American Contradiction
revolution and revenge from the 1950s to now
- ISBN: 9780300282436
- Editorial: Yale University Press
- Fecha de la edición: 2026
- Lugar de la edición: New Haven. Estados Unidos de Norteamérica
- Encuadernación: Cartoné
- Medidas: 24 cm
- Nº Pág.: 456
- Idiomas: Inglés
How did Americans come to elect Barack Obama-and then Donald Trump? Those choices capture what Paul Starr calls the American contradiction.
The whole truth about America, Starr argues in this new history of the United States since the 1950s, has never been contained in one consistent set of values or interests. The nation was born in the contradiction between freedom and slavery. Today it is beset by a contradiction between a changing people and a resisting nation, a nation with entrenched institutions that have empowered those who fear the changes and look to restore an old America of their imagining.
Starr tells this history from the dual standpoints of the progressive movements that changed the American people and of the movements that emerged in response. Black Americans, he argues, served as a model minority, setting in motion America's twentieth-century revolutions in gender as well as race and rights. With industry's decline and the rise of economic inequality, millions of Americans have felt dispossessed and want the old America back. Trump is their revenge. American Contradiction tells the story of how 1950s America became the almost unrecognizable America of the 2020s.
Introduction: A New People, an Old Nation: America in the Twenty-First Century
Origins of the Upheaval
Why the Full Backlash Took So Long
Marchers and Sleepwalkers
The Progressive Project and American Identity
PART I: AMERICAN REVOLUTIONS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
1. Midcentury Normal
Consensus as a Contested Political Project
The Area of American Agreement
Consensus as Intellectual Framework
2. Black Americans, Model Minority
Black Prototypes
The New Model Movement Black Power as a Political and Cultural Prototype
The New Family of Minorities
Individual versus Group Striving
3. How Sex Got Serious
Feminism as Equal Rights
Feminism as Women's Liberation
Gay Rights and the Turn toward Sexual Pluralism
The New Centrality of Gender Politics
4. Half a Counterrevolution
The Conservative Project and Political Realignment
The Conservative Take-Off (1): Religion
The Conservative Take-Off (2): Business and the Counter-Establishment
The Democrats' Squandered Opportunity
The Half-Truth of the Reagan Revolution PART II: SLEEPWALKING INTO REVENGE
5. Americans as Enemies: The 1990s as Historical Pivot
From Cold War to Culture War
The 1990s as the Beginning of a New Era
The Limits of Democratic Victories
6. Sleepwalking (1): Immigration
A Quiet Explosion
The Return of Nativism
The New Immigrants versus the Old
7. Sleepwalking (2): Race
A Majority of Minorities?
The Return of ""People of Color
Diversity as an Ideal and Legal Standard
Obama and the Racial Loop
America, the Boiling Pot
8. How America Stopped Working for Working-Class Americans Post-Industrial Capitalism: Two Elites, One Loser
The Growing Divide among the 99 Percent
Labor's Decline and the Struggle for Labor's Revival
9. Trumpism as Total Revenge
The Interplay of Elite and Base in the Republican Party
A Truly Hostile Takeover
The Pandemic Stress Test
Trump and the American Contradiction
10. A New, Old America: Counterrevolution through the Courts
Gay Rights and the Waning of the Liberal Rights Revolution
Rights Subtraction, the Quiet Counterrevolution
The Right's Rights
History and Traditionalism
Law versus Culture The Partisan Court
11. The American Contradiction, 2024
The Third Trump Election
The 2024 Fault Lines
The Democrats Try to Occupy a New Center
Trump's Restoration
