How Identity Has Changed — And Hasn't — Over Morning Edition's 40 Years
Since our show debuted in 1979, some notions of race and identity have changed dramatically, while in other ways the same painful battles continue.
How — and to whom — should America distribute its resources? Who gets to be American? Those were the questions roiling the country 40 years ago this week when Morning Edition debuted. It's a timeframe that encompasses most of post-civil rights America, and many of the issues that gripped the nation in 1979 are still being debated today.
But some of those issues have mutated in unexpected ways, and are playing out in a country that has grown steadily browner, and more queer.
Here is our survey of some of the major issues involving race and identity from the last 40 years.
Busing
During those first weeks of November, 1979, Pittsburgh had just approved a plan to integrate its schools via busing. And busing was the.
