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THE SILENT MAJORITY SPEAKS: Antiwar Protest and Backlash, 1965–1972
Author(s) -
Heineman Kenneth
Publication year - 1992
Publication title -
peace and change
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1468-0130
pISSN - 0149-0508
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-0130.1992.tb00163.x
Subject(s) - democracy , backlash , white (mutation) , political science , media studies , sociology , gender studies , law , class (philosophy) , politics , engineering , biochemistry , chemistry , artificial intelligence , computer science , gene , mechanical engineering
Campus‐based antiwar protest and black activism in the 1960s exposed fundamental class and cultural divisions in America. This study focuses on the role a liberal and increasingly cosmopolitan university had in provoking a white working‐class backlash in its community. As activist academics and students sought to influence the Democratic party at the national and local level, the progressive New Deal coalition fractured. This article will examine the largely blue‐collar and Roman Catholic city of Buffalo, New York, a bastion of New Deal democracy, which in response to university protest and black ghetto discontent increasingly embraced conservative Republican candidates. This “silent majority” of culturally and politically threatened whites generally opposed both antiwar protest and the Vietnam War iiself.