Word: backlashers
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Bakke Backlash...
...White backlash, neoconservatism, a national move to the right. It's all the same pnenomenon, and it boils down to fear and disillusionment in white urban America. Liberal reformers, and the society that has gone along with the ideas and plans of the liberals, see crime and poverty and continued racial tension despite all their efforts in the '50s and '60s to create the Good Society. The renewed interest in ethnicity to distract from the issue of race and class, the stiffening resistance to affirmative action (or reverse discrimination, depending on your viewpoint), the call for more law and order...
Some homosexual leaders are afraid that the excesses of the national anti-Anita campaign may cause a public backlash against the gay rights movement, and claim that this is exactly what she is seeking. "She's willingly making herself a stalking horse for the ultra-right and trying to set up homosexuals as scapegoats," contends Howard Wallace, a founder of the Coalition for Human Rights. Adds Bruce Voeller, co-executive director of the National Gay Task Force, "Gays have traditionally been the victims, not the perpetrators, of violence...
Barbara Seaman, author of Free and Female, goes further: "The backlash is against casual sex because a lot of people were hurt. It was as if there was a train gradually carrying us away from Victorian morality, but then suddenly in the '60s and '70s the train became a runaway, and a lot of passengers were injured. Now the brakes are starting to be repaired...
Tall, thin, bearded Principal Edwin Barker is popular with students and community alike. "He does a good job walking the tightrope of an innovative school system and a conservative backlash," observes one parent. Says Barker: "I'm a believer in basic skills, but I want to do it in a humanitarian environment." Discipline is fairly loose. Barker downplays such issues as drugs (ditch weed, the crude local variety of marijuana, is common), discipline, smoking and leaving school without permission. "We have a lot of people coming and going," admits Barker. "Keeping them in school is not one of our high...