All Folks Were Created Equal

Author : William Wolff Wattenberg
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 154 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (91 download)

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Download or read book "All Men are Created Equal" written by William Wolff Wattenberg and published by . This book was released on 1966 with total page 154 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The contributors to this volume-a professor of politics, an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court, a lawyer-diplomat, and a professional educator-address themselves to the interrelated questions: What do we believe about equality? What are the consequences of these beliefs? John P. Roche, chairman of the department of politics, Brandeis University, sketches and documents the transformation of the American majority's beliefs about equality. In tracing the past century's exclusion of the Negro from the political community, he notes that our forefathers did not build a pluralistic society around the principles of liberty and equality but that men achieved equality as a function of membership in the body politic-a privilege which the majority has always accorded on its own terms. Although the majority affirmed all men to be created equal, it refused to consider the Negro as a "man" among "men." He finds today's American majority determined to give "full coverage to the Declaration of Independence." Discussing equality before the law, William O. Douglas finds obvious the need to defend individual differences in a world besieged by general leveling influences and in an era where having no view at all seems better to many than having a controversial one. To cope with the problems of the twenty-first century, he writes, we shall need wonder, reverence, and awe for man's ingenuity along with sympathy and forgiveness for his shortcomings. He emphasizes the need for new history and social studies textbooks if we are to educate oncoming generations in the exciting challenges of our multiracial nation and world. Adolf A. Berle, diplomat, lawyer, and a "brain truster" of the Roosevelt administration, places in perspective recent and proposed federal efforts to set a floor under deprivation. For better or worse, he concludes, the American economy is a vast collective enterprise which must make its children as nearly equal as possible in opportunities for education and for jobs. It cannot permit even "justified" misery, and poverty below a level which outrages an affluent civilization. Underlying William W. Wattenberg's essay is the theme that any serious effort to counteract inequities in our present system of opportunities must come to grips with the fact that many people, young and old, react adversely to opportunities. Tackling the question of whether or not it is possible to alter the self-hampering obstructions which many people develop within themselves, he notes that self concepts form very early in life, that where a young person has formed a poor self-concept, his response to success with a lifting of aspirations is likely to be temporary, and that among young persons living in impoverished areas or belonging to minorities suffering discrimination, there is almost overwhelming social reinforcement for poor self-concepts. He finds the still unsolved problem to be not merely one of inducing the child to have a better concept of himself, but one of finding a way to make the change endure. Included in the book is a symposium entitled "Psychological Issues with Respect to Race Relations." The meeting served as a substitute program when the original speaker was unable to attend or to submit a manuscript on the topic. Participants in the symposium were Juanita Collier, professor, educational psychology; Lloyd Allen Cook, professor emeritus of educational sociology; George Henderson, assistant director, Delinquency Control Training Center; Ross Stagner, chairman, department of psychology; and Henry Watts, associate professor of social psychology; all of Wayne State University.