Word: commoner
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Though such a pessimistic assessment is implied throughout A Common Destiny, it is never stated with such sweeping clarity. Instead, the authors prefer to present their findings in the numbing language of social science. "Since the early 1970s," the study states, "the economic status of blacks relative to whites has, on average, stagnated or deteriorated." Consider what that single sentence reveals about white America's smug belief in the healing virtues of progress and prosperity. After nearly two decades, five Presidents, periods of both activism and apathy, largesse and laissez-faire, the result has been at best stagnation...
...theory, it is laudable that A Common Destiny resists the easy summary that leads to TV-style sound bites. But there is also the danger that the report may be unjustly ignored. The enduring value of A Common Destiny can be found in the mountain of evidence it marshals to rebut a series of debilitating myths about the true state of contemporary race relations...
...aside from a few well-publicized anecdotal examples, virtually all the evidence contradicts this common white stereotype. Take black male college graduates, likely beneficiaries of affirmative action. In 1984 their average yearly earnings were just 74% of their white counterparts'. Popular misperceptions also exaggerate the rate at which the black middle class is growing. Between 1970 and 1986, the proportion of black families with inflation-adjusted incomes over $35,000 merely increased from...
Only in terms of the voting booth and the lunch-counter stool is there much truth to support this common white view. As A Common Destiny makes clear, "a considerable amount of remaining black-white inequality is due to continuing discriminatory treatment of blacks. The clearest evidence is in housing...
Since Myrdal, social scientists who study race relations have wrestled with the sometimes tenuous connection between expressed attitudes and personal behavior. As A Common Destiny puts it, "blacks and whites share a substantial consensus, in the abstract, on the broad goal of achieving an integrated and egalitarian society...