By Erica and Karen

We were taken aback when we read a recent op-ed by David Brooks. Citing a new book, The Upswing,” he says that ”until the late 1960s, American life was improving across a range of measures. Since then, it’s a story of decay.”

[B]etween the 1870s and the late 1960s a broad range of American social trends improved: Community activism surged, cross party collaboration increased, income inequality fell, social mobility rose, church attendance rose, union membership rose, federal income taxes became more progressive and social spending on the poor rose.

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Black school attendance, income gains, homeownership rates, voter registration rates started rapidly improving in the 1940s and then started slowing in the 1970s and 1980s.

The American century was built during these  decades of social progress. And then, around the late 1960s, it all turned south.

Over the past 50 years, the positive trends have reversed: membership in civic organizations has collapsed, political polarization has worsened, income inequality has widened, social trust has cratered, religious attendance is down, social mobility has decreased, deaths of despair have skyrocketed and on and on.

Obviously, we found this distressing. And counter-intuitive. Could it really be that, just as large numbers of women were demanding access to careers, and large numbers of Black people were demanding equality, progress in the United States began to reverse and go the other way? Why on earth would that happen? 

Brooks attributes the change to mind-set and culture.

The story of the American experiment in the twentieth century is one of a long upswing toward increasing solidarity, followed by a steep downturn into increasing individualism. From ‘I’ to ‘we’ and back again to ‘I’.

That surprised us. 

We are white women and we confess to having been ambitious. We were surely not sufficiently intersectional in our perceptions and actions, and surely insufficiently sensitive to the multiple barriers facing Black women, and others. But we never thought our efforts were only about “I”. The class action litigation being brought by leaders like Ruth Bader Ginsberg was more obviously about “we” than our jobs in corporate America, but we believed that, if each of us took action, one woman at a time, we could bring down barriers for all women. And we also felt that getting into the power structure was an essential part of the effort. Self-serving? Maybe, but we remain certain that the more diversified the power structure is, the better off everyone will be.

Thinking about this new information, we began to wonder. We do not recall our mindset being only about “I”, not “we.” One of the most wonderful characteristics of those years was the sisterhood among women entering the workforce. So what happened? Could it be that the change that occurred in the late 60s and early 70s was that feminists and Black Power advocates and other outsiders began to make demands rather than to accept largesse--well-meaning largesse but given at the will of those in power? And could it be that those in power found these demands annoying, and threatening? Could that have affected their attitudes toward progress?

And could there be a gender gap in the perceptions of what was happening? Another recent NYT op-ed suggests that women vote to serve the interests of their communities, and men vote their own self interest. Did those who held most of the power in the late 60s and early 70s feel they had to protect themselves by pulling back on initiatives being demanded, rather than offerings being accepted, by those insisting on access? Obviously that is too simplistic a view—lots of things were happening at that time. But was this one of them?

What matters today is that we use what we have learned to change the trajectory. Now that at least some members of formerly outside groups, including women, have more seats at the table, we wield more influence. We can and will focus on the “we” as well as the “I”.

How do you remember those early days? And where should we start, now?