Title: Life in the 90's | America Magazine
Headings: Life in the 90's
Life in the 90's
Content: Maybe, like the television series that helped define its ethos, the decade was about nothing. That probably would be the view of more than a few postmodernists—a term that came into somewhat common usage in the 90’s. But surely great changes took place over the last 10 years, not the least of which was that liberal arts types like myself now use words like "modem" with at least some understanding of what we’re talking about. So, what about life in the 90’s, anyway? We certainly became more aware of our differences over the last 10 years, and not simply the division (large though it is) between the technologists and the non-technologists. Beginning with the historic 1990 U.S. Census, which documented the effects of immigration reform in 1965, we learned that the United States is well on its way to becoming a multicultural society in ways few foresaw in the 1980’s. Indeed, the national conversation about diversity and multiculturalism dominated the decade and surely set the stage for one of the next century’s great national dramas. Life in the 90’s approached life in the 20’s in terms of its affluence, its contempt for politics, its fear of anything serious and its weak or irrelevant leadership. To say the decade was about money, of course, hardly distinguishes it from many American decades, including the 1980’s. But in the 90’s we at least could see what all the new money was creating: