An American History

CULTURE WARS ★^1095

difficult to transfer their credentials to
the United States and found jobs driv-
ing taxis and selling African crafts at
street fairs.
Most African- Americans, nonethe-
less, remained in a more precarious
situation than whites or many recent
immigrants. In the early twenty- first
century, the black unemployment
rate remained double that of whites.
Half of all black children lived in
poverty, two- thirds were born out of
wedlock, and in every index of social
well- being from health to quality
of housing, blacks continued to lag.
Despite the continued expansion of
the black middle class, a far lower per-
centage of blacks than whites owned
their homes or held professional and managerial jobs. Housing segregation
remained pervasive. In 2010, more than one- third of the black population lived
in suburbs, but mostly in predominantly black communities.
Despite the nation’s growing racial diversity, school segregation— now result-
ing from housing patterns and the divide between urban and suburban school
districts rather than laws requiring racial separation— was on the rise. Most city
public school systems consisted overwhelmingly of minority students, large
numbers of whom failed to receive an adequate education. The courts released
more and more districts from desegregation orders. By 2000, the nation’s black
and Latino students were more isolated from white pupils than in 1970. Nearly
80 percent of white students attended schools where they encountered few if any
pupils of another race. Since school funding rested on property taxes, poor com-
munities continued to have less to spend on education than wealthy ones.

The Spread of Imprisonment

During the 1960s, the nation’s prison population declined. But in the 1970s,
with urban crime rates rising, politicians of both parties sought to convey the
image of being “tough on crime.” They insisted that the judicial system should
focus on locking up criminals for long periods rather than rehabilitating them.
They treated drug addiction as a violation of the law rather than as a disease.
State governments greatly increased the penalties for crime and reduced the
possibility of parole. Successive presidents launched “wars” on the use of illegal

Despite the ups and downs of unemployment,

the rate for non-whites remains persistently

higher than that for whites.

FIGURE 27.1 UNEMPLOYMENT

RATE BY SEX AND RACE,

1954–2000

White male

Non-white male

Non-white

female

Per

centage of population

0

4

8

12

16

20

1955196019651970197519801985199019952000

Ye ar

White

female

What cultural conflicts emerged in the 1990s?