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Question 1 a. Instant global communications, powered by the digital revolution that created the information superhighway, permitted ordinary people to obtain immediately educational information once exclusively held by libraries, universities, and other elite institutions. They also allowed businesses to conduct heavy volumes of financial transactions all around the world at the click of the mouse or with a cell phone call powered by satellite technology. This revolutionary development in instant global communications represented a key characteristic of the most recent stage of the new information age, commencing in the mid-late 1990s. b. High-technology computer businesses, such as International Business Machines (IBM), applied digital research technology to develop mainframe computers in the 1950s that stored, organized, and processed enormous volumes of data for businesses. Microsoft Corporation took advantage of technological advances in microprocessing in the 1980s to develop operating systems and information software that would spur the rapid growth of the personal computing business. Finally, the phenomenal growth of the Internet and broadband networks facilitated the proliferation of digital and cable media businesses in the United States and throughout the world. c. The speed and efficiency of these new communication instruments endangered the continued existence of occupations, whose work involved mediating between the product and the client. For example, the positions of postal carriers, travel agents, store clerks, bank tellers, and stock brokers became threatened by digital communication tools and worldwide information platforms, such as the Internet, that allowed ordinary citizens to bypass these mediating workers when transmitting personal information and conducting business. d. Correct answer. In the spring of 2000, the high-tech economy demonstrated that it was equally as susceptible to the boom and bust capitalist business cycle as the traditional smokestack economy, when the dot.com speculative bubble burst and the stock market began a precipitous slide that bottomed out in 2003, after $6 trillion in market value had been lost. The economic upheaval, caused by the bursting of the dot.com bubble in the first several years of the new century, illustrated that the high-tech American economy, despite the enormous wealth and innovation it had generated, could not reverse the capitalist business cycle and provide immunity from the adverse consequences of speculative risk, judgment errors, scandal, and untrammeled greed. e. The development of advanced computer technology and a highly educated and English-speaking workforce in developing countries, such as India, allowed the United States and other Western nations to outsource white-collar jobs, such as computer programmers and call center customer service employees, to these developing countries. Question 2 a. Profound questions about the ethical implications of post-World War II scientific research continue to pose moral quandaries and spark fierce public policy debates among Americans about the application of animal cloning technology to human reproduction, the ecological dangers posed by the use of genetically bred strains of high-yield, pest- and weather-resistant crops, the use of human stem cells to conduct research that might lead to cures for diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, and the allocation of human organs for lifesaving transplants. b. Consumers of air bags, personal computers, and other high-tech products and users of the Internet can attribute these postwar improvements to their quality of life to the billions in dollars in basic science research made by universityemployed scientists, paid mostly by government grants, and to additional billions of dollars in expenditures made by private industry on applied research and product development. Similarly, the postwar advances in medical science and technology that have enhanced and saved the lives of millions of Americans would not have been developed without the Big Science private industry and government-funded research into new drugs, devices, and methods of treatment that have extended Americans’ life expectancy; provided new treatments and technologies for infertility, cancer, and heart disease and heart defects; and offered life-extending drug treatments for diseases such as AIDS. c. Correct answer. A close alliance between the federal government, defenseoriented industries, and American research universities characterizes one of the manifestations of the rise of Big Science in the 1950s. This led to the development of government-funded laboratories, reactors, accelerators, and observatories in the early postwar era that advanced physics, chemistry, and aerospace research at American universities, which allowed the United States to develop civilian and military aerospace applications, such as communication and spy satellites; land a man on the moon and become the world leader in space exploration; develop commercial and military applications for nuclear power; produce intercontinental missiles; and make breakthroughs in electronics, audio, and microwave technology that would be used for defense and civilian consumer applications. d. The noted Big Science achievements in medical science and technology, communications and information technologies, and defense-oriented aerospace and weaponry usually requires complex teams of collaborating scientists, engineers, and technicians to transform the applied scientific research into militarily or commercially applicable treatments, products, and technologies. For example, the $3 billion Human Genome Project, which completed mapping and sequencing all the genetic material in the human body in 2003 and has lead to some promising bioengineered tests and therapies for genetic diseases, was the product of a coordinated interagency United States government project that involved thousands of scientists in universities and laboratories across the nation and around the world. Similarly, the invention of the Internet required close collaboration between U.S. Defense Department scientists, engineers, and technicians and their counterparts in private industry and higher education. e. The United States government has heavily funded, directed the mission, and influenced the military and commercial applications of many of the Big Science projects of postwar era. These projects include the space exploration, missile technology, and aerospace research of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) since the late 1950s; the Strategic Defense Initiative (or “Star Wars”) of President Reagan; the development of Cold War era weaponry systems by defense contractors; the Department of Energy- and National Institutes of Health-coordinated Human Genome Project; and U.S. Defense Department-sponsored collaborative research that led to the invention of the Internet. Question 3 a. Intensifying global competition during the 1980s and 1990s from developing nations, such as India, China, and the nations of Southeast and East Asia, depressed the wages of semiskilled and unskilled workers in the United States and led to the global outsourcing of millions of semiskilled and unskilled manufacturing sector jobs from the United States to these developing nations. b. The precipitous decline of union membership among American workers in the manufacturing sectors meant that millions of American workers no longer enjoyed the long-term employment protections, contractually protected increases in wages and benefits, and collective bargaining power that they previously enjoyed in the postwar era. Moreover, the failure of unions to penetrate the growing service sector in the American economy during this period meant that many low-skill service workers lacked the collective bargaining leverage to negotiate moderate wage and benefit increases with their employers that would have their incomes to rise steadily. c. Correct answer. The moderately progressive tax policies of the Carter and Clinton administrations were not responsible for the widening gap between rich and poor Americans during the 1980s and 1990s. Some analysts have asserted that the tax and fiscal policies of the Reagan and both Bush (father and son) administrations, which included tax cuts that proportionally benefited the wealthy more than the poor and reduced government supports for lowincome workers, such as food stamps and child care subsidies, were partly responsible for the widening gap between rich and poor Americans during this period. d. The growth of part-time and temporary work during the 1980s and 1990s meant that low-income workers experienced declines in their wages and benefits as employers paid these low-income workers significantly less money per hour, hired them for fewer hours per week, and denied them access to benefits, such as health insurance, that exacerbated the widening gap between rich and poor. e. The greater economic rewards for specialized education, commanded by workers in high technology industries, and the increasing tendency of educated men and women to marry one another created households with very high incomes, which contributed to the yawning gap between rich and poor Americans in the 1980s and 1990s. In addition, the inferior and underfunded urban schools, attended by many poor Americans during this period, made it more difficult for poor Americans to complete a university education, an achievement increasingly correlated with greater economic rewards. Question 4 a. During the 1990s and the 2000s, women remained much more likely than men to interrupt their careers to bear and raise children and select less demanding and lower-earning career paths to permit them to meet their burdensome childrearing responsibilities. b. Employers persisted in paying women lower wages, less than 81 percent on the dollar in 2006, compared with men doing the same full-time work. c. A disproportionate number of women remained concentrated in a few lowprestige, low-paying occupations, such as secretaries, clerical workers, elementary and secondary school teachers, and cashiers. Women, in 2006, accounted for just 32 percent of lawyers and judges and 32 percent of physicians. d. Correct answer. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited discrimination in employment against women and subsequent federal civil rights legislation, passed in the 1970s and 1990s, prohibited discrimination against older women, pregnant women, disabled women, and women requesting family and medical leave. The legal barriers encountered by women seeking high level, high prestige positions were removed by these pieces of federal civil rights legislation, although covert and overt sexual discrimination in hiring continued to account for some of the occupational segregation suffered by women during the 1990s and 2000s. e. Women continued to bear the heaviest responsibility for the health and welfare of children. Their focus on children also explained the continuation of a gender gap in voting behavior, which was characterized by women voting in higher numbers than men for Democratic candidates, who were frequently believed to be more eager to support government assistance for health and child care, education, and job equality. Question 5 a. By the 1990s, one out of two marriages ended in divorce. Seven times more children were affected by divorce than at the beginning of the twentieth century. Kids who commuted between separated parents had become a regular feature of domestic family life by the 1990s. b. By the 2000s, the identities of viable American families assumed a diversity of forms quite different from the traditional nuclear family. Americans manifested a growing consensual acceptance of households led by a single parent, a stepparent, or a grandparent, as well as homes where children were being raised by gay or lesbian parents. This development meant that the married, maternal/paternal structure of the traditional family was no longer considered the only viable norm for the evolving American family. c. The assignment of child-rearing responsibilities to parent-substitutes, such as child care centers, schools, the television, and the Internet, meant that children encountered a diversity of values, ideas, enticements, dangers, and socializations outside of the protective traditional family unit at younger and younger ages. d. The family continued to serve many of its traditional social functions such as child rearing, the transmission of moral values, and maintaining the health and material welfare of family members. e. Correct answer. The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 guaranteed legal job protection for working mothers and fathers who desired to take time off from work for family-related reasons. Consequently, the law was designed to ease the strains of currently working mothers and fathers who needed to take a short-term, unpaid leave from their employment in order to address family medical and child rearing challenges that required their dominant attention. Question 6 a. A majority of Americans still relied more heavily on Social Security benefits rather than their 401(k) pension plans for their retirement funds. b. The existence of a $7 trillion unfunded liability of the Social Security system led many younger Americans to support President Bush’s plan to give younger workers the option to invest some of their payroll taxes in individual retirement accounts. President Bush’s plan to partially privatize the Social Security system failed to become law, despite the support of many young Americans. c. In 2005, President Bush attempted to use his re-election in 2004 as a political mandate for his Social Security privatization reform plan. d. The stock market’s uneven performance over the last decade did make the Social Security privatization proposal of President Bush fiscally risky, but that fact did not represent the primary reason why the proposal failed to be enacted. e. Correct answer. The electoral power of older Americans, who feared that their Social Security benefits would be reduced because of partial privatization of the system, and the country’s ultimate loyalty to a public social safety net were the two primary reasons why President Bush’s plans to reform the Social Security system were defeated and shelved for the duration of his presidency. Question 7 a. In contrast to most previous immigrant groups, the Latino migration to the United States that has occurred since the 1980s became densely concentrated in one geographic region, the Southwest. By the turn of the century, Latinos composed nearly one-third of the population in Texas, Arizona, and California and 40 percent in New Mexico. b. Bilingual education laws were intended to prevent non-English-speaking children from falling behind their English-speaking peers in math, science, and social studies and ultimately master English speaking and reading skills. These laws were designed so that Latinos, for example, could eventually master English because educators asserted that bilingual education programs teach English better than English-only immersion programs. The goal of bilingual programs was for non-English-speaking children, such as Latino youngsters, to learn literacy, reading comprehension, and other skills in their native language first so that these skills could be transferred by Latinos and other non-English speaking children during their required English instruction classes. c. Correct answer. The Latino population that has migrated to the United States since the 1980s has concentrated itself in the Southwest, from Texas to California. By the turn of the century, Latinos composed nearly one-third of the population in Texas, Arizona, and California and 40 percent in New Mexico. In particular, it seemed that by 2000, Mexican Americans had created a bicultural zone in the booming southwestern states, since their native culture remained accessible just over the border. d. Many previous immigrant groups shared a similar intense desire of Latinos to preserve their native language and customs, but since they had been so thinly scattered across the land, they had no practical choice but to learn English and assimilate quickly into the larger American society. e. Latinos did not remain politically loyal to the various Latin American nations from which they emigrated. Many Latino immigrants have served loyally and bravely in the U.S. armed forces during the last twenty-five years. Question 8 a. Most undocumented immigrants do send their children to public school because there is no legal prohibition against undocumented immigrants sending their kids to public school. b. Most undocumented immigrants would prefer to remain in the United States because of superior employment opportunities in the country and extended family support in the United States. c. Most undocumented immigrants do not try to claim welfare benefits at taxpayer’s expense because they risk being deported back to their native country if they are discovered to have tried to claim these benefits illegally. d. No study has ever demonstrated that undocumented immigrants commit disproportionably more crime than any other group in American society. e. Correct answer. Undocumented immigrants pay more dollars in federal taxes than they claim in benefits because their taxes are automatically withheld by their employer and they generally do not file tax returns that would have allowed them deductions resulting in refunds. Question 9 a. President Bush’s controversial plan in 2006 to establish a guest-worker program for undocumented workers and create a path to citizenship for these undocumented workers and families represented an effort to broker a moderate political compromise between anti-immigrant organizations, which attacked the plan as amnesty and immigrant rights advocates who asserted it would create second-class citizens. b. Correct answer. The vitriolic anti-immigrant political attacks, expressed by some Republican politicians and xenophobic pundits after the 2004 election, undermined and reversed the strong political gains among Latino voters achieved by President Bush and the Republican Party in 2004. The unproven assertion by these Republican politicians and xenophobic pundits that millions of undocumented workers were appropriating millions of American tax dollars, draining public health and education services, and illegally accessing government assistance programs for the poor caused significant majorities of Latino voters to support Democratic candidates in the 2006 Congressional elections. c. The passage of a federal law authorizing the comprehensive fence across the border of the United States and Mexico was supported by wide bipartisan majorities in Congress in 2006. Therefore, this law was not primarily responsible for the substantial loss of Latino electoral support for Republican candidates in the 2006 Congressional elections. d. Republican Senator John McCain was one of the leading members of bipartisan group of Congressional lawmakers in 2006 that unsuccessfully attempted to craft consensus immigration reform legislation authorizing a guest-worker program for undocumented workers and a path to citizenship for these undocumented workers and their families. e. The Democratic Party platform did not adopt an anti-immigration plank at the 2008 party convention. Question 10 a. African-American politicians did not rely on racial solidarity to win electoral offices in the 1990s and 2000s because practicing racial identity politics had proved to be an unviable political strategy in citywide and statewide elections, where the African-American population remained an electoral minority. b. African-American politicians had learned, by the 1990s and 2000s, that merely mobilizing the entire African American population of a state or a city to vote as a unified bloc for an African-American candidate, for statewide or citywide political office, was a losing political strategy as long as African Americans continued to constitute only a minority percentage of all eligible voters in these contested states and cities. A bloc voting political strategy succeeded for African-Americans only in gerrymandered majority-minority Congressional, state legislative, and local city council districts. c. Correct answer. Voting tallies and post-election polling of successful statewide and nationwide African-American politicians, such as former Virginia Governor L. Douglas Wilder, the first African American elected to serve as a state governor in 1989; former Illinois Senator Carol Moseley Braun, who became the first African American woman elected to the United States Senate in 1994; and Senator Barack Obama, the first African American candidate elected president of the United States, revealed that their electoral achievements were attributable to their ability to extend their political support beyond isolated racial constituencies and into the political mainstream by appealing to a racially diverse array of voters who possessed different political, economic, and social concerns. d. The 1989 statewide election of former Governor Wilder in Virginia, a state possessing only a 15 percent African American population, demonstrated that the success of the broad-based, racially cross-cutting, and centrist political strategy employed by African American politicians during this period did not rest on their running for political office exclusively outside of the South. e. African American candidates for citywide and statewide political offices often encountered resistance from city political bosses and urban political machines that would support white machine politicians against African American candidates because they doubted the political viability of these African American candidates or opposed the political and social reform agenda of some of these African American candidates. Question 11 a. A college or university, receiving federal financial assistance, cannot deny financial aid to students based on race, according to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The U.S. Supreme Court did not address, in its 2003 decision, Grutter v. Bollinger, whether race-exclusive scholarship programs designed to boost African-American enrollment at colleges and universities are legal, and if they are legal, whether they must be narrowly tailored to address a previous pattern of racial discrimination in awarding financial aid. b. The U.S. Supreme Court, in its decision, Grutter v. Bollinger (2003), did not hold that formerly all-white universities had to provide compensation for past discrimination. c. Correct answer. The U.S. Supreme Court, in its decision, Grutter v. Bollinger (2003), held that affirmative action in university admissions was constitutional as long as rigid quotas or point systems were not used. The Court expressed its expectation that the use of racial preferences would no longer be necessary twenty-five years from now and expressed hesitation in permitting these racial preference programs from continuing on an indefinite basis. d. The U.S. Supreme Court, in Grutter v. Bollinger (2003), did not address whether racially-oriented African-American studies programs are constitutional. e. The holding in the U.S. Supreme Court case, Grutter v. Bollinger (2003), did not authorize universities to use rigid quotas, point systems, and other mechanistic ways of diversifying their student populations to remedy past discrimination or as a means to diversify their student bodies. Question 12 a. While some critics of multiculturalism claimed that its advocates grossly inflated the political, economic, and social achievements and contributions of minorities in the development of American society, this criticism did not represent the primary cultural attack against the use of a multicultural approach in the nation’s classrooms. b. Advocates of multiculturalism attempted to place a greater educational emphasis on studying the achievements and experiences of AfricanAmericans, Latinos, and Native Americans and other non-white racial and ethnic groups in the development of American society and culture. c. The assertion that teaching a multicultural curriculum into America’s classrooms could possibly lead to racial and ethnic violence or civil war represented an extreme, xenophobic critique of multiculturalism. d. The assertion that the widespread use of a multicultural curriculum in American education would lead to the development and spread of socialism in the United States represented an extreme and irrational argument against the use of a multicultural approach in American education. e. Correct answer. Critics of multiculturalism argued that it promoted an undue influence on ethnic and racial differences that would cause fissures in the nation’s national cohesion and diminish an appreciation of common American political and social values by racial and ethnic groups in American society. Question 13 a. The representation on canvas or through sculpture of contemporary familiar icons of popular culture and consumer items as an ironic and sardonic comment on the elevation of the banal and kitschy in American society, characterized the Pop Art movement of the 1960s. The Pop Art movement was best exemplified by Andy Warhol’s painted canvases of Campbell Soup cans and Claes Oldenburg’s giant plastic sculptures of pillow-soft telephones. b. Correct answer The abstract expressionist action paintings of Jackson Pollock and William de Kooning expressed these painters’ indviduality, spontaneity, and emotional intensity in colors and shapes rather than in realistic representational forms, and they required the viewer to become a creative participant in establishing a painting’s meaning. Abstract Expressionism represented the leading modern art movement of the early post-World War II era. c. The Minimalist movement in art and sculpture developed in the 1960s as reaction against Abstract Expressionism. Minimalism shuns illusion, decorativeness, and emotional subjectivity in favor of impersonality, simplification of form, and the use of often massive, industrially produced materials for sculpture. d. Dadaism involved the style and techniques of a group of European and North American artists of the early twentieth century who exploited accidental and incongruous effects in their work to challenge established principles of art, political thought, and morality. e. Postmodernism refers to a movement in architecture and the decorative arts that began in the 1970s that used the decorative details of earlier historical styles in a playful manner to escape the stark modernism and spare functionalism of modern architecture. Question 14 a. The proliferation of New Media has permitted bloggers, posters of YouTube videos, and users of social networking sites, such as MySpace and Facebook, to offer fresh voices and new perspectives that expanded the national discourse about political, economic, and social issues beyond the consensus opinions of the mainstream media and political and economic elites. b. The New Media has had a democratizing effect in virally spreading the opinions, beliefs, and views of millions of Americans and other people around the world, regardless of the level of education or journalistic training possessed by a blogger or other purveyors of the New Media. c. The free, instantaneous, twenty-four hour news cycle generated by New Media Internet news sites has pushed daily newspapers to offer their reporting online, on a regularly updated basis during the day and evening, frequently free of any charge to the New Media consumer. d. Correct answer. The New Media has had a democratizing effect in permitting ordinary citizens to obtain and disseminate information and opinions about a wide variety of topics because Web-based New Media platforms, such as social networking sites, blogs, Weblogs, personal Web sites, and YouTube, have provided average citizens with easily accessible communication tools to express and circulate their opinions, beliefs, aspirations, and information all around the world. e. The New Media does not possess rigorous journalistic standards for the reporting of news and information because of the absence of editorial gatekeepers researching and verifying the accuracy of the information posted on these New Media Web sites.