Wendy Wall The American Way Summary

The decades following World War II were often portrayed by scholars as a time of deep and well-grounded unity of American people and their agreement about the nation’s core values. The Great Depression intensified social divisions, then Roosevelt’s New Deal reunited American citizens. In this book, Wendy Wall challenges this image of perfect consensus. Wall argues that Americans were united by a shared idea of the “American Way”, rather than identical beliefs. Reinforcing this common “American Way” was essential to building this nation for the future. Wall also suggests that this consensus originated during the turbulent years of the Great Depression, as this economic and social chaos along with the rise of fascism and communism led to a sense

of unease for many different groups. Many liberals and leftists feared rising nativism, red-baiting, and union busting, while conservatives worried that the New Deal would lead to state socialism. We have later learned that both of these fears were exaggerated but to many at the time, they were all too real. Driven by the concerns of their citizens, public intellectuals, government officials, and organizations across the political spectrum worked towards defining a common ground for Americans.
During this time period, there were three broad groups that played central roles in the effort to shape this consensus. The first group consisted of many government officials and cultural elites, ranging from Margaret Mead to organizers of cold war campaigns. They sought to unify Americans and unite them to withstand the fascist and communist threats. The second group consisted of industry executives, public relations executives, and advertising executives. Their goal was to rearrest the authority of business and halt the New Deal. They wanted to restore a political culture in order to demonstrate corporate power with minimal government control. The third group was a coalition of individuals and organizations that wanted to defuse tensions within the groups to promote a more religiously, ethnically, and racially tolerant society. The third group consisted of many liberals and leftists such as Louis Adamic, Gunnar and Alva Myrdal, E. Franklin Frazier, those affiliated with the Council Against Intolerance, and Newton Baker. Baker and his colleagues from the National Conference of Christians and Jews aimed to hold American society together but had little interest in transforming the economic and political status quo. Diverse as they were, these groups shared values and ideologies of national unity.
Depending on one’s class, race, and religion, Americans had different understandings of the consensus.

During the first decade of the Cold War government officials, business groups, and intergroup liberals solidified a consensus. This Cold War vision of the American Way emphasized free enterprise teamwork, and a shared religious faith. Liberals, too, believed that Americans needed to stand for something universal. On the other hand, immigrants, such as Carlos Bulosan, felt the continuing racism but hoped that people would one day come to their senses. They believed American society was deeply flawed, and that it remained an “unfinished dream”. Other Americans, such as economic conservatives, cold warriors, and intergroup liberals who hoped to preserve social harmony, presented the United States as comparatively perfect. In their opinion, America was a model of political, religious, and economic freedom. They believed all that needed to be done by society was to get along. When preaching the consensus, these groups minimized the issue of power imbalances and emphasized the importance of civility between different classes and religions. Religious groups had their own feelings about the consensus. Protestantism, Catholicism, and Judaism were considered “the religions of democracy,” as they provided a diverse representation of ideals and moral values that most Americans shared. This reinforced the underlying cohesiveness of American society. By the late 1940s, the interfaith

idea was so publicly known that is was used as a symbol of American pluralism and American consensus. Race, on the other hand, proved to be more of a stumbling block. The issue of race was explosive and disturbed the image of the United States as a consensual nation. News outlets were often persuaded not to cover racial issues because advertising officials worried that it would only inflame racial tensions. E. Franklin Frazier often said that the only way to have complete national unity was to fully integrate black people into American life, but it was more easier said than done. A consensus built around individual freedom was not popular with minority groups, especially African Americans. It was much less successful with these groups. The different ways this consensus was viewed led to national debates that carried into the 1960s.
Another debate that was happening during this time period was the idea of industrial democracy versus free enterprise. Americans were expressing the desire to be free of want, while the government was calling for and activist government to ensure economic security. Industrialists also emphasized the importance of individual rights and the dimensions of American “freedom”. President Roosevelt gave speeches about freedom and invoking the image of unity. He believed that is was the duty of the government to give Americans what they wanted; to “promote the general welfare,” as he said in 1935. “Only through the submerging of individual desires into unselfish and practical cooperation civilization will grow,” Roosevelt said to a crowd in 1934. Many organizations had their own opinions on this argument, one of them being the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM). They had many billboards and publications that spread their perspective. They argued that what made someone American was their ability to worship, associate, speak, read, and travel as they wished. The NAM’s emphasis on freedom contrasted with the vision of New Dealers, as they put their faith in majoritarian democracy. With this taken into consideration, I believe that neither free enterprise nor industrial democracy “won” because the people at this time could not come to an agreement on one or the other. Some groups favored one, while some groups favored the other.
In conclusion, the 1930s to the 1950s was an extremely influential time period that helped shape what America is today.

There were many different arguments and perspectives on what exactly the American Way should be, and I believe there still are. One common ground that most of the groups shared was the emphasis on our unique freedom. While some believed that the government should be more active than others, most agreed on our freedom to worship, speak, associate, etc. how we please. This idea is extremely important to the United States as a whole, as it is something that was, at this time, unique to our country. Maintaining this uniqueness was vital to the American image. There were tensions at this time between different races and religious groups that still exist in some form today. Because they still exist today, I do not believe one dominated the other. Both religious tolerance and racial tolerance have improved since then, there is unfortunately still some intolerance. Finding a consensus on these issues was difficult because of the inequality that some minorities experienced, especially for African Americans. Despite all the issues that the mentioned groups and more struggled to agree on, the consensus of the importance of our freedom, the “American Way”,

remained.