At the beginning of every year, the regular job that the media does is summarize the major events that happened in the previous year. These events, which include social, economic, political, environmental and legal affairs, somehow represent the dynamic of Americans’ opinions. Yet, few would connect the dots of the past hundred years (or even longer) to see that the trends of public opinions have been changing regarding the same issue over time, and how that has shaped federal and state governments to take action and respond.
Recently Alex Tribou and Keith Collins issued a series of interactive graphs in Bloomberg Business showing how fast Americans changed their minds during the past century. The report compared six big issues — interracial marriage, prohibition, women’s suffrage, abortion, same-sex marriage and recreational marijuana — to show how Americans evaluated these issues in the past and may again in the future.
Some of the issues that we think are common sense today were not that obviously acceptable in the past. For example, perhaps everyone today accepts interracial marriage. But, in the 1960s, 16 states had banned interracial marriage, most of which were Southern states. These states reluctantly and gradually abandoned the anti-interracial marriage laws until the Supreme Court ruled in the case Loving v. Virginia that it is unconstitutional to ban interracial marriage. It is hard to imagine that South Carolina and Alabama were the last two final holdouts on desegregation, with each not following the Supreme Court’s ruling until 1998 and 2000, respectively.
Not all the big issues follow the same pattern. Public opinions regarding alcohol and abortion have gone back and forth since the founding of this country. Starting in the mid-19th century, most states rejected attempts to pass prohibition laws, allowing counties’ governments to decide whether to go dry. After entering the 20th century, popular votes in many states pushed for statewide prohibition, and eventually this prohibition of movement gave birth to the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
When it comes to abortion, the pattern of legislation and regulation has been always rocky. Before Roe v. Wade, 17 states, including North Carolina, allowed abortions. But today, the state’s legislative branch has tightened abortion laws and made extensive regulations on them. Opinions regarding abortion are still heavily divided among states, making it less likely to form a common movement and bring it to the Supreme Court in the near future.
Legalizing drug use is the issue that the majority of public opinion has rejected so far. Only four states in the nation have made recreational marijuana legal. However, the report does not mention drugs such as cocaine, heroin and any other addictive drugs. Surprisingly, these drugs were legal 100 years ago. Cocaine was not made illegal until 1914, and until then, the substance had a variety use in medicine. Cocaine tonic, powders and pills were believed to cure symptoms such as headaches, nausea and impotence.
The most mysterious recipe of Coca-Cola has been widely believed to contain certain amount of cocaine in history, and was still using coca-leaf extracts through at least 1988, according to a New York Times article, “How Coca-Cola Obtains Its Coca.”
Perhaps in the area of regulating drugs, the public’s opinion has largely retracted from 100 years ago. The definition of addiction has been redefined. But getting addicted to something is not a matter of that substance; rather, it is still a matter of human beings.
The patterns of public opinions concerning those big social issues usually change starting with legislation in a few states; then supporters kick off the debate and spread the ideas to the whole nation. Some of the issues remain divisive for years among states, whereas some were forcefully brought to the Supreme Court and gradually achieve national conformity. Each of those issues took a long time to get from their triggering points to federal actions, along with civil movements, protests and campaigns every step of the way. What this reveals is that there is no such thing as “progressive” or “conservative” from the point of history. Some progressive ideas that are embraced today were actually mainstream conservativism 100 years ago, and vice versa.
