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Review of Leonard Steinhorn, The Greater Generation: In Defense of the Baby Boom Legacy. St Martins Press, 2006, 318 p. + xvi. $15.95 paperback. In his most recent book, The Greater Generation: In Defense of the Baby Boom Legacy, Leonard Steinhorn argues that many features of “sixties” culture (or “counterculture”) are currently in effect in our daily lives and that this is a generally a good thing. He regards the prominence of right-wing rhetoric as the work of a loud and vocal minority. Steinhorn opens by citing a list of unjust policies and practices from the fifties that were swept away by the “Baby-Boom” generation, for example, open and legal racism: There were “Jim Crow” laws in the South, but there was also open racism in the North. The General Manager of the Red Sox in 1960 openly proclaimed that there would be no Afro-Americans on the team as long as he was manager. In addition, there was widespread anti-Jewish bias, which was exacerbated by traditional sexual values: A newly married couple had to present a letter from their minister (not rabbi, etc) to the manager of any resort they wished to stay at. Many Jews changed their names or displayed Christmas decorations in order to hide their Jewish identities. Of course, there was much more open bias against non-religious people than there is today. A poll in the fifties found that a majority of Americans thought that an atheist should not be allowed to teach at a college or make a public speech against religion. (An interesting tidbit: Steinhorn also cites a 1955 poll showing that approximately 50% of Americans then couldn’t name a single one of the gospels. To me, this raises doubts about the claim that there has been a general decline in education and literacy during the last five decades.) Bias against gays was much more blatant and it also targeted straights who didn’t conform to traditional gender roles: The Boise Iowa police interrogated hundreds of suspected gays during the early fifties, forcing some to “out” their friends. There was also an official anti-gay witch hunt at the University of Florida that began in 1958 and lasted until 1962. In the early fifties, the Miami police chief openly proclaimed that his officers would harass effeminate men and make it clear that they were unwelcome on the beach. In general, there was a rigidly-enforced conformity. Job applicants (almost always men then) had to take personality tests designed to weed out non-conformists: Steinhorn quotes the book The Organization Man as saying that the best advice is to answer “that you love your father and mother, but your father a little more, that you don’t care much for books or music, and that you also love your wife and kids, but don’t let them get in the way of company work.” The “Baby Boom” generation replaced this prejudice and strict conformity with a general “equality of personal worth”, according to Steinhorn. Even though the US has a capitalist economic system, Steinhorn argues that it is currently a system of “economic democracy”, at least compared to the way it was before the mid-eighties when baby-boomers took over the corporate world. Before then, there were no profit-sharing plans; workers dared not question their bosses or come up with their own ideas; there was virtually no flex time. In general, corporations are flatter, i.e., less hierarchical than they were then. Steinhorn argues that this democratization of the economy deserves much of the credit for the technological and economic boom of the late eighties through today, because it gave workers more outlets for their creativity and more of a sense of ownership of their work. Steinhorn at least pays lip service to the point that “the greatest generation” deserves credit for surviving the great depression and fighting off the tyranny of Nazism and fascism. As for post baby boom generations, he argues that they tend to agree with baby-boomers about equality of personal worth, free expression, diversity and other values. However, they may resent baby boomers because this generation seems to be refusing to “give up the mantle of youth.” Some other interesting points from this book are: –––Even though there are more working mother’s today than in the forties and fifties, parents tend to spend more time with their children. This is due to factors such as flex time at work, looser gender roles that sometimes even include stay-at-home dads, and the fact that couples tend to have fewer children these days. –––There is less of a generation gap between baby boomers and their children, with the children often citing their parents as role models. –––Even churches have become more democratic in the baby boom era. For example, a recent poll of American Catholics found that approximately 40% believe that a good Catholic must be a “pro-lifer” whereas 60% believe that a good Catholic must have “concern for the poor.” Steinhorn also quotes a Jesuit theologian as saying “if we insist that Catholics agree with all of the Church teachings, then I’m afraid we’ll have no one for communion.” –––Even though colleges offer much more diversity in literature and other subjects these days, he argues that students also have more opportunities to study the classics. (An interesting point here is that, in the early 20th century, Shakespeare was considered a low quality fad – scholars during this period advocated classics such as works of Plato and Aristotle). While disapproving of so-called “politically correct” speech codes, Steinhorn argues that there is much more academic freedom today than there was before the sixties. I view this book as a good answer to the notion that there has been a general “decline in morals” since the fifties, but I have two main criticisms of it. The first is that Steinhorn does not address the fact that economic inequality has exploded since the seventies: the median (i.e., 50th percentile) income of American workers has declined since then, even though the average income has increased (because the wealthy are now much wealthier than the average citizen). Similarly, the ratio of the 90th percentile income divided by the 10th percentile income has skyrocketed during the last few decades. These factors would seem to testify against Steinhorn’s praise of the recent “democratization” of the economy. My second criticism of this book is that Steinhorn, like Tom Brokaw and others, seems the gloss over the fact that there are really no such things as discrete “generations”, unless you’re restricting the concept to a particular family: There are people being born every day throughout history. A 30 year old, for example, is in a slightly different generation from a 31 year old. In spite of these criticisms, I enjoyed this book immensely and recommend it as a defense of the baby boomer legacy against all the recent talk about post-sixties moral decline.
Independent Scholar |