1970s America: Social Politics, Fashion, Music, and More

Summing up the 1970s, novelist Tom Wolfe coined the term “ ’Me’ decade” in his essay “The ‘Me’ Decade and the Third Great Awakening,” published by New York Magazine in August of 1976. The term described a general new attitude of Americans towards atomized individualism while turning away from the communal brotherhood of the 1960s.

Many Americans, particularly working-class and middle-class whites, responded to the turbulence of the late 1960s: the race riots, the antiwar protests, the hippy counterculture movement–by embracing a new kind of conservative populism. Fed up with what they saw as soft underbelly hippies and whiny anti-everything protestors, they had also grown weary of a federal government that appeared to coddle the poor at taxpayer’s expense, forming a political movement that became known as the “silent majority.”

Environmental and Social Justice in the 70s

In some ways, though, 1960s liberalism continued to flourish in a growing crusade to shut down environmental abuse after the Love Canal toxic waste spill and the near meltdown at Three Mile Island nuclear power plant. During the 1970s, many groups of Americans continued to fight for expanded social and political rights, including the 1972 ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution.

Affirmative Action v. Reverse Discrimination became a forefront issue in America’s ongoing fight for racial equality, until a 1978 Supreme Court ruling limited the use of numerical quotas, but recognized that race could be used as one of the factors in admission policies for colleges and universities.

The OPEC-inspired oil crisis of 1973 saw long lines at gas stations due to fuel shortages and gas rationing programs, while Nixon would resign from office to avoid impeachment due to the Watergate Scandal. War ended in Southeast Asia with the Fall of Saigon, while back on the home front, the fad-happy decade saw the birth of 8-track tapes and disco sensations such as Abba, Olivia Newton-John, Donna Summer and the Bee Gees.

On the rock front, bands like the Rolling Stones, Van Halen, Pink Floyd and Queen dominated the airwaves, while soft rock solo artists like Jackson Brown and Billy Joel packed stadiums wherever they performed.