The answer to your question is Sept. 11, 2001. There'd been a whole lot of cultural anxiety building over demographic changes in the US leading up to that, but, in my mind anyway, the terrorist strike turned that anxiety in a full fledged panic. The culture of the 1950s was constructed and constructed with a plan to some extent. The creation of a mythic normalcy was a reaction to the large numbers of war scarred men returning home from the European and Pacifics wars and ensuing occupation. Add to that the massive demographic shakeup that had taken place between 1930 and the 1950s and the country had really lost its sense of what was normal; what the baselines were both physically and culturally.
The to 2000s have been less extreme, but the loss of reference points for many people is still significant. There's a security anxiety owing to unpredictable nature of terrorism. Then there's a cultural fear that we're seeing play out with the Obama administration. In the past ten years, in many places, the numbers of minorities have exceeded the number of whites. There's been an almost explosive grown in religious non-believers which has really unhinged a good many Christian leaders. Needless to say, the old majority is running scared from changes that have already happened. Bad enough that their own counties seem more brown, but there's a brown face in the white house now and that feels really unfamiliar even to people who aren't racist. I find it refreshing, but I was born in Inglewood. So, maybe a grandparent in their sixties or seventies will find the pink tinkertoys reassuring enough that they'll buy them for their granddaughter.
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momijizukamori
no subject
Date: 2009-10-11 07:38 pm (UTC)The to 2000s have been less extreme, but the loss of reference points for many people is still significant. There's a security anxiety owing to unpredictable nature of terrorism. Then there's a cultural fear that we're seeing play out with the Obama administration. In the past ten years, in many places, the numbers of minorities have exceeded the number of whites. There's been an almost explosive grown in religious non-believers which has really unhinged a good many Christian leaders. Needless to say, the old majority is running scared from changes that have already happened. Bad enough that their own counties seem more brown, but there's a brown face in the white house now and that feels really unfamiliar even to people who aren't racist. I find it refreshing, but I was born in Inglewood. So, maybe a grandparent in their sixties or seventies will find the pink tinkertoys reassuring enough that they'll buy them for their granddaughter.