His/145 A Personal Overview

The latter half of the 20th century is filled with many historical events and lessons that in theory we can use in our lives today. From the rights for persons of color, equal treatment for women, the Vietnam war, freedom in the 70's and the information era of the 80's and 90's, we as a nation progressed and fell as one.

In the 1950's the constant block of rights for the typical black person and less than equal treatment for women was the topic of many conversations. Gone was the war of 1945 but the men were back and wanted those positions now held by the wives and daughters they left behind to fight for our rights. Blacks were also treated less than equally regardless of their contribution to the war. It was a messy situation.

As we progressed through this time we can look back and see that rights are still a problem in today's society. It is not an untrue statement to declare that white males still have more privilege than a black male with a higher education, white female with more experience and black females that could put our educations to shame. It is a sad and true fact held on for many suspected reasons and is becoming the biggest fear of human resource departments across the nation. To truly learn from the experience we as humans in whole must direct our focus and become less aware of color and gender and more on the goal. This too should transfer all over the world in hopes, someday.

The Vietnam War was in my opinion an endeavor we as a nation are doomed to repeat. An effort to help the helpless, our country felt the need to send over American soldiers to fight the communist oppression of the North Vietnamese. Unnecessary and ultimately a failure, the American people spoke en-mass in the form of rallies, protests and songs.

This failure is still being repeated today and with the rights given to the president to declare war at anytime without congress approval we find situations were our American forces are fighting for our rights to terrorist free lives and cheap oil, the latter being a personal opinion. In whole we have not learned from our mistakes and continue to live in a nation that is more concerned about debt, gas prices and reality TV than the investment in education of our children. I think the news feed site fark.com had it best when they linked to an article on MSNBC stating a sarcastic description "1.6 trillion dollars spent on our children's educationÐ'... just kidding, that was the bill for the Iraq war."(fark.com, 2007) Why do we continue to redo the mistakes we know as failure?

The 70's was a time for freedom and self expression.

The 1970s decade refers to the years from 1970 to 1979, also called The Seventies. In Western cities primarily , the focus shifted from the social activism of the sixties to social activities for one's own pleasure: drug use, all-night dancing at discotheques and swinging parties. The seventies were considered by Tom Wolfe as the "Me Decade." A notable exception was the tremendous growth in environmentalism. It should be noted that many of America's smaller towns had a decidedly tamer experience, in the 1970s.(Wikipedia.com, 2007)

To learn from this era we can identify many of the realities we see today. Single parents are no longer a social taboo, sexual activities that were once shunned are now understood and although not common, more accepted. The lessons from this age is that we as a people can accept change and understand that life is more than just work, but a life.

The 80's and 90's will be the information age. It was not until the 1950's that the information age started to grow. Transistors were invested and although originally the size of a small refrigerator