William Tyler
Emerging Voices: Black, Female, Young and Hispanic

William Tyler | Emerging Voices Black, Female, Young and Hispanic | 02.19.24

- And welcome everyone who’s joining me this evening here and whatever time of day you are listening to this talk at in your own countries. I called this talk “Emerging Voices, Black, Female, Young and Hispanic.” A rather boring title, I think. I think I could have got a better title. I hope the content will be more interesting than that rather pedantic turgid title. I’m really starting about the 1960s. The decade of the 1960s was an extraordinary time of change in America, and indeed through America for the wider Western world. Last week, we saw the rise of the Civil Rights Movement in this same decade. And I also in passing, made reference to the parallel Women’s Movement of the 1960s. The week before that, two weeks ago, we were looking at the Vietnam War. And we looked at opposition to that war, particularly young opposition to that war, again in America, but spreading to the wider Western world. And with the rise of very politically motivated protest songs of the Vietnam era. The sixties, a time, I would argue of the moving of society’s tectonic plates in America, and then in the rest of the Western world.

Where to begin was my problem. How to make sense of the decade that changed the Western world forever. It seemed then, when many of us were young and still seems today with a historian’s hindsight that a New Age was born. Indeed, the very phrase, the New Age came from the late 1960s And the American sociologist Michael York commented, “The New Age is an umbrella term that includes a great variety of groups and identities.” Another phrase from the 1960s was “The dawning of the Age of Aquarius.” It doesn’t matter that no one can actually define that phrase. “You just have,” in the words of the 1960s, “You just have to feel it, man.” You can’t define it. You either get it or you don’t get it. A New Age, and we were growing up in that New Age. And so we have memories it. And yes, to us, it did seem that the tectonic plates had moved. We were the post-war generation. And we were now living and actually moulding this world of the 1960s. Despite, of course, in America, the Vietnam War, the Cold War, climaxing in the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the sometimes violence of the Civil Rights Movements on the streets of American cities.

Today, we are more cynical. And the sixties decade of peace and hope, of flower power and marijuana has perhaps ended today with war and anxiety in this third decade of the 21st century. But that doesn’t mean that the sixties don’t matter anymore or that they didn’t change anything. The very basis of my argument today is that the sixties did change it. For me, and it isn’t just because of the particular moment in time that the sixties hit me and hit many of you. For me, the sixties formed the base point of our world, of the modern world. We had moved on from the pre-war world, and from the war itself. This was a moment in time where everything was readjusted. And which, we look back on now and trace where we have arrived at from that base, now over half a century or so ago. The Civil Rights Movement has given way in modern contemporary times to Black Lives Matter Movement, the Women’s Movement, to the MeToo Movement of the present day, Women’s Lib to LGBTQ + identities and New Age to wokeism. We are, I would argue, on a continuous road from the 1960s. Not the same road, but certainly a road that began then and is continuing today. A New Age, a point in history. So where do I start?

Well, I’m going to start with us, our generation. I’m going to start with youth culture. And a new word that was indeed coined in the early part of the 20th century in the States. But only took flight when we were young, the word teenager. If you’re my age, in your late seventies there or thereabouts, your parents never went through teenage years. The word did have no meaning, not even in the States where the word had been first used. But now, in the sixties a divide opens up between generations. Between the older generations with power and the younger generations challenging that power, in a way that our parents’ and grandparents’ generations really wouldn’t have challenged power. They may have challenged social mores, in the 1920s for example, but not power structures. It had changed in the sixties. I’m highlighting the 1960s. But those of you who have been following many of my talks over the last few months know that I’m sceptical about assigning hard and fast dates in history.

In the book “Twentieth Century USA” Carole Jones has written this and she says, “The new teenager of the 1950s was very different. And could be seen in J.D. Salinger’s ‘The Catcher In The Rye’ published in 1951. Holden Caulfield, the novel’s hero was disparaging about the society he lived in and the phoney values of the adults he saw about him. Along with many others, a sugarcoated, goody-goody message transmitted by US culture, at the time, disgusted many American youths, who turned away from such wholesome heroes as Curly in the film "Oklahoma,” 1955, to embrace the more exciting Marlon Brando in “The Wild One”, 1953 and James Dean in that extraordinary changing film, changing in the terms of its impact on culture. James Dean in 1955 in ‘Rebel Without A Cause.’ The role models that these film characters provided teenagers, summed up the general frustration and lack of direction that many felt in the fifties. They wanted to rebel against everything. But especially against what their parents believed in.“

Absolutely spot on, in my opinion, true. And the older generation were frightened. In 1953, J.Edgar Hoover published an FBI report, which warned quote and direct quote from the report, "The nation can expect an appalling increase in the number of crimes that will be committed by teenagers in the years ahead.” Eisenhower used his 1955 State of the Union speech to call for legislation to quote “Assist the States in dealing with this nationwide problem.” Your young had now been defined as a problem. And that was very counterproductive. Because the young rather liked being thought of as a problem. They were being taken notice of. And they could rebel against being told, “You are a problem.” Music of course, played a major role in this new youth culture and youth awareness. Rock and roll hit the world, bang. It horrified our parents, more used to the Perry Comos and Bing Crosbys of the entertainment industry than Bill Haley & His Comets.

More importantly, perhaps in sociological terms, in the States, rock and roll helped to break down what we used to call the colour bar between Black and white young people. Music united them. The artists united them. And again, referring back to Carole Jones. I read the following. I lost the page. Here we go. “A disc jockey from Cleveland, Alan Freed, claims the credit for coining the term rock and roll. His popular radio show, which featured Black artists and rhythm and blue songs ensure that Black recording artists were heard by thousands of teens all over the USA between 1954 and ‘55. Many white parents were horrified, not only by the fact that Black music was having an influence on their children. But, also, because the content of many of the songs contained, in their opinion, too many references to immoral behaviour and rather suggestive lyrics.” Immorality of the young became an issue that closed the young war. The words they used all seemed to underline the fact, to their parents, that the world was going to hell in a handcart of immorality.

Britain and Western Europe followed this sharp change in popular music, which carried with it issues of race, which carried with it issues of rebellion. Bill Haley & The Comets visited Britain for the first time in 1957 and were sensational. I was only 12 and I was at boarding school, but I still remember it. We read about it. And I remember how horrified my parents’ generation were at this devil’s music. And in 1964, Britain returned the favour when The Beatles first crossed the Atlantic to perform in the States. This is a international move in Western society, not simply an American move or a European, one fed off the other. And the link was young people. So why had this phenomenon come about? There has to be reasons. Now you can spend days looking at the reasons for this eruption of youth culture. But perhaps, three of the major reasons for the rise of the young in the sixties were first of all, better education. People were staying on at school longer.

The education they received was better. And also in that education, they were encouraged to think for themselves. And it’s really rather like the printing revolution of the late 15th, early 16th century when printing came along and people were taught to read so they could read the Christian Bible in the West. Only for them to reject the Bible and turn to pornography. There was a huge rise in pornography printing, well because of printing in 16th century England. And a rise of political pamphlets, which in England led to the Civil War and all that that ensued. So better education led young people to challenge. They were being encouraged to challenge, and now they do so. They also had more money. They would do, those in education, part-time jobs. And I guess many of you, like me, who went on to university in the sixties did part-time jobs. And we may not have had huge sums of money. But looking back, I know I was fortunate in Britain to have all my fees paid for when I went to university. And I had a grant to live on. But I don’t ever remember being poor. I simply don’t. Maybe we were all in the same state.

But we were, now, a consumer demographic. Marketing men and women targeted the young. Now of course we target children. But then we were targeting teenagers. It’s a change. You only target people in terms of selling things if those people you’re targeting have disposable income, have money to spend. And we spent it and increasingly did the young spend it on records, on clothing, on going to gigs and so on. And then the third factor after better education and more money was now, okay, this does not apply to all the young. But car ownership gave independence. And if you didn’t own a car, on the American films from Hollywood, the young are driving cars. And of course those films have seen here in Britain and elsewhere in the English speaking world. And we might not have been able to afford one of those glossy big American cars driving about in California with the young in them. But we aspired to have a car like that. We wanted to be free. The open road was what we desire to be, free of the shackles of the older society.

So that’s why I started with youth culture, because it’s us. But I also start there because I think it is perhaps the most seminal change. The other huge change was the Women’s Movement. In 1963, an American housewife, Betty Friedan published a book “The Feminine Mystique,” which hit the big time again throughout the English speaking world, as well as being translated into other languages. With the publication of that book, “The Feminine Mystique,” the Women’s Movement took off. The child, if you like, of the early 20th century suffrage movements. Friedan argued in her book that “Home life was a concentration camp that stifled women as individuals.” A concentration camp. The suffrage movement used the analogy of slavery. The woman was the slave. Why? Because that was an issue at the time following the Civil War in America. Now following the Second World War, the phrase concentration camp, which we would find really rather unacceptable in this context, nevertheless, was used in 1963 to great effect. “Home life was a concentration camp that stifled women as individuals.”

American women as now Heather Cox in the book that I was recommending last week, “How the South Won The Civil War.” She points this out. She says, “Many Americans were no longer willing to wait for political leaders to accord them the equality that was their birthright. When young female civil rights workers found themselves excluded from positions of power and expected to defer to men, they launched their own liberation movement.” It’s really interesting in as a phenomenon that if you have one movement, it often spawns new movements. And the Civil Rights Movement dominated by Black men, nevertheless spawned the Women’s Civil Rights Movement. And Richardson is absolutely correct. “By the mid 1960s, the Women’s Movement was in full swing. And in 1966, women who had participated in the Successors for Kennedy’s commission on the status of women organised the National Organisation for Women.”

National Organisation for Women in the States with the letters, NOW, N-O-W, National Organisation for Women. Betty Friedan, the woman who wrote the book that kicked it off “The Feminine Mystique” or kicked it off in a big way. “Betty Friedan, wrote the organization’s statement of purpose declaring that the National Organisation For Women aim to quote, a direct quote, ‘Bring women into full participation in the mainstream of American society, NOW, exercising all the privilege and responsibilities thereof in truly equal partnership with men.’ To call attention to derogatory gender norms, a group of feminists with girdles, make-up, mops and bras into a trash can in the 1968 taping of the ‘Miss America pageant’ and demanded that women be respected as human beings, rather than as sex objects.” And again, that spread across the Western world, the burning of bras became a big issue at the time, you remember.

So women are on the march, as a minority group in society, well not so much a minority group, but a group that’s been marginalised. A marginalised group saying, “Come on, we’re not going to support civil rights if you men, do not give us an equal voice.” In fact, we want an equal voice across the spectrum, which is what NOW was demanding. And this movement could not, of course it could not, be contained within American shores. Here in Britain, we had a book that had a profound impact. And again, it was produced across the English speaking world and translated into other European languages. Hannah Gavron, G-A-V-R-O-N, had a book published shortly after her suicide called “The Captive Wife.” Hannah Gavron is a very interesting young woman. She’d been born in Palestine, today’s Israel, when it was the British Mandate of Palestine. She was the daughter of Mary Kirschner, who was a South African and of a man called Fyvel, who was a left-wing Zionist and ended up, and a friend indeed of George Orwell. And this radical background radicalised her. She married a man, who became a labour peer.

But by the time of her suicide had parted from him. She was highly educated. And she obtained a lecturing post in London at the Hornsey School of Art, which was a hotbed of radical views and opinions. “The Captive Wife” was in fact her PhD research, published and with enormous impact after her suicide. Her son has, only in recent years, written a biography of his mother, trying to identify why she committed suicide. It’s quite, it’s not a clear cut case of why she did. Maybe depression simply covers it. But Hannah Gavron, Betty Friedan, and others are spreading the word right across the Western world. American society was changed forever by the Women’s Movement. As indeed, American society was changed by the youth movement. The Women’s Movement, arguing for equality and the abolition of gender stereotyping. Work became an important area of battle between the Women’s Movement and the leaders of society. Men in the main as well.

In the 1960s, women made up, in America, 33-43% of the American workforce. But were often in the lowest paid jobs. Earning on average in the States, 40% less, 40% less than men. And indeed, in all our societies of all of you listening tonight, women were often paid less than men for the same job. It was Eleanor Roosevelt actually who started the ball rolling when she persuaded President Kennedy to launch a commission on the status of women in the States. And she herself, Eleanor, chaired that meeting. And it had an enormous impact because Eleanor knew that what had to be done was legislation. She criticised in the report of the commission, gender inequality in American society and identified discrimination against women as a serious problem across the states. And so laws were introduced and to short circuit.

I’ll read a little bit about the laws that came. “In response to the commission’s report, new laws were introduced to give women equality in employment. The 1963 Equal Pay Act made it illegal in the States to pay women less than men for the same job. A year later, the 1964 Civil Rights Act prohibited discrimination in employment on the basis of sex.” But these laws were loosely enforced and easy to get round, too easy to get round. You simply redefined the job and paid the woman less. And there may be people listening tonight, mainly men, who have done that in the past or who did it in order to get rid of someone who was difficult to get rid of under the laws of the nation that you live in. So the laws helped. And Eleanor was right, it set the tone. But you still needed to persuade men that they had to put this into action. And I suppose you could well argue that it only really begins the bite once women themselves get into positions of higher management in whatever business profession or whatever we are talking about.

Then the NOW Movement of Betty Friedan produced in 1968 what they called a Bill of Rights, a Bill of Rights for women. And they demanded that gender equality be written into the American Constitution. They wanted access to equal employment rights, job opportunities, maternity leave, childcare, and the right to abortion. And that last point underlines the fact that many of the issues of the 1960s are still with us today. Abortion being one in the States, which divides opinion even now. Further legislation followed and we see, and I’m sure some ladies, women… Have you seen that’s interesting. Can I say ladies or do I have to say women? A friend of mine appeared on a very popular radio show in Britain in the 1970s called “Woman’s Hour.” And he said, ladies, when he spoke and he was cut to pieces on air, live, for using the word. Words are important, but they’re also elephant traps.

So further legislation came in. In 1968, job advertisements ordered that banned, sorry. In 1968, laws came in that banned job advertisements that asked for men only to apply. That, of course, meant that women could apply for higher jobs, higher paid jobs, higher level jobs. And it is, you see all my life, professional life, I’ve worked in education and thus I’ve worked with many women. In fact, more women than men in most of the colleges I’ve worked in. And with women in positions of seniority and power. And that is not necessarily the case outside the world of education. But within education, you simply could not, you simply could not take a view even were you to wish to take a view, as a man that was in any way derogatory or constraining of women.

I remember being asked when I’d shortly before become Principal of the City Lit in London, the largest AE college in Europe when I was there. And shortly after I arrived, I was asked whether I would run a session on a course where we were training tutors across London and I’d done training courses in a number of my previous jobs. And they asked me to speak about teaching older people. I had a MPhil in teaching older people. This was something I was qualified in. But the women decided, because they were all women on this particular course, decided that I might not be acceptable. And not because I wasn’t qualified, but because I was a male and because I was a principal and because I had a degree from the University of Oxford. All of which they felt was unacceptable. So I withdrew from the group and said, “Well, look, you’ve got quarter of an hour to work out whether you want me to take this session or not, because I’ve got other work to do. If you want me to run it, I’m downstairs in my office.” And after quarter of an hour debate that they decided that perhaps I was acceptable.

It was a strange time for many of us who were men in the sixties and seventies, let alone for women. So the world, beginning with America, had certainly shifted on its axis. My experience can be mirrored by experiences of other people, Canada, Australia, Britain, America, Israel, wherever you’re listening from. I was at boarding school in the 1960s. And for the first time in a hundred years, they abandoned what were called bounds. Bounds were a line drawn on the map around the school in the countryside in which the school was based. And you were not allowed to cross those bounds. It was a way of imprisonment, basically. I also remember, I’m sorry to all women listening, I deeply apologise. In 1971, I became the adult education tutor to college in Shakespeare’s town of Stratford-upon-Avon. And to my embarrassment now, the first course I ran, I called “Women’s Lib.” I mean, was I to do that today, I would be lynched. But then, I got away with it.

Now, the people who came on this daytime course were all women. And they were all at least 50 years older than I was. And one of the students, was a lady called Dr. Field, who became a great friend of my wife and I. Dr. Field was an early anaesthetist. And when we were talking about the suffrage movement, she said, “Oh, I was part of the suffrage movement because my mother was.” So, we said, “Well, tell us about it.” She said, “Well, I went to a rally in Birmingham where Mrs. Pankhurst was speaking.” We said, “Did you? How fantastic. Tell us what Mrs. Pankhurst was like. How did she speak?” And Dr. Field said, “I have no idea.” She said, “I was about nine.” And she said, “I was on this stage with Mrs. Pankhurst. She was in the middle and I was at the side.” And I quote, a quote, “I was holding the bloody flag up for what seemed hours.” She was stood there with the suffrage flag or the suffragette flag. And all she wanted to do, she said, was to put down and go to the toilet. And so she never really heard what Mrs. Pankhurst said.

But it linked across from suffragette movement to the Women’s Lib Movement of the sixties and seventies. Let me pause for a moment. And tease out some core points from what I’ve so far been talking about. The 1960s was a decade of change. It reset the base of modern society. And it began in the States and then spread across the rest of the Western world. And once spread, the genie could never be put back in the bottle, however, much the older generations wished to. We had entered what I believe was a new historical period, a period of mass communication, of challenging previously accepted truths, of rebellion. And 60 years ago, of hope for this new age, a hope maybe a hope of better things to come. Now lost in what John Bunyan in “Pilgrim’s Progress” might well have described as the Slough of Despond We live in different times. But we still live with wokeism, which has emerged from the sixties. We still live with Black Lives Matter, which has come from the sixties. We still live with the MeToo Movement, which has come out of Women’s Lib.

We still live with LGBTQ + Movement, which has come out of both Civil Rights and the Women’s Movement. And above all else, we’ve become internationalised. We’ve become internationalised. There’s a saying by Northerners in Britain, “What Manchester thinks today, London will think tomorrow.” What America thinks today, Britain will think tomorrow. We are interlinked in this internationally based global world in which we now live. And that globalisation began in the sixties. Incidentally, quite different from what I’ve been talking about today and what I intend to go on talking about. You can also trace the environmental movement of the present day to the 1960s. Many of you may have read Rachel Carson’s a “Silent Spring.” So lots of things were changing. I could have done the whole talk about music changing. But I’m not a musician. I could have done environmental talk. But I’m not an environmentalist. I’ve chosen to look at these social groupings.

But there have been these massive changes from the sixties. Look at the way how indigenous peoples across the world are now looked at. And in America, at how America’s own indigenous people are now looked at, in terms of the environmentalist movement. And how, for example, the American buffalo has been reintroduced. How we’re concerned about all these things. This was the 1960s, for good or ill, the 1960s is the base of our society. But now I’ve got to keep an eye on the clock. Now I want to turn to a uniquely American problem. The effect on American demography and American society by the percentage rise in the Hispanic and Latino population of the United States. Now, okay, I accept that today across Europe as well as the States as well across the world, we have the issue of immigration. That’s true. But the specific Hispanic Latino position is an issue, which is distinctly American.

The original Hispanic or Spanish Americans dates back to 1848 and the end of one of Mexican-American War. And initially it referred to the Hispanics who found themselves living in the US state of New Mexico. In 1970, Spanish American definition was widened by the American census. To quote a person… So a Spanish American or Hispanic. The words are rather loosely used “To a person…” This is a US census definition, “To a person of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Dominican, South or Central American, or other Spanish culture or origin, regardless of race.” It’s not a question of race, it’s a question of ethnicity. The difference between race and ethnicity is an important one. When looking and talking about and thinking about Hispanic Americans. Race is based upon physical characteristics.

I’m white. Some of you listening may be Black. Some of you listening may be Asian. But ethnicity is different. I’m British. Put into a room with one of my American friends, not opening our mouths because that would give a lot away. But just sitting in an audience next to an American friend, you might say, we’re the same race. Yes we are. But we’re not the same ethnicity. Because my cultural identity is British. And my friend’s cultural identity as American is different. Now the big question with Hispanic Americans put race aside, its ethnicity. What culture are they embracing? Now, the whole basis of American white immigrant society has been precise in that immigration and the American state had gone to enormous lengths to ensure that immigrants bought into whatever phrase you want to use, the American dream, American culture.

Some of you have read the wonderful books, “The Education of Hyman Kaplan” by Leo Rosten and his attempts to be more American than the Americans. Very funny. And if you’ve never read Leo Rosten, then please do so. Hyman Kaplan is a wonderful creation. But that’s different. It’s different. Is it? With Hispanic Americans? That’s been the question. Indeed, the term Hispanic Americans now includes Portuguese immigration from Brazil into the United States. Now let me just, before I come back to the issue of what does this pose to American society? Just some facts. In 2010, the Hispanic American population in the States was 50.5 million. By 2022, it had risen to 63.6 million, a growth rate of 26%. As against the national growth rate in the States in that same period of 8%. In other words, Hispanic Americans, Spanish Americans were growing in number disproportionately.

However, in the same period, 2010 to 2022, the growth in Asian Americans had increased by a staggering 34%. Hispanic Americans by 26%. The overall picture, 8%. In 2022, Hispanic Americans accounted for nearly one in five of the population in the United States, just under 20%. Of those claiming to be Hispanic Americans, something in the order of 37, 38% are of Mexican origin. And of the states with the largest population is perhaps unsurprisingly, California followed by Texas. What has that meant for American society? Well, it’s led to the growth in the number of Roman Catholics in America. And we know from the very beginnings of my talks on American history, that it begins with Protestantism, those Puritan, who fled from England to build a new Jerusalem in the New World in New England. And this is a Catholic population and rising. And another consequence is the rise, well, this is not peculiar to the States, it’s a rise that the world is seeing, a rise in anti-immigration politics, Trump’s wall to keep them out.

But the question in the States has to be in academic as well as in popular circles, does the growth in the numbers of Spanish Americans threaten American culture? If you like changing American ethnicity? Or not? As long ago now as 2007, the academic Samuel Huntington wrote a book called “Perspectives on Politics,” in which he argued that the sheer number, concentration, linguistic homogeneity, and other characteristic of Hispanic immigrants will erode the dominance of English as a nationally unifying language. And we all know that if you change a language, you change a culture. Let me go on. “It will weaken,” argued Huntington, “The country’s dominant cultural values and promote ethnic allegiances over a primary identification as an American.”

It’s changing what Americans believed was meant by the phrase American. Which the immigrants from wherever they came had bought into. But not, argues Huntington, or the danger is the Hispanic Americans won’t buy into it. But the US census, in recent years has shown that Spanish Americans acquire English and lose Spanish as a language, rapidly, beginning with the second generation. And appear to be no more or less religious or committed to the work ethic than native born whites. So fears of Hispanics seems misplaced. On the evidence of the census, they are buying into the American dream. Here in Britain, because of the rise in antisemitism and an extremist Islamist beliefs seen on our streets, we say those of us who are not Jewish, those of us who are not Islamic, that the Jews bought into being British.

My Jewish friends are British, totally, completely, in the same way that I am British. That I’m not a Jew, but was educated and brought up as a Christian. That I’m not a Jew because my family’s history goes back both here in England and in France to Europeans, but without any Jewish ethnicity. But Jews bought into it. And our concern in Britain is that many Muslims do not buy in to be British. And the same is true, of course, across the Western world. And the fear was that Hispanic Americans would not buy into the American dream. And that does seem not to be so. I should be very interested to hear what some of my American friends will say in terms of their view of Hispanic Americans. But the drumbeat of extremism, politically, in the States and here does not help a sensible debate about the problem of international immigration. And you can play around with words like legal or illegal, until you are blue in the face.

But we have a problem. That people wish to leave countries of poverty and move to countries of prosperity to give themselves, and in particular, their children, a better chance in life. And we seem to have no, what is the right word? I would say we seem to have no moral answer, no moral answer to that question. And so now my talk comes full circle. Back to last week’s topic of Black Civil Rights. What happened to the Civil Rights Movement after the assassination of Martin Luther King in 1968? Well, it had achieved much. It fragmented without a leader like King. And it lost a little bit of momentum because it had gained so much. But there was more to gain, as we know, with the Black Lives Matter Movement. We’ve also seen that the movement gave rise to the Women’s Movement. It was developing in different ways than it had begun.

The Black Lives Movement has been accelerated by in Britain, which I can speak of, and in terms of America, by police actions against Black citizens. And today, Black Lives Matter in whichever country you are living are demanding police reform, the elimination of police racism, institutional racism. Here in Britain, the Metropolitan Police in London is consistently accused of racism, of institutional racism. And there is no doubt that that charge has weight. There’s accusations of police brutality towards Black people, but also towards women. We’ve had some horrendous cases in Britain of the rape of young women by police officers. We want criminal justice reform. We want an end to racial profiling. All these things, all these things happen on both sides of the Atlantic.

We’ve also seen emerging from the States where there was demands for the removal of statutes commemorating Confederate generals and political leaders to the renaming of universities, the renaming of buildings, of street names, because they bear Confederate names. So we have a whole list of issues today, which arise out of the 1960s. But in terms of America and concern about the Confederacy to the 1860s. And we’ve seen that emphasis about slavery and the money that people made out of slavery, hit the headlines, here in Britain on many occasions. And I’ve mentioned before, my home city of Bristol, which was a great slave port. A great benefactor of the city, William Colston statue was dobbed and thrown into the river by the Black Lives Matter Movement. We are still wherever we live, dealing with some of these issues.

Whether we can deal with them in a controlled way without it dividing us more than we are divided remains to be seen. Whether my argument, that the 1960s is the base of the world we live in, will seem in 10 years time to have been complete nonsense also remains to be seen. You must make these judgements for yourselves in terms of the country, the society in which you live. What do I believe has come out of the sixties that’s positive? Think for yourselves. Don’t be led. Don’t be led by loudest voices. Don’t follow the crowd. Think for yourselves. And for me, the overriding mark of a civilised society is toleration for others. But toleration does not mean there isn’t an end to toleration. There are limits to toleration in a democracy. And those limits apply to free speech as much as to everything else. There’s a story told, which really grabbed me in Heather Richardson’s book, which I found really quite disturbing.

And it goes like this. “The rewriting of the past,” says Richardson, “Created momentum for women’s suffrage. After a long fight for the ratification of a constitutional amendment to guarantee women the right to vote, the 19th Amendment finally became part of the American Constitution in 1920. In 1922, Georgia put a woman’s suffrage advocate in the Senate for a day. Rebecca Latimer Felton was a reformer who wanted educational and prison reform, as well as women’s suffrage.” Wait for the next sentence. “She was also in favour of lynching her Black neighbours who wanted equal rights. Seeing lynching as a way to free white women from the brutal lust of these half-civilized gorillas.”

Wow. A hundred years ago, but those views are around. Not only in the States, but in all our societies today. I agonised for a long time on how to finish this talk. I couldn’t find a clever quotation. I couldn’t find a clever story. I couldn’t come up with a clever paragraph to sum it up. It didn’t seem possible. So I turned instead to Heather Richardson’s “How The South Won The Civil War,” because it seemed to me that some of the things she was arguing in her book are the right way to look at these marginalised people in America and American society, and therefore all our societies in general. I got three quotations, two from the very beginning of her book and one from the very end. So bear with me. She writes, “America began with a great paradox. The same men who came up with a radical idea of constructing a nation on the principle of equality, also owned slaves, thought Indians were savages and considered women inferior.

This apparent contradiction was not a flaw, it was a key feature of the new democratic republic. For the founders, the concept that all men are created equal, depended on the idea that the winning phrase all men did not actually include everyone.” She goes on to say in her introduction, the following, “In the last half century, we have begun to pay attention to how the American paradox has kept people of colour and women from the full enjoyment of their rights. But we have paid far less attention to the fact that it actually threatens all Americans. It has given a small group of wealthy men the language they need to undermine our democracy and to replace it with an oligarch.” And then she finishes by saying this, “In the 2018 midterm elections, female candidates began to articulate a new vision of the country, to replace the old American paradox”

They emphasise community and fairness over individualism. And the race, class and gender roles, individualism has always implied. Women and voters of colour are helping to redefine the image of an America for the 21st century. As they did briefly after the Civil War and after World War II. In 1612, as English colonists were starving in Virginia, Shakespeare’s Miranda exclaimed him wonder at the possibilities of a brave new world of people who created a society untrammelled by traditional hierarchies. 175 years later, America’s founders put that idea into practise in what George Washington called a great experiment, a government based on the idea that human beings had the right to determine their own fate. Could such a government endure?

And she writes, "As an American, our country’s peculiar history has kept the question open.” Individualism against community, my demands against your demands, my views against your views. You may not agree with Richardson’s analysis of the paradox at the centre of American society, but it is a way at looking. It is a way at looking at the American world today and how we got there and the Western world of today and how we got there. You can come up with different analyses, that’s easy to do. But it’s challenging. And that is where I end because the 1960s taught us to be challenging. And maybe, the 2020s have to teach us to be tolerant. Thanks ever so much for listening. I’m sure there’s not somebody who will want to disagree profoundly.

Q&A and Comments

Have I got any questions? My goodness, I have. Naomi, hello Naomi. “As a young married woman raising children and running my own home, my own way. It seemed to me then and still now, that it was the change in attitudes towards doing what our parents told us was ‘right.’ For the first time, we determined to do our own thing. Deference for our elders gradually disappeared.” Absolutely true. Naomi. In fact, deference for everybody has disappeared. Deference for school teachers, deference for doctors, deference for politicians. Deference is something we don’t do. And we don’t want civility. That’s the last thing I would want. But am I wrong? Am I wrong to expect a doctor to be dressed correctly? Am I wrong to expect a doctor not to ask me what’s wrong with me, but to tell me what’s wrong with me? For a doctor to tell me what medicines to take and not ask me which ones I would like to take? There’s an awful app in Britain to get our medical information and it’s called Patients Know Best. No, we don’t. I’m not qualified as a doctor. So deference is it. I don’t want deference, but I do want an acknowledgement of professionalism. One of the problems in modern society, here I go again, you don’t have to agree, but one of the problems from the modern society In Britain, we had a senior politician say this, that they don’t trust professionals. I want to trust the doctor when he says, you know, you are going to live for another 50 years. Oh wow, I’m going to trust that doctor.

Michael says to in answer Naomi, “Agreed, but it doesn’t seem to have given us a better or safer world.” Yeah. Jacqueline, “Were there the equivalent of Teddy Boys in the US they were known for trashing cinemas and flick knives in specific fashion.” Yeah. Carol says, “I remember seeing Bill Haley at the State Cinema in Kilburn,” which is in London. “It was the first time I’d been to a concert. I rushed out after the concert, bought my first record ‘Rock Around The Clock.’ I still have the 78 record in my lock with every other record he ever made. Every Elvis record ever recorded, every Beatles record, et cetera. Unfortunately, I do not have an old record player to play them on” Elaine, “I was 15 and went to Bill Haley at the Hammersmith Palais,” again in London. Pat, “Hi William. The cultural icon of the sixties, The Graduate, so Mrs. Robinson and Benjamin Braddock, also known as Dustin Hoffman.” Oh yes. Oh my goodness me. Yes. That, I’m getting a little hot under the collar just thinking about that.

Q: Monty, “Was the New Age something evolved from the Enlightenment?” A: Oh, now Monty, you’ve got to ask a this is a very intellectual question. “Was the New Age something evolved from the Enlightenment?” An adjustment introduced to cater to the 20th century?“ Do you know, Monty, that is such a good question. And not one I can give a flippant answer to, not when I needn’t give an answer to. Did it evolve from the Enlightenment? I, Monty, I honestly don’t know. I would have to think a lot about that. That’s a really good, funny enough, I got a whole load of books in front of me here on the Enlightenment. ‘Cause I’ve been looking at it and I’d never thought of that question. Now you’ve got me thinking.

Hale, "When I got married in '63, my mother, an early feminist, gave me a copy of Betty Friedan’s "Feminine Mystique” as a wedding present.“ "So I would know what’s what.” Oh dear. Oh dear. I hope your marriage was long and successful, despite mother. I shouldn’t have said that.

Q: Anna, “Did the American feminist acknowledge the contribution of Simone de Beauvoir?” A: Yes. “The Second Sex” published in 1949. Yes, I could have gone back that far. I was merely concentrate. Yeah, I could have gone back that far. You’re absolutely right. I was trying a, to concentrate on American society, Betty Friedan and then on how that influenced influenced Britain and other English speaking worlds, like Hannah Gavron. And it really is America that kicked off that.

Jane, “The Age of Aquarius came to England and the musical score, Hair.” Exactly, that’s where the words are. “Naked people on the stage, celebration of new culture, an audience invited to get up and dance on the stage, a wonderful time to be young.”

Q: Shelly, “Cynically. I think a lot of the change was caused by one, the sexual revolution, which led to less commitment to family and more commitment to individual liberties. And two, the galloping inflation of the early seventies, which brought women of all ages, permanently into the workforce. Your opinion?” A: Agreed. Certainly, the pill helped change society. I didn’t mention it. I should and could have done. One of my problems, says he. There’s no, I’m not going to, sort of get myself off the hook. I should’ve mentioned the pill, and I didn’t. And you’re right about women going back in. No, hang on. I’m hundred percent with you about the pill. But hang on, the galloping of inflation early seventies, brought women of all ages permanently into the workforce. Partly, the other part of women coming into the workforce is we become a very consumer society. Another phrase from the sixties and seventies. And in that consumer society, you need money. And so men are quite happy for their wives to go to work. Wives are happy to escape their home. “The concentration camp” in Betty Friedan’s words, because they see freedom in going to work. The men see money coming into the household for a working wife. So it’s the consumer society that I think is important.

Your honour, “Technology played an important role in the explosion of the Women’s Movement. Two classes of labour, household tools were time saving.” Absolutely right. “And mechanical power assist, automobile steering and braking, open to women jobs that previously require massive physical musculature.” What an excellent point at last is household tools. That’s true. Housekeeping becomes, well, two things happen with housekeeping. You are right that gadgetry helps enormously, the technological improvement, but also the societal change in men helping in the house on household chores.

“Television and the pill were probably two of the biggest vehicles of change”, says Gabrielle and Kitty. Sandy says, “Interesting, in the fifties, I was castigated by my mother for saying, milk woman instead of milk lady.” Oh, how interesting. And now of course it, so I apologise to Americans. But in cricket, the person with the bat was always called the batsman. But now, because women’s cricket has taken off, we now use a very inelegant word. We call it a batter. I hate the word batter. It reminds me of something that’s been cooked in the kitchen rather than someone playing cricket. But that shows my age.

Q: “Does the expression out of bounds sent from the bounds that were set around country schools?” A: No, I think it’s the bounds around a, I think this is a Jonathan, I think it’s a mediaeval phrase. It’s beyond the bounds of the village, rather than the bounds in the school. The schools adopted the word bounds.

Ruth, “In the early seventies, I had my own business, The Inland Revenue,” that’s the tax people for those who aren’t British. “Sent forms that had to be signed by my husband to validate my tax returns. I complained that I was a married woman with three children and well educated and did not wish my husband have to sign. The result was they raided my accountant to find out what I was up to.” Gosh. June says, “Which country?” That’s Britain.

Carol, “My mother didn’t own her own name in Paris, letters were written as Mrs. Alec Pinkus, and that’s how she was known. Today, young girls, they keep their own names. I had my own first name, but had my husband’s surname.” It was really common for my generation, for a wife to take her husband’s surname. It’s become quite fashionable for younger people to put two surnames together to give a double barreled name. But also, of course, for women to keep their maiden, surname. “I was involved with the Women’s Movement in the sixties, Trude Silman ” says Gertrude. Rita “Thank you, William, for making the important distinction between ethnicity and race, appreciate it.”

Q: Carol, “What does that mean with American Jewish race and or ethnicity? And why so much antisemitism?” A: I’m sorry I cannot, Carol, all the will in the world start in a matter of minutes to talk about why we have a rise in antisemitism. But in race and ethnicity, I can’t answer that question. American Jews and British Jews must answer that question. Ethnically, the answer is it’s very, I can’t answer it. I’ve got Jewish friends who might answer it in different ways. I think that’s either something you’ve got to answer for yourself or says he passing the buck has to be answered by Trudy, and it’s more than either Trudy or I could do in a single sentence. It’s such a deep question. I’m not getting out from answering it. It’s just, I cannot begin to give an intelligent answer in two minutes.

Peter says, “How many people, oops,”

• [Host] William, you’ve muted yourself. You’ve muted yourself.

• I have?

• Yeah, there you go.

• I’m sorry. I muted myself. I’m, this is, that shows Peter, what an interesting question you asked.

Q: So Peter says, “How many people who supported Civil Rights in the sixties feel betrayed by things going past reasonable limits to where they have degenerated into the vices they originally approached? I used to believe the goal of anti-racism was to make people consider race something that should not matter, something people should neither be proud or ashamed of. Does identity politics encourage people to be proud of their race? There are many cases where this has become the case, and I feel to be authentically anti-racist, I must oppose woke idealists.” A: All I can say is I observed with my grandchildren that they do not see colour. And I regard that as a positive. As an adult, I saw racist riots against Black people in Manchester, and I thought that would be the undoing of a British society. It has not been. We must remain hopeful.

“We remember the Teddy Boys and Ducktails that rejected the status quo of their parents from about 1953,” says Ed. The name Teddy Boy was coined when on 23rd of September '53, the Daily Express newspaper in Britain, headline, shortened Edwardian to Teddy. Nevertheless, the term had previously been used Edwardian in Britain to refer to members of the territorial army. See the novel “Swoop” by P. G. Wodehouse. This was a reference to the King Edward VII.“ Ed, you are far too knowledgeable. This is wonderful. Thank you very much. Shelly, "In '75, when I got married, I insisted that the wedding announcement in my parents’ small town newspaper, run a photo of both my husband and I, not just a photo of me, the bride.” Oh, Shelly, crikey, you were very daring. Ed.

Q: “Were the Mods versus the Rockers, both teenagers in revolution, against the status quo, unique to the UK?” A: No, I don’t think so. We’ve always had this. They go by different names.

I’m sure that isn’t your name, but. iPad says, “Race versus ethnicity. You are forgetting the Spanish, white versus indigenous population, which Spain murdered and saved and otherwise dominated before they came to USA and became part of a white American dominant ethnicity.” Oh, Richard says. No, I don’t think I’m forgetting that. I’m not, that wasn’t the point I was making. Your point is obviously true. Betty Ann says, “I still have my copy of "Our Bodies, Ourselves” by the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective. The idea began with a small group at a women’s conference in Boston in ‘69. Early book to discuss sexuality, gay collective, rape, venereal disease, birth control, abortion, childbearing, and menopause. Showed the need for attention to women’s healthcare.“ My God, your mother would’ve been horrified. What a change you see in society. What a change.

Monique and Danny says, "Hispanic Americans are not a monolithic block, however, they are Christian as is America. Even though the types of Christianity, more Catholic versus Protestant. Muslims come with a different frame of reference where they have been a majority with dominant beliefs.” Yeah, but Hispanic Americans have come from dominant Catholic societies in South and Central America. “The immigrants come to prosperous countries and try to change 'em to their own ideals and values,” says Deedee. Well, that’s absolutely not true. It wasn’t true in terms of Britain of the 19th century Jewish immigration. They didn’t come to try and Judaism isn’t an evangelising faith. They accepted British ways. They integrated and they prospered. It’s an issue. It’s an issue with Islam. It is not an issue with other. Now I’ve got some Huguenot French Protestant blood in my veins. It wasn’t true of them either. So I think I have to disagree.

Erica, “I’ve just come back from a two-week holiday in Florida. I happened to be a Spanish speaker. But people there had no way of knowing that. And almost everyone addressed me in Spanish. No one asked me, do you speak Spanish? Some had poor English. They just launched straight into Spanish.” They launched, I think, they just launched straight into Spanish. “Was I in a Latin American country?” Well, that was what I was hoping somebody would say in terms or would give some basic information in regards to the States. You see, language carries with it , the culture. If you lose your language, you lose everything. You must keep the language. Thank you Rita.

Morris says, “You are critical of Trump’s immigration laws. You are completely wrong. He wants just to enforce US laws as defined by Congress.” You are welcome to your view. I don’t agree. We have the same problem here. I don’t think anything that Trump does can be logical. And no, he’s pandering to the lowest common multiple. We have to have better solutions than shooting people at borders and people dying because they’re trying to cross borders.

Monique and Danny, “Is cancel culture a valid answer to historic unjust, some of which have been worked on, or is cancel culture a term of erasing history, reopening a door to new abuses by those who seek power and use to pass injustice as a rationale?” I’m not happy with the whole concept of cancel culture.

Estelle, “I’m 97.” Wow, congratulations, Estelle. I can think of a history lesson as appropriate as well. Oh, no, that’s nice. I didn’t read the rest. Estelle, that’s very nice of you and I’m glad you joined us. Proof for me, as a educational gerontologists, we are never too old to learn. We’re never too old to change our opinions. And we should not allow ourselves to be put into boxes because of age as the young didn’t, as we, when we were young in the sixties, refused to be put into age boxes. So now that we’re old, we should equally refuse to be put into age boxes. I renounce that. Oh, dear you. This is getting …

“In the peer described in the Hyman Kaplan story, the level of American language mastery required for citizenship was higher than it is today and was more firmly enforced. At the same time, there was public financial support, the kind of classes that Mr. Kaplan and his associates were attending. Moral, you reap what you sow because it’s been cut back in the States.” What you’ve said about America, about the state is absolutely 100% the same as in Britain. My wife had an appointment with a consultant in a hospital last week. I went along because she’s quite deaf to be able to pick up accents. Unfortunately, the consultant’s English was so poor that he didn’t understand what either of us were saying. And we had great difficulties in understanding what he was saying.

Fortunately, there was a medical student there who was able to translate. And I thought, this is not good. We should have better English tests. It would be fine if we could have communicated in his language. I suppose if you are American, you could communicate in Spanish. Can I put my foot right in it and say, if you’re Canadian, you could communicate in French? But this wasn’t a question of a European language. This was a question of an African language, which we didn’t have. So it was enormously frustrating to have a consultant doctor that really wasn’t speaking our language. Now, that is not racist to say that. Nor is it wrong to say that English language requirements in the time of Hyman Kaplan and here in Britain as well at the same period were higher than they are now. Most, oh, hang on. I’ve just been scrolling through. I’ve got to stop in a minute.

I think Shelly’s point, “Most of the population, Athenian democracy did not have rights.” No slaves didn’t have rights. Women didn’t have rights. Oh, Myrna, what a clever thing to put. Myrna put “Civility versus servility” Oh, I like that. That’s very clever. I shall borrow that when you aren’t looking at some talk I shall give in the future. “Civility versus servility.” Celine, “My great grandmother was addressed with Vu, my grandmother with Wu.” Yeah, how very, very interesting.

• [Host] William, we’re going to need to stop in a sec, so maybe this will be the last one.

• Hang on a minute. Sorry. Joan has put “Own name, not maiden name or birth name.” Now I’m not talking about birth name. I’m not saying Christian name. I’m saying the surname of someone, which we refer to in English as their maiden name. I’m not sure, Joan, I’m not sure what elephant trap I’ve walked into. I’ve got to finish. I’m sorry. It’s been fantastic. I’ve learned so much in your questions and comments that you’ve put. It’s been really interesting. “Civility versus servility.” I’m going to write that down.

Thank you for listening. See you, same time, same place next week.