When Affirmative Action was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-century AmericaA groundbreaking work that exposes the twisted origins of affirmative action. When Affirmative Action Was White demonstrates that all the key programs passed during the New Deal and Fair Deal era of the 1930s and 1940s were created in a deeply discriminatory manner. This was no accident. With the United States still in an era of legal segregation, the powerful southern wing of the Democratic Party provided the framework for Social Security, the GI Bill, and landmark labor laws that helped create the foundations of the modern middle class. Through mechanisms that specifically excluded maids and farmworkers and through laws that kept administration in local hands, the gap between blacks and whites actually widened despite postwar prosperity. The publication of this deeply disturbing work promises to create a national debate on the meaning of affirmative action and the responsibility of government. |
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User Review - aketzle - LibraryThingLearned a lot in this book! Very important reading! Highly recommended. Puts the whole concept of affirmative action in historical context compared to all the times when government action was essentially an economic launching pad for white people at the expense of black Americans. Read full review
WHEN AFFIRMATIVE ACTION WAS WHITE: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America
User Review - KirkusA searching study of institutional inequality, much of it wrought, then as now, by the South."Three-fourths of us are disenfranchised; yet no writer on democratic reform says a word about Negroes ... Read full review
Contents
Doctor of Laws | xvii |
Welfare in Black and White | 23 |
Rules for Work | 51 |
Divisions in War | 78 |
White Veterans Only | 111 |
Johnsons Ambitions Powells Principles Thoughts on Renewing Affirmative Action | 140 |
To Fulfill These Rights | 171 |
Notes | 180 |
| 223 | |
Index | 227 |
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administration affirmative action African Americans agricultural armed forces Army Bakke benefits black Americans black soldiers black veterans Board Chicago Cited civil rights colleges color Committee Congress country's Deal Democratic Party despite discrimination economic employers employment equal exclusion Fair Labor Standards families federal government FLSA G.I. Bill GI Bill higher education House Howard Howard University industries institutions integration Jim Crow Journal Justice labor market Labor Standards Act legislation Lyndon Johnson majority middle class military Mississippi National Labor Relations Negro soldiers Negro Troops Negro veterans offered officers opportunity organized percent Pittsburgh Courier political postwar President public policy race racial racial segregation racism relief Report Republicans Roosevelt schools Second World Second World War segregation Senate sess Social Security South southern members Taft-Hartley tion tive unions United University Press vote W. E. B. Du Bois wages Washington white and black workers York
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Bibliographic information
| Title | When Affirmative Action was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-century America |
| Author | Ira Katznelson |
| Contributor | Sara Roberson Collection |
| Publisher | W. W. Norton & Company, 2005 |
| ISBN | 0393052133, 9780393052138 |
| Length | 238 pages |
| Subjects | › › History / United States / General Social Science / Discrimination & Race Relations |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |