #1

In your opinion, to what extent has the War on Drugs of the 1980s affected how Americans think about drug use and addiction today? Respond in the word cloud below, or access it here.

We'll end the module here. Next week, we'll wrap up our course with the end of the Reagan administration, the end of the Cold War, and the 1990s!

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Conclusion:

1. The “silent majority” describes a growing conservative movement as well as those who supported the ideas of equality and rights, but were committed to the ideology of a color-blind individual meritocracy.

2. The end of the “golden age” of capitalism and its corresponding effects on the male-breadwinner family wage, the fall of a president, and the energy crisis all contributed to a “crisis of confidence” in the 1970s, priming the nation for a major transformation in the 1980s.

3. The Reagan administration implemented new economic policies that sought to undermine the welfare state in order to bring about the end of “big government.” The women’s movement and gay rights movements were increasingly put on the defensive.

4. Conservative grassroots groups saw issues like abortion rights and AIDS as a threat to the morality of the nation. In addition, social problems like drug use were spoken about in the language of “personal responsibility,” putting the onus on the individual to change immoral behavior.

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Citations:

[1] Matthew D. Lassiter, The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South (Princeton; Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2006), 17.

[2] Lassiter, Silent Majority, 151.

[3] Natasha Zaretsky, No Direction Home: The American Family and the Fear of National Decline, 1968-1980 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 86.

[4] Haynes Johnson, Sleepwalking Through History: America in the Reagan Years (New York; London: W.W. Norton and Company, 1991), 55.

[5] For more on the dynamics of evangelical Christianity and politics in the late 20th century, see Robert Self, All in the Family: The Realignment of American Democracy since the 1960s (New York: Hill and Wang, 2012).

[6] Self, All in the Family, 371-378.

[7] Self, All in the Family, 378.

[8] See Tina Fetner, How the Religious Right Shaped Lesbian and Gay Activism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008).

[9] Jason E. Glenn, "Making Crack Babies: Race Discourse and the Biologization of Behavior," in Precarious Prescriptions: Contested Histories of Race and Health in North America, ed. Laurie B. Green, John McKiernan-González, and Martin Summers (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014), 252.

[10] Glenn, "Making Crack Babies," 253.