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| brief history of equality: A Brief History of Equality Thomas Piketty, 2022-04-19 A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice A Public Books Best Book of the Year “A profound and optimistic call to action and reflection. For Piketty, the arc of history is long, but it does bend toward equality. There is nothing automatic about it, however: as citizens, we must be ready to fight for it, and constantly (re)invent the myriad of institutions that will bring it about. This book is here to help.” —Esther Duflo “A sustained argument for why we should be optimistic about human progress...[Piketty] has laid out a plan that is smart, thoughtful, and motivated by admirable political convictions.” —Gary Gerstle, Washington Post “Thomas Piketty helped put inequality at the center of political debate. Now, he offers an ambitious program for addressing it...This is political economy on a grand scale, a starting point for debate about the future of progressive politics.” —Michael J. Sandel, author of The Tyranny of Merit “[Piketty] argues that we’re on a trajectory of greater, not less, equality and lays out his prescriptions for remedying our current corrosive wealth disparities.” —David Marchese, New York Times Magazine It’s easy to be pessimistic these days. We know that inequality has increased dramatically over the past two generations. Its ravages are increasingly impossible to ignore. But the grand sweep of history gives us reasons for hope. In this short and surprisingly optimistic history of human progress, the world’s leading economist of inequality shows that over the centuries we have been moving, fitfully and inconsistently but inexorably, toward greater equality. Thomas Piketty guides us through the seismic movements that have made the modern world: the birth of capitalism, the age of revolution, imperialism, slavery, two world wars, and the building of the welfare state. He shows that through it all, societies have moved toward a more just distribution of income and assets, reducing racial and gender inequalities and offering greater access to health care, education, and the rights of citizenship. To keep moving, he argues, we need to commit to legal, social, fiscal, and educational systems that can make equality a lasting reality, while resisting the temptations of cultural separatism. At stake is the quality of life for billions of people. We know we can do better. But do we dare? |
| brief history of equality: A Brief History of Equality Thomas Piketty, Steven Rendall, 2022-05-18 |
| brief history of equality: Capital and Ideology Thomas Piketty, 2020-03-10 A New York Times Bestseller An NPR Best Book of the Year The epic successor to one of the most important books of the century: at once a retelling of global history, a scathing critique of contemporary politics, and a bold proposal for a new and fairer economic system. Thomas Piketty’s bestselling Capital in the Twenty-First Century galvanized global debate about inequality. In this audacious follow-up, Piketty challenges us to revolutionize how we think about politics, ideology, and history. He exposes the ideas that have sustained inequality for the past millennium, reveals why the shallow politics of right and left are failing us today, and outlines the structure of a fairer economic system. Our economy, Piketty observes, is not a natural fact. Markets, profits, and capital are all historical constructs that depend on choices. Piketty explores the material and ideological interactions of conflicting social groups that have given us slavery, serfdom, colonialism, communism, and hypercapitalism, shaping the lives of billions. He concludes that the great driver of human progress over the centuries has been the struggle for equality and education and not, as often argued, the assertion of property rights or the pursuit of stability. The new era of extreme inequality that has derailed that progress since the 1980s, he shows, is partly a reaction against communism, but it is also the fruit of ignorance, intellectual specialization, and our drift toward the dead-end politics of identity. Once we understand this, we can begin to envision a more balanced approach to economics and politics. Piketty argues for a new “participatory” socialism, a system founded on an ideology of equality, social property, education, and the sharing of knowledge and power. Capital and Ideology is destined to be one of the indispensable books of our time, a work that will not only help us understand the world, but that will change it. |
| brief history of equality: Deculturalization and the Struggle for Equality Joel Spring, 2016-02-26 Joel Spring’s history of school polices imposed on dominated groups in the United States examines the concept of deculturalization—the use of schools to strip away family languages and cultures and replace them with those of the dominant group. The focus is on the education of dominated groups forced to become citizens in territories conquered by the U.S., including Native Americans, Enslaved Africans, Chinese, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and Hawaiians. In 7 concise, thought-provoking chapters, this analysis and documentation of how education is used to change or eliminate linguistic and cultural traditions in the U.S. looks at the educational, legal, and social construction of race and racism in the United States, emphasizing the various meanings of equality that have existed from colonial America to the present. Providing a broader perspective for understanding the denial of cultural and linguistic rights in the United States, issues of language, culture, and deculturalization are placed in a global context. The major change in the 8th Edition is a new chapter, Global Corporate Culture and Separate But Equal, describing how current efforts at deculturalization involve replacing family and personal cultures with a corporate culture to increase worker efficiency. Substantive updates and revisions are made throughout all other chapters |
| brief history of equality: The Economics of Inequality Thomas Piketty, 2015-08-03 Succinct, accessible, and authoritative, Thomas Piketty’s The Economics of Inequality is the ideal place to start for those who want to understand the fundamental issues at the heart of one the most pressing concerns in contemporary economics and politics. This work now appears in English for the first time. |
| brief history of equality: Political Cleavages and Social Inequalities Amory Gethin, Clara Martnez-Toledano, Thomas Piketty, 2021-11-16 The empirical starting point for anyone who wants to understand political cleavages in the democratic world, based on a unique dataset covering fifty countries since WWII. Who votes for whom and why? Why has growing inequality in many parts of the world not led to renewed class-based conflicts, seeming instead to have come with the emergence of new divides over identity and integration? News analysts, scholars, and citizens interested in exploring those questions inevitably lack relevant data, in particular the kinds of data that establish historical and international context. Political Cleavages and Social Inequalities provides the missing empirical background, collecting and examining a treasure trove of information on the dynamics of polarization in modern democracies. The chapters draw on a unique set of surveys conducted between 1948 and 2020 in fifty countries on five continents, analyzing the links between votersÕ political preferences and socioeconomic characteristics, such as income, education, wealth, occupation, religion, ethnicity, age, and gender. This analysis sheds new light on how political movements succeed in coalescing multiple interests and identities in contemporary democracies. It also helps us understand the conditions under which conflicts over inequality become politically salient, as well as the similarities and constraints of voters supporting ethnonationalist politicians like Narendra Modi, Jair Bolsonaro, Marine Le Pen, and Donald Trump. Bringing together cutting-edge data and historical analysis, editors Amory Gethin, Clara Martnez-Toledano, and Thomas Piketty offer a vital resource for understanding the voting patterns of the present and the likely sources of future political conflict. |
| brief history of equality: The Age of Equality Richard Pomfret, 2011-10-15 In 1900 the global average life expectancy at birth was thirty-one years. By 2000 it was sixty-six. Yet, alongside unprecedented improvements in longevity and material well-being, the twentieth century also saw the rise of fascism and communism and a second world war followed by a cold war. This book tells the story of the battles between economic systems that defined the last century and created today's world. The nineteenth century was a period of rapid economic growth characterized by relatively open markets and more personal liberty, but it also brought great inequality within and between nations. The following century offered sharp challenges to free-wheeling capitalism from both communism and fascism, whose competing visions of planned economic development attracted millions of people buffeted by the economic storms of the 1930s. The Age of Equality describes the ways in which market-oriented economies eventually overcame the threat of these visions and provided a blueprint for reform in nonmarket economies. This was achieved not through unbridled capitalism but by combining the efficiency and growth potential of markets with government policies to promote greater equality of opportunity and outcome. Following on the heels of economic reform, rapid catch-up growth in countries such as China, India, Indonesia, Brazil, and Poland helped to reduce global inequality. At a time when inequality is on the rise in nations as disparate as the United States and Egypt, Pomfret’s interpretation of how governments of market economies faced the challenges of the twentieth century is both instructive and cautionary. |
| brief history of equality: Expectations of Equality Albert S. Broussard, 2012-02-21 In this concise and engaging new volume, the latest in our growing Western History Series, Professor Broussard examines how African Americans over the course of nearly five centuries attempted to find their place in the states and territories west of the ninety-eighth meridian. Although black westerners, like white immigrants or native-born whites, defy easy characterization because they came to the West for a variety of reasons, blacks have shared certain commonalities with these groups. The majority of African Americans who settled in the West saw the region as a place where they could fashion a better life for themselves or their families. Some naively viewed the West as an oasis, a place free of racial or class restrictions. While many white immigrants, native-born whites, Hispanics, and Asians also saw the West as a place of opportunity, the experiences of African Americans differed profoundly from whites, people who never faced such a pervasive pattern of discrimination based solely on their race. In addition to covering central themes and important figures, Expectations of Equality tells the stories of every-day African American men and women, persons who lived in the West from the early 1500s until the turn of the twenty-first century. Many of them led ordinary lives that are difficult to reconstruct in detail–working, raising families, attending church, and educating their children. Yet some of them forged colorful careers as scouts and mountain men, Buffalo Soldiers, businesswomen, athletes, activists, and politicians, their stories helping to make Expectations of Equality the perfect choice as supplementary reading—not only for courses in the history of the U.S. West, but also for survey courses in United States and African American history. |
| brief history of equality: Summary of Thomas Piketty's A Brief History of Equality Milkyway Media, 2022-06-04 Buy now to get the main key ideas from Thomas Piketty's A Brief History of Equality Inequality has been present through human history, but it has changed dramatically in the past couple of decades. In A Brief History of Equality (2021), Thomas Piketty, a leading French economist, lays out the history of equality in the most recent centuries. With an optimistic point of view, he especially focuses on movements and periods that achieved some form of progress towards equality. As more people are becoming aware of worldwide inequality issues, Piketty reminds us that there has been past progress, and the future is up to us. |
| brief history of equality: Ordinary Equality Kate Kelly, 2022-03-01 We are all living through modern constitutional history in the making, and Ordinary Equality helps teach about the past, present, and future of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) through the lives of the bold, fearless women and queer people who have helped shape the U.S. Constitution. Ordinary Equality digs into the fascinating and little-known history of the ERA and the lives of the incredible—and often overlooked—women and queer people who have helped shape the U.S. Constitution for more than 200 years. Based on author Kate Kelly’s acclaimed podcast of the same name, Ordinary Equality recounts a story centuries in the making. From before the Constitution was even drafted to the modern day, she examines how and why constitutional equality for women and Americans of all marginalized genders has been systematically undermined for the past 100-plus years, and then calls us all to join the current movement to put it back on the table and get it across the finish line. Kate Kelly provides a much-needed fresh perspective on the ERA for feminists of all ages, and this engaging, illustrated look at history, law, and activism is sure to inspire many to continue the fight. Individual chapters tell the stories of Molly Brant (Koñwatsi-tsiaiéñni / Degonwadonti), Abigail Adams, Phillis Wheatley, Matilda Joslyn Gage, Alice Paul, Mary Church Terrell, Pauli Murray, Martha Wright Griffiths, Patsy Takemoto Mink, Barbara Jordan, and Pat Spearman, and features other key players and concepts, including Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Title IX, Danica Roem, and many more. |
| brief history of equality: Who’s Black and Why? Henry Louis Gates Jr., Andrew S. Curran, 2022-03-22 2023 PROSE Award in European History “An invaluable historical example of the creation of a scientific conception of race that is unlikely to disappear anytime soon.” —Washington Post “Reveals how prestigious natural scientists once sought physical explanations, in vain, for a social identity that continues to carry enormous significance to this day.” —Nell Irvin Painter, author of The History of White People “A fascinating, if disturbing, window onto the origins of racism.” —Publishers Weekly “To read [these essays] is to witness European intellectuals, in the age of the Atlantic slave trade, struggling, one after another, to justify atrocity.” —Jill Lepore, author of These Truths: A History of the United States In 1739 Bordeaux’s Royal Academy of Sciences announced a contest for the best essay on the sources of “blackness.” What is the physical cause of blackness and African hair, and what is the cause of Black degeneration, the contest announcement asked. Sixteen essays, written in French and Latin, were ultimately dispatched from all over Europe. Documented on each page are European ideas about who is Black and why. Looming behind these essays is the fact that some four million Africans had been kidnapped and shipped across the Atlantic by the time the contest was announced. The essays themselves represent a broad range of opinions, which nonetheless circulate around a common theme: the search for a scientific understanding of the new concept of race. More important, they provide an indispensable record of the Enlightenment-era thinking that normalized the sale and enslavement of Black human beings. These never previously published documents survived the centuries tucked away in Bordeaux’s municipal library. Translated into English and accompanied by a detailed introduction and headnotes written by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Andrew Curran, each essay included in this volume lays bare the origins of anti-Black racism and colorism in the West. |
| brief history of equality: Capital in the Twenty-First Century Thomas Piketty, 2017-08-14 What are the grand dynamics that drive the accumulation and distribution of capital? Questions about the long-term evolution of inequality, the concentration of wealth, and the prospects for economic growth lie at the heart of political economy. But satisfactory answers have been hard to find for lack of adequate data and clear guiding theories. In this work the author analyzes a unique collection of data from twenty countries, ranging as far back as the eighteenth century, to uncover key economic and social patterns. His findings transform debate and set the agenda for the next generation of thought about wealth and inequality. He shows that modern economic growth and the diffusion of knowledge have allowed us to avoid inequalities on the apocalyptic scale predicted by Karl Marx. But we have not modified the deep structures of capital and inequality as much as we thought in the optimistic decades following World War II. The main driver of inequality--the tendency of returns on capital to exceed the rate of economic growth--today threatens to generate extreme inequalities that stir discontent and undermine democratic values if political action is not taken. But economic trends are not acts of God. Political action has curbed dangerous inequalities in the past, the author says, and may do so again. This original work reorients our understanding of economic history and confronts us with sobering lessons for today. |
| brief history of equality: The First Amendment and LGBT Equality Carlos A. Ball, 2017-03-27 Carlos A. Ball argues that as progressives fight the First Amendment claims of religious conservatives and other LGBT opponents, they should take care not to forget the crucial role the First Amendment played in the early decades of the movement, and not to erode the safeguards of liberty that allowed LGBT rights to exist in the first place. |
| brief history of equality: A Brief History of Feminism Patu, Antje Schrupp, 2024-04-02 An engaging illustrated history of feminism from antiquity through third-wave feminism, featuring Sappho, Mary Magdalene, Mary Wollstonecraft, Sojourner Truth, Simone de Beauvoir, and many others. The history of feminism? The right to vote, Susan B. Anthony, Gloria Steinem, white pantsuits? Oh, but there's so much more. And we need to know about it, especially now. In pithy text and pithier comics, A Brief History of Feminism engages us, educates us, makes us laugh, and makes us angry. It begins with antiquity and the early days of Judeo-Christianity. (Mary Magdalene questions the maleness of Jesus's inner circle: “People will end up getting the notion you don't want women to be priests.” Jesus: “Really, Mary, do you always have to be so negative?”) It continues through the Middle Ages, the Early Modern period, and the Enlightenment (“Liberty, equality, fraternity!” “But fraternity means brotherhood!”). It covers the beginnings of an organized women's movement in the nineteenth century, second-wave Feminism, queer feminism, and third-wave Feminism. Along the way, we learn about important figures: Olympe de Gouges, author of the “Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen” (guillotined by Robespierre); Flora Tristan, who linked the oppression of women and the oppression of the proletariat before Marx and Engels set pen to paper; and the poet Audre Lorde, who pointed to the racial obliviousness of mainstream feminism in the 1970s and 1980s. We learn about bourgeois and working-class issues, and the angry racism of some American feminists when black men got the vote before women did. We see God as a long-bearded old man emerging from a cloud (and once, as a woman with her hair in curlers). And we learn the story so far of a history that is still being written. |
| brief history of equality: Equality Charles Postel, 2019-08-20 An in-depth study of American social movements after the Civil War and their lessons for today by a prizewinning historian The Civil War unleashed a torrent of claims for equality—in the chaotic years following the war, former slaves, women’s rights activists, farmhands, and factory workers all engaged in the pursuit of the meaning of equality in America. This contest resulted in experiments in collective action, as millions joined leagues and unions. In Equality: An American Dilemma, 1866–1886, Charles Postel demonstrates how taking stock of these movements forces us to rethink some of the central myths of American history. Despite a nationwide push for equality, egalitarian impulses oftentimes clashed with one another. These dynamics get to the heart of the great paradox of the fifty years following the Civil War and of American history at large: Waves of agricultural, labor, and women’s rights movements were accompanied by the deepening of racial discrimination and oppression. Herculean efforts to overcome the economic inequality of the first Gilded Age and the sexual inequality of the late-Victorian social order emerged alongside Native American dispossession, Chinese exclusion, Jim Crow segregation, and lynch law. Now, as Postel argues, the twenty-first century has ushered in a second Gilded Age of savage socioeconomic inequalities. Convincing and learned, Equality explores the roots of these social fissures and speaks urgently to the need for expansive strides toward equality to meet our contemporary crisis. |
| brief history of equality: The Myth of Equality Ken Wytsma, 2019-07-23 Is privilege real or imagined? Ken Wytsma, founder of the Justice Conference, unpacks what we need to know to be grounded in conversations about today's race-related issues. And he helps us come to a deeper understanding of both the origins of these issues and the reconciling role we are called to play as witnesses of the gospel. |
| brief history of equality: Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality Danielle Allen, 2014-06-23 “A tour de force.... No one has ever written a book on the Declaration quite like this one.” —Gordon Wood, New York Review of Books Winner of the Zócalo Book Prize Winner of the Society of American Historians’ Francis Parkman Prize Winner of the Chicago Tribune’s Heartland Prize (Nonfiction) Finalist for the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation Hurston Wright Legacy Award Shortlisted for the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction Shortlisted for the Phi Beta Kappa Society’s Ralph Waldo Emerson Award A New York Times Book Review Editors Choice Selection Featured on the front page of the New York Times, Our Declaration is already regarded as a seminal work that reinterprets the promise of American democracy through our founding text. Combining a personal account of teaching the Declaration with a vivid evocation of the colonial world between 1774 and 1777, Allen, a political philosopher renowned for her work on justice and citizenship reveals our nation’s founding text to be an animating force that not only changed the world more than two-hundred years ago, but also still can. Challenging conventional wisdom, she boldly makes the case that the Declaration is a document as much about political equality as about individual liberty. Beautifully illustrated throughout, Our Declaration is an “uncommonly elegant, incisive, and often poetic primer on America’s cardinal text” (David M. Kennedy). |
| brief history of equality: The Invention of Humanity Siep Stuurman, 2017-02-20 For much of history, strangers were routinely classified as barbarians and inferiors, seldom as fellow human beings. The notion of a common humanity was counterintuitive and thus had to be invented. Siep Stuurman traces evolving ideas of human equality and difference across continents and civilizations from ancient times to the present. Despite humans’ deeply ingrained bias against strangers, migration and cultural blending have shaped human experience from the earliest times. As travelers crossed frontiers and came into contact with unfamiliar peoples and customs, frontier experiences generated not only hostility but also empathy and understanding. Empires sought to civilize their “barbarians,” but in all historical eras critics of empire were able to imagine how the subjected peoples made short shrift of imperial arrogance. Drawing on the views of a global mix of thinkers—Homer, Confucius, Herodotus, the medieval Muslim scholar Ibn Khaldun, the Haitian writer Antenor Firmin, the Filipino nationalist Jose Rizal, and more—The Invention of Humanity surveys the great civilizational frontiers of history, from the interaction of nomadic and sedentary societies in ancient Eurasia and Africa, to Europeans’ first encounters with the indigenous peoples of the New World, to the Enlightenment invention of universal “modern equality.” Against a backdrop of two millennia of thinking about common humanity and equality, Stuurman concludes with a discussion of present-day debates about human rights and the “clash of civilizations.” |
| brief history of equality: Equality's Call Deborah Diesen, 2020-02-18 Learn all about the history of voting rights in the United States—from our nation’s founding to the present day—in this powerful picture book from the New York Times bestselling author of The Pout-Pout Fish. A right isn’t right till it’s granted to all… The founders of the United States declared that consent of the governed was a key part of their plan for the new nation. But for many years, only white men of means were allowed to vote. This unflinching and inspiring history of voting rights looks back at the activists who answered equality’s call, working tirelessly to secure the right for all to vote, and it also looks forward to the future and the work that still needs to be done. |
| brief history of equality: Gateway to Equality Keona K. Ervin, 2017-07-28 Like most of the nation during the 1930s, St. Louis, Missouri, was caught in the stifling grip of the Great Depression. For the next thirty years, the Gateway City continued to experience significant urban decline as its population swelled and the area's industries stagnated. Over these decades, many African American citizens in the region found themselves struggling financially and fighting for access to profitable jobs and suitable working conditions. To combat ingrained racism, crippling levels of poverty, and sub-standard living conditions, black women worked together to form a community-based culture of resistance—fighting for employment, a living wage, dignity, representation, and political leadership. Gateway to Equality investigates black working-class women's struggle for economic justice from the rise of New Deal liberalism in the 1930s to the social upheavals of the 1960s. Author Keona K. Ervin explains that the conditions in twentieth-century St. Louis were uniquely conducive to the rise of this movement since the city's economy was based on light industries that employed women, such as textiles and food processing. As part of the Great Migration, black women migrated to the city at a higher rate than their male counterparts, and labor and black freedom movements relied less on a charismatic, male leadership model. This made it possible for women to emerge as visible and influential leaders in both formal and informal capacities. In this impressive study, Ervin presents a stunning account of the ways in which black working-class women creatively fused racial and economic justice. By illustrating that their politics played an important role in defining urban political agendas, her work sheds light on an unexplored aspect of community activism and illuminates the complexities of the overlapping civil rights and labor movements during the first half of the twentieth century. |
| brief history of equality: The End of Astronauts Donald Goldsmith, Martin Rees, 2022-01-01 A world-renowned astronomer and an esteemed science writer make the provocative argument for space exploration without astronauts. Human journeys into space fill us with wonder. But the thrill of space travel for astronauts comes at enormous expense and is fraught with peril. As our robot explorers grow more competent, governments and corporations must ask, does our desire to send astronauts to the Moon and Mars justify the cost and danger? Donald Goldsmith and Martin Rees believe that beyond low-Earth orbit, space exploration should proceed without humans. In The End of Astronauts, Goldsmith and Rees weigh the benefits and risks of human exploration across the solar system. In space humans require air, food, and water, along with protection from potentially deadly radiation and high-energy particles, at a cost of more than ten times that of robotic exploration. Meanwhile, automated explorers have demonstrated the ability to investigate planetary surfaces efficiently and effectively, operating autonomously or under direction from Earth. Although Goldsmith and Rees are alert to the limits of artificial intelligence, they know that our robots steadily improve, while our bodies do not. Today a robot cannot equal a geologist's expertise, but by the time we land a geologist on Mars, this advantage will diminish significantly. Decades of research and experience, together with interviews with scientific authorities and former astronauts, offer convincing arguments that robots represent the future of space exploration. The End of Astronauts also examines how spacefaring AI might be regulated as corporations race to privatize the stars. We may eventually decide that humans belong in space despite the dangers and expense, but their paths will follow routes set by robots. |
| brief history of equality: She the People Jen Deaderick, 2019-03-05 A sweeping, smart, and smart-ass graphic history of women's ongoing quest for equality In March 2017, Nevada surprised the rest of America by suddenly ratifying the Equal Rights Amendment--thirty-five years after the deadline had passed. Hey, better late than never, right? Then, lo and behold, a few months later, Illinois followed suit. Hurrah for the Land of Lincoln! That left the ERA just one state short of the congressional minimum for ratification. One state--and a legacy of shame--are what stand between American women and full equality. She the People takes on the campaign for change by offering a cheekily illustrated, sometimes sarcastic, and all-too-true account of women's evolving rights and citizenship. Divided into twelve historical periods between 1776 and today, journalist, historian, and activist Jen Deaderick takes readers on a walk down the ERA's rocky road to become part of our Constitution by highlighting changes in the legal status of women alongside the significant cultural and social influences of the time, so women's history is revealed as an integral part of U.S. history, and not a tangential sideline. Clever and dynamic, She the People is informative, entertaining, and a vital reminder that women still aren't fully accepted as equal citizens in America. |
| brief history of equality: From Here to Equality, Second Edition William A. Darity Jr., A. Kirsten Mullen, 2022-07-27 Racism and discrimination have choked economic opportunity for African Americans at nearly every turn. At several historic moments, the trajectory of racial inequality could have been altered dramatically. But neither Reconstruction nor the New Deal nor the civil rights struggle led to an economically just and fair nation. Today, systematic inequality persists in the form of housing discrimination, unequal education, police brutality, mass incarceration, employment discrimination, and massive wealth and opportunity gaps. Economic data indicates that for every dollar the average white household holds in wealth the average black household possesses a mere ten cents. This compelling and sharply argued book addresses economic injustices head-on and make the most comprehensive case to date for economic reparations for U.S. descendants of slavery. Using innovative methods that link monetary values to historical wrongs, William Darity Jr. and A. Kirsten Mullen assess the literal and figurative costs of justice denied in the 155 years since the end of the Civil War and offer a detailed roadmap for an effective reparations program, including a substantial payment to each documented U.S. black descendant of slavery. This new edition features a new foreword addressing the latest developments on the local, state, and federal level and considering current prospects for a comprehensive reparations program. |
| brief history of equality: American Ideas of Equality Carl L Bankston, 2021-02-26 Equality is a fundamental American value. The nation's Declaration of Independence declared equality as a self-evident foundation for political life and the pursuit of equality has continued to dominate policy debates in the twenty-first century. However, equality is a complex idea and it has had different meanings in different eras. Using a variety of data sources, this book describes how the views we hold regarding this fundamental national value developed as products of our cultural history from the origins of the American republic to 2020. It traces how cultural transmission, political and economic structures, and communication technology have shaped this core American value. The book begins with the early days of the American republic and follows ideological changes through the era of the self-made man, the rise of corporate society, the New Deal, the post-World War II era, and the era of Civil Rights. It ends with a detailed discussion of how this history has resulted in some of the most divisive political and social controversies of the twenty-first century. Most studies of equality have taken this as having a single, clear meaning. Most often, this has been either how much equality of opportunity exists now or has existed in the past, or how much equality of condition exists now or has existed in the past. They rarely consider that people can be equal or unequal in different ways, and that what we mean when we talk about equality or engage in debates about it has been shaped by historical experience. This book is a work of historical sociology that examines the forces that have shaped and re-shaped this fundamental cultural value. The book leads readers through an exploration of how different stages of American history have led to thinking about equality in terms of independence from hierarchy, the opportunity for self-creation, access to services and resources, widespread upward mobility, and equality across social categories. It takes a unique multidisciplinary approach, combining intellectual and cultural history with political, economic, and sociological analysis. No other book offers this kind of analysis of the both the historical origins and contemporary consequences of a cultural concept at the core of American national life. American Ideas of Equality will be a valuable resource for academic researchers, students, and general readers interested in American studies; cultural, economic, and political history; political science; and sociology. |
| brief history of equality: A Brief History of Equality Thomas Piketty, 2022-01-01 The world's leading economist of inequality presents a short but sweeping and surprisingly optimistic history of human progress toward equality despite crises, disasters, and backsliding. A perfect introduction to the ideas developed in his monumental earlier books. It's easy to be pessimistic about inequality. We know it has increased dramatically in many parts of the world over the past two generations. No one has done more to reveal the problem than Thomas Piketty. Now, in this surprising and powerful new work, Piketty reminds us that the grand sweep of history gives us reasons to be optimistic. Over the centuries, he shows, we have been moving toward greater equality. Piketty guides us with elegance and concision through the great movements that have made the modern world for better and worse: the growth of capitalism, revolutions, imperialism, slavery, wars, and the building of the welfare state. It's a history of violence and social struggle, punctuated by regression and disaster. But through it all, Piketty shows, human societies have moved fitfully toward a more just distribution of income and assets, a reduction of racial and gender inequalities, and greater access to health care, education, and the rights of citizenship. Our rough march forward is political and ideological, an endless fight against injustice. To keep moving, Piketty argues, we need to learn and commit to what works, to institutional, legal, social, fiscal, and educational systems that can make equality a lasting reality. At the same time, we need to resist historical amnesia and the temptations of cultural separatism and intellectual compartmentalization. At stake is the quality of life for billions of people. We know we can do better, Piketty concludes. The past shows us how. The future is up to us. |
| brief history of equality: Visualizing Equality Aston Gonzalez, 2020-07-20 The fight for racial equality in the nineteenth century played out not only in marches and political conventions but also in the print and visual culture created and disseminated throughout the United States by African Americans. Advances in visual technologies--daguerreotypes, lithographs, cartes de visite, and steam printing presses--enabled people to see and participate in social reform movements in new ways. African American activists seized these opportunities and produced images that advanced campaigns for black rights. In this book, Aston Gonzalez charts the changing roles of African American visual artists as they helped build the world they envisioned. Understudied artists such as Robert Douglass Jr., Patrick Henry Reason, James Presley Ball, and Augustus Washington produced images to persuade viewers of the necessity for racial equality, black political leadership, and freedom from slavery. Moreover, these activist artists' networks of transatlantic patronage and travels to Europe, the Caribbean, and Africa reveal their extensive involvement in the most pressing concerns for black people in the Atlantic world. Their work demonstrates how images became central to the ways that people developed ideas about race, citizenship, and politics during the nineteenth century. |
| brief history of equality: Programmed Inequality Mar Hicks, 2018-02-23 This “sobering tale of the real consequences of gender bias” explores how Britain lost its early dominance in computing by systematically discriminating against its most qualified workers: women (Harvard Magazine) In 1944, Britain led the world in electronic computing. By 1974, the British computer industry was all but extinct. What happened in the intervening thirty years holds lessons for all postindustrial superpowers. As Britain struggled to use technology to retain its global power, the nation’s inability to manage its technical labor force hobbled its transition into the information age. In Programmed Inequality, Mar Hicks explores the story of labor feminization and gendered technocracy that undercut British efforts to computerize. That failure sprang from the government’s systematic neglect of its largest trained technical workforce simply because they were women. Women were a hidden engine of growth in high technology from World War II to the 1960s. As computing experienced a gender flip, becoming male-identified in the 1960s and 1970s, labor problems grew into structural ones and gender discrimination caused the nation’s largest computer user—the civil service and sprawling public sector—to make decisions that were disastrous for the British computer industry and the nation as a whole. Drawing on recently opened government files, personal interviews, and the archives of major British computer companies, Programmed Inequality takes aim at the fiction of technological meritocracy. Hicks explains why, even today, possessing technical skill is not enough to ensure that women will rise to the top in science and technology fields. Programmed Inequality shows how the disappearance of women from the field had grave macroeconomic consequences for Britain, and why the United States risks repeating those errors in the twenty-first century. |
| brief history of equality: Marriage Equality William N. Eskridge, Jr., Christopher R. Riano, 2020-08-18 The definitive history of the marriage equality debate in the United States, praised by Library Journal as beautifully and accessibly written. . . . An essential work.” As a legal scholar who first argued in the early 1990s for a right to gay marriage, William N. Eskridge Jr. has been on the front lines of the debate over same‑sex marriage for decades. In this book, Eskridge and his coauthor, Christopher R. Riano, offer a panoramic and definitive history of America’s marriage equality debate. The authors explore the deeply religious, rabidly political, frequently administrative, and pervasively constitutional features of the debate and consider all angles of its dramatic history. While giving a full account of the legal and political issues, the authors never lose sight of the personal stories of the people involved, or of the central place the right to marry holds in a person’s ability to enjoy the dignity of full citizenship. This is not a triumphalist or one‑sided book but a thoughtful history of how the nation wrestled with an important question of moral and legal equality. |
| brief history of equality: Democracy in the Time of Coronavirus Danielle Allen, 2022-02-16 Democracy in crisis -- Pandemic resilience -- Federalism is an asset -- A transformed peace: an agenda for healing our social contract. |
| brief history of equality: Why Marriage George Chauncey, 2005-12-13 Showing how the present is shaped by the past, the author of Gay New York explains why the campaign for same-sex marriage has become the most explosive issue in the long struggle for gay rights. |
| brief history of equality: Until Justice Be Done: America's First Civil Rights Movement, from the Revolution to Reconstruction Kate Masur, 2021-03-23 Finalist for the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in History Finalist for the 2022 Lincoln Prize Winner of the 2022 John Nau Book Prize in American Civil War Era History One of NPR's Best Books of 2021 and a New York Times Critics' Top Book of 2021 A groundbreaking history of the movement for equal rights that courageously battled racist laws and institutions, Northern and Southern, in the decades before the Civil War. The half-century before the Civil War was beset with conflict over equality as well as freedom. Beginning in 1803, many free states enacted laws that discouraged free African Americans from settling within their boundaries and restricted their rights to testify in court, move freely from place to place, work, vote, and attend public school. But over time, African American activists and their white allies, often facing mob violence, courageously built a movement to fight these racist laws. They countered the states’ insistences that states were merely trying to maintain the domestic peace with the equal-rights promises they found in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. They were pastors, editors, lawyers, politicians, ship captains, and countless ordinary men and women, and they fought in the press, the courts, the state legislatures, and Congress, through petitioning, lobbying, party politics, and elections. Long stymied by hostile white majorities and unfavorable court decisions, the movement’s ideals became increasingly mainstream in the 1850s, particularly among supporters of the new Republican party. When Congress began rebuilding the nation after the Civil War, Republicans installed this vision of racial equality in the 1866 Civil Rights Act and the Fourteenth Amendment. These were the landmark achievements of the first civil rights movement. Kate Masur’s magisterial history delivers this pathbreaking movement in vivid detail. Activists such as John Jones, a free Black tailor from North Carolina whose opposition to the Illinois “black laws” helped make the case for racial equality, demonstrate the indispensable role of African Americans in shaping the American ideal of equality before the law. Without enforcement, promises of legal equality were not enough. But the antebellum movement laid the foundation for a racial justice tradition that remains vital to this day. |
| brief history of equality: Ghazals Mir Taqi Mir, 2022-02-15 The finest ghazals of Mir Taqi Mir, the most accomplished of Urdu poets. The prolific Mir Taqi Mir (1723–1810), widely regarded as the most accomplished poet in Urdu, composed his ghazals—a poetic form of rhyming couplets—in a distinctive Indian style arising from the Persian ghazal tradition. Here, the lover and beloved live in a world of extremes: the outsider is the hero, prosperity is poverty, and death would be preferable to the indifference of the beloved. Ghazals offers a comprehensive collection of Mir’s finest work, translated by a renowned expert on Urdu poetry. |
| brief history of equality: A Passion for Equality Nick Kotz, Mary Lynn Kotz, 1977-01 'A Passion for Equality' traces the life of George Wiley, one of the most original and controversial leaders of the social movements of the 1960s and early 1970s. |
| brief history of equality: Communities in Action National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, Health and Medicine Division, Board on Population Health and Public Health Practice, Committee on Community-Based Solutions to Promote Health Equity in the United States, 2017-04-27 In the United States, some populations suffer from far greater disparities in health than others. Those disparities are caused not only by fundamental differences in health status across segments of the population, but also because of inequities in factors that impact health status, so-called determinants of health. Only part of an individual's health status depends on his or her behavior and choice; community-wide problems like poverty, unemployment, poor education, inadequate housing, poor public transportation, interpersonal violence, and decaying neighborhoods also contribute to health inequities, as well as the historic and ongoing interplay of structures, policies, and norms that shape lives. When these factors are not optimal in a community, it does not mean they are intractable: such inequities can be mitigated by social policies that can shape health in powerful ways. Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity seeks to delineate the causes of and the solutions to health inequities in the United States. This report focuses on what communities can do to promote health equity, what actions are needed by the many and varied stakeholders that are part of communities or support them, as well as the root causes and structural barriers that need to be overcome. |
| brief history of equality: Seattle in Black and White Joan Singler, Jean C. Durning, Bettylou Valentine, Martha (Maid) J. Adams, 2011-10-17 Seattle was a very different city in 1960 than it is today. There were no black bus drivers, sales clerks, or bank tellers. Black children rarely attended the same schools as white children. And few black people lived outside of the Central District. In 1960, Seattle was effectively a segregated town. Energized by the national civil rights movement, an interracial group of Seattle residents joined together to form the Seattle chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). Operational from 1961 through 1968, CORE had a brief but powerful effect on Seattle. The chapter began by challenging one of the more blatant forms of discrimination in the city, local supermarkets. Located within the black community and dependent on black customers, these supermarkets refused to hire black employees. CORE took the supermarkets to task by organizing hundreds of volunteers into shifts of continuous picketers until stores desegregated their staffs. From this initial effort CORE, in partnership with the NAACP and other groups, launched campaigns to increase employment and housing opportunities for black Seattleites, and to address racial inequalities in Seattle public schools. The members of Seattle CORE were committed to transforming Seattle into a more integrated and just society. Seattle was one of more than one hundred cities to support an active CORE chapter. Seattle in Black and White tells the local, Seattle story about this national movement. Authored by four active members of Seattle CORE, this book not only recounts the actions of Seattle CORE but, through their memories, also captures the emotion and intensity of this pivotal and highly charged time in America’s history. A V Ethel Willis White Book For more information visit: http://seattleinblackandwhite.org/ |
| brief history of equality: A Brief History of Justice David Johnston, 2011-03-08 A Brief History of Justice traces the development of the idea of justice from the ancient world until the present day, with special attention to the emergence of the modern idea of social justice. An accessible introduction to the history of ideas about justice Shows how complex ideas are anchored in ordinary intuitions about justice Traces the emergence of the idea of social justice Identifies connections as well as differences between distributive and corrective justice Offers accessible, concise introductions to the thought of several leading figures and schools of thought in the history of philosophy |
| brief history of equality: The Meritocracy Trap Daniel Markovits, 2020-09-08 A revolutionary new argument from eminent Yale Law professor Daniel Markovits attacking the false promise of meritocracy It is an axiom of American life that advantage should be earned through ability and effort. Even as the country divides itself at every turn, the meritocratic ideal – that social and economic rewards should follow achievement rather than breeding – reigns supreme. Both Democrats and Republicans insistently repeat meritocratic notions. Meritocracy cuts to the heart of who we are. It sustains the American dream. But what if, both up and down the social ladder, meritocracy is a sham? Today, meritocracy has become exactly what it was conceived to resist: a mechanism for the concentration and dynastic transmission of wealth and privilege across generations. Upward mobility has become a fantasy, and the embattled middle classes are now more likely to sink into the working poor than to rise into the professional elite. At the same time, meritocracy now ensnares even those who manage to claw their way to the top, requiring rich adults to work with crushing intensity, exploiting their expensive educations in order to extract a return. All this is not the result of deviations or retreats from meritocracy but rather stems directly from meritocracy’s successes. This is the radical argument that Daniel Markovits prosecutes with rare force. Markovits is well placed to expose the sham of meritocracy. Having spent his life at elite universities, he knows from the inside the corrosive system we are trapped within. Markovits also knows that, if we understand that meritocratic inequality produces near-universal harm, we can cure it. When The Meritocracy Trap reveals the inner workings of the meritocratic machine, it also illuminates the first steps outward, towards a new world that might once again afford dignity and prosperity to the American people. |
| brief history of equality: Cengage Advantage Books: Liberty, Equality, Power: A History of the American People, Volume 1: To 1877 John M. Murrin, Paul E. Johnson, James M. McPherson, Alice Fahs, Gary Gerstle, 2011-04-21 Developed to meet the demand for a low-cost, high-quality history book, this economically priced version of LIBERTY, EQUALITY, POWER, Sixth Edition offers the complete narrative while limiting the number of features, photos, and maps. All volumes feature a paperback, two-color format that appeals to those seeking a comprehensive, trade-sized history text. A highly respected, balanced, and thoroughly modern approach to U.S. History, LIBERTY, EQUALITY, POWER uses these three themes in a unique approach to show how the United States was transformed, in a relatively short time, from a land inhabited by hunter-gatherer and agricultural Native American societies into the most powerful industrial nation on earth. This approach helps readers understand not only the impact of the notions of liberty and equality, which are often associated with the American story, but also how dominant and subordinate groups have affected and been affected by the ever-shifting balance of power. The text integrates the best of recent social and cultural scholarship into a political story, offering readers the most comprehensive and complete understanding of American history available. Important Notice: Media content referenced within the product description or the product text may not be available in the ebook version. |
| brief history of equality: These Truths: A History of the United States Jill Lepore, 2018-09-18 “Nothing short of a masterpiece.” —NPR Books A New York Times Bestseller and a Washington Post Notable Book of the Year In the most ambitious one-volume American history in decades, award-winning historian Jill Lepore offers a magisterial account of the origins and rise of a divided nation. Widely hailed for its “sweeping, sobering account of the American past” (New York Times Book Review), Jill Lepore’s one-volume history of America places truth itself—a devotion to facts, proof, and evidence—at the center of the nation’s history. The American experiment rests on three ideas—“these truths,” Jefferson called them—political equality, natural rights, and the sovereignty of the people. But has the nation, and democracy itself, delivered on that promise? These Truths tells this uniquely American story, beginning in 1492, asking whether the course of events over more than five centuries has proven the nation’s truths, or belied them. To answer that question, Lepore wrestles with the state of American politics, the legacy of slavery, the persistence of inequality, and the nature of technological change. “A nation born in contradiction… will fight, forever, over the meaning of its history,” Lepore writes, but engaging in that struggle by studying the past is part of the work of citizenship. With These Truths, Lepore has produced a book that will shape our view of American history for decades to come. |
| brief history of equality: Equality and Efficiency REV Arthur M. Okun, 2015-04-30 Originally published in 1975, Equality and Efficiency: The Big Tradeoff is a very personal work from one of the most important macroeconomists of the last hundred years. And this new edition includes Further Thoughts on Equality and Efficiency, a paper published by the author two years later. In classrooms Arthur M. Okun may be best remembered for Okun's Law, but his lasting legacy is the respect and admiration he earned from economists, practitioners, and policymakers. Equality and Efficiency is the perfect embodiment of that legacy, valued both by professional economists and those readers with a keen interest in social policy. To his fellow economists, Okun presents messages, in the form of additional comments and select citations, in his footnotes. To all readers, Okun presents an engaging dual theme: the market needs a place, and the market needs to be kept in its place. As Okun puts it: Institutions in a capitalist democracy prod us to get ahead of our neighbors economically after telling us to stay in line socially. This double standard professes and pursues an egalitarian political and social system while simultaneously generating gaping disparities in economic well-being. Today, Okun's dual theme feels incredibly prescient as we grapple with the hot-button topic of income inequality. In his foreword, Lawrence H. Summers declares: On what one might think of as questions of economic philosophy, I doubt that Okun has been improved on in the subsequent interval. His discussion of how societies rely on rights as well as markets should be required reading for all young economists who are enamored with market solutions to all problems. With a new foreword by Lawrence H. Summers |
A Brief History of Equality - Harvard University Press
In the course of the last two decades, I have written three works running to about a thousand pages (each!) concerning the history of inequalities: Top Incomes over the Twentieth Century …
A Brief History of Equality - ENS
Chapter 1. The Movement toward Equality: The First Milestones. Chapter 2. The Slow Deconcentration of Power and Property. Chapter 3. The Heritage of Slavery and Colonialism. …
A Brief History Of Equality - mdghs.com
A Brief History of Equality: A Long and Winding Road The pursuit of equality – the unwavering belief that all individuals deserve equal rights and opportunities regardless of their background …
A Brief History Of Equality (Download Only)
The history of equality is a multifaceted narrative of progress and setbacks, of triumphs and ongoing struggles. While we have made significant strides, the fight for a truly equitable society …
A Brief History of Equality - ENS
Chapter 1. The Movement toward Equality: The First Milestones • Chapter 2. The Slow Deconcentration of Power and Property • Chapter 3. The Heritage of Slavery and Colonialism • …
A Brief History of Equality - UUJEC
A Brief History of Equality By Thomas Piketty (2022) The renowned Piketty brings a refreshing and populist view of inequality as a political choice that has varied widely time and space, a …
A Brief History of Equality - University of Technology Sydney
We explicate an iron law of intergenerational transmission of income dispersion. The same mechanism that limited income disparities, as population and prosperity increased through …
A Brief History Of Equality (book) - cie-advances.asme.org
Understanding this history is crucial to fostering empathy, informing effective action, and sustaining the momentum towards a future where everyone is afforded dignity and opportunity, …
A Brief History of Equality - ENS
• 1 The Movement toward Equality: The First Milestones • 2 The Slow Deconcentration of Power and Property • 3 The Heritage of Slavery and Colonialism • 4 The Question of Reparations • 5 …
A Brief History of Equality - University of Technology Sydney
On this basis, the Iron Law suggests a simple reduced-form “history of equality”. In the Malthusian era, the Iron Law tended to produce ever greater equality: it suppressed the incomes of the …
RIEF HISTORY OF EQUALITY - Development Education Review
contention that ‘equality is a battle’ in the historic ‘transformation of power relationships’ (Piketty, 2021a: viii). The point being made and arguably proven is that there has been a historic trend …
BRIEF HISTORY of EQUALITY THOMAS PIKETTY - ENS
This book offers a comparative history of inequalities among social classes in human socie ties. Or rather, it offers a history of equality, because, as we shall see, there has been a long- term …
A Brief History of Equality - mycourses.aalto.fi
Gary Gerstle (Washington Post): optimistic blueprint for easing global inequality. It is a summary of two previous books by Piketty that were targeting economists: his 2014 696-page Capital in …
A Brief History of Equality - cdn.bookey.app
In "A Brief History of Equality," renowned economist Thomas Piketty offers a compelling exploration of humanity's enduring quest for social justice and economic fairness.
Book Review: A Brief History of Equality by Thomas Piketty
an outline of the historical evolution of equality in the Western and colonial worlds. At the beginning of this history, slavery and colonialism were the main original modalities of wealth …
A brief history of equality - ENS
An economic, social & political history of inequality regimes, from trifunctional and colonial societies to post-communist, post-colonial hyper-capitalist societies
A Brief History of Equality - ResearchGate
Thomas Piketty’s Brief History is the fourth installment of his assault on economic inequality, following as it does the best- selling Capital in the Twenty-First Century and Capital and...
A brief history of equality - ENS
An economic, social & political history of inequality regimes, from trifunctional and colonial societies to post-communist, post-colonial hyper-capitalist societies
A Brief History of Equality
If one desperately searches for an answer to these questions, Thomas Piketty’s latest book, A Brief History of Equality, might offer a possible starting point. Piketty is known for his valuable …
A brief history of equality - piketty.pse.ens.fr
An economic, social & political history of inequality regimes, from trifunctional and colonial societies to post-communist, post-colonial hyper-capitalist societies
A Brief History of Equality - Harvard University Press
ining how movement toward equality has actually been produced, we can learn precious lessons for our future and better understand the struggles and mobilizations that have made this …
THE PURSUIT OF EQUALITY IN THE WEST - Harvard …
here a history of equality in the West—a project far removed from my goals—but just a path within it. An itinerary aimed at identifying some key loci, from which an alternative and as-yet …
A HISTORY OF MODERN RUSSIA - Harvard University Press
Rev. ed. of: A history of modern Russia from Nicholas II to Vladimir Putin. c2003. 1st ed. title was A history of twentieth-century Russia. Includes bibliographical references and index.
Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China - Harvard …
xii . Preface . Deng criticized autobiographies in which authors lavished praise on them-selves. He chose not to write an autobiography and insisted that any evalua
Fearless Women - Harvard University Press
equality between the sexes. Admitting the obstacles, I hope in this book to pop the growing myth that those who fought for equal rights were a cliquish band of bourgeois white women whose …
VISIONS OF INEQUALITY - Harvard University Press
In short, this is a book on the history of economic thought in one area (income distribution) as it was approached by the thinkers themselves—as far as possible. While I occasionally read …
The Scalia Lecture, 2021 - Harvard University Press
who wrote it. The Constitution is a brief document. It has seven articles and twenty-seven amendments. It creates a representative federal democracy, with a separation of …
Capital and Ideology - Harvard University Press
Inequality Regimes in History . 1. Ternary Societies: Trifunctional Inequality . 51 2. European Societies of Orders: Power and Property . 65 3. The Invention of Ownership Societies . 99 4. …
Out of My Skull - Harvard University
literary, artistic, and theological history—far too complex to cover in its entirety here. 5 But to truly understand what boredom is, to define it, we must start somewhere. A Brief History of …
The Economics of Inequality - Harvard University Press
the reader of the history and extent of today’s ine quality. Doing so will enable us to identify the principal sets of facts that any theory of in-equality and redistribution must take into account …
