Historical Texts

Paper Summary:

This paper explains that both Donald Spivey's "Schooling for a New Slavery: Black Industrial Education, 1868-1915" and Ellen Schrecker's "The Age of McCarthyism: A Brief History with Documents"are cultural critiques of apparently benevolent ideologies that harmed rather than helped the Americans they were designed to protect. The author points out that these history texts use different presentational techniques possibly because McCarthyism was a top-down phenomenon while racism has been rife within American society since its inception. The paper relates that John Kenneth Galbraith's "The Great Crash of 1929" describes how rampant speculation in the stock market caused the destruction of the American economy and that Charles Fishman's "The Wal-Mart Effect". speculates that exploitation used as an economic tool by a single large company has caused cheaper goods but a less ethical society.

From the Paper:

"After the end of slavery, Blacks were supposed to become free and equal citizens with Whites under the law. Instead, despite the previous centuries of oppression that were supposed to be undone by legal enfranchisement of Blacks, most Blacks were denied their rights of civic participation, and their education was limited to manual, rather than intellectual pursuits. This is why Spivey's book ultimately emerges as the more frightening of the two scenarios--while McCarthyism lasted for a relatively short period of time, the racism chronicled by Spivey and the attitudes that hampered Black progress still exist today."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Galbraith, John Kenneth. The Great Crash of 1929. New York: Mariner Books, 1997.
• Fishman, Charles. The Wal-Mart Effect. New York: Penguin, 2006.
• Schrecker, Ellen. The Age of McCarthyism: A Brief History with Documents. Boston: St. Martin's Press, 1994.
• Spivey, Donald. Schooling for a New Slavery: Black Industrial Education, 1868-1915. Westport CT: Greenwood.

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