When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America

A groundbreaking work that exposes the twisted origins of affirmative action. In this "penetrating new analysis" (New York Times Book Review) Ira Katznelson fundamentally recasts our understanding of twentieth-century American history and 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. Through mechanisms designed by Southern Democrats that specifically excluded maids and farm workers, the gap between blacks and whites actually widened despite postwar prosperity. In the words of noted historian Eric Foner, "Katznelson's incisive book should change the terms of debate about affirmative action, and about the last seventy years of American history."

Katznelson's historical review of how legislation has been implemented from the Great Depression's New Deal to Johnson's Great Society is an eye-opener for its detail, and for linking the way legislation that looks universal was implemented through states rights to benefit whites and not blacks.

The control of Congress by 17 southern states intent on maintaining racist states' rights segregation made every decent piece of legistation including the GI Bill a boon for white folks and an impediment for African-Americans. Thus affirmative action for whites, of the books's title, was a result of a nearly invisible operation over and over; IN ORDEWR TO GET ANY LEGISLATION PASSED, CONCESSIONS HAD TO BE MADE TO THE SOUTHERNERS WHO CONTROLLED COMMITTEES AND THUS LEGISLATION. Because of their one-party white rule in their states, they had seniority in national legislatures, so they had control until Johnson, part of the southern bloc, broke rank during the civil rights struggles.

This is a must-read book for its historical documentation of how white working class peoiple benefitted and african-american working class people were denied.

This is a wonderful work! His account of the power of Southern politicians to impose their own policy preferences on the national sphere during the New Deal and the GI Bill is not only extremely factually fruitful, but also highly readable. He is a data-driven political scientist whose arguments resonate quite loudly as a result. His interjection into the debate on affirmative action will surely add a third voice for a very long time.

Katznelson has assembled a compelling and powerful historical analysis of the use of affirmative action in America. It is essential reading for those who are interested in the state of race relations today. It turns the affirmative action debate on its head, suggesting that we LOVE affirmative action. I recommend it for a wide variety of readers. It is readable, but more important, it will chalenge your understanding of how we arrived where we are! It is also a great study in the unintended consequences of political settlements.

This book provides valuable statistics comparing white and black economic status in the Depression era. Its strength is its documentation of how New Deal programs (and the GI Bill of Rights) had a disparate impact on whites and blacks. It describes how legislative provisions crafted by Southern Senators, and administration by Southern local officials, meant the African-American workers (often forced to labor as domestics or in agriculture) received far less generous support from the federal government than their white counterparts. Less direct aid, fewer contracts, lack of access to mortgages, non-coverage by the Social Security Act, fewer opportunities to attend universities, meant that the federal government was actively exacerbating the racial economic divide for much of the 20th century.

This book, written in a formal manner, in the style of a political policy paper, touches on that most sensitive of American subjects, race, specifically the responsibility of American society to provide compensation to African Americans for the centuries of slavery and severe publicly and privately enforced economic and psychological misery.

The main focus of the book is on the increases in the disparities in terms of wealth, health and other indicators between black and white Americans that began during the New Deal period. It was this disparity that President Johnson noted in his speech to the Howard University graduating class in June 1965. LBJ noted that since 1947 white poverty had decreased by 27 percent while non-white poverty had decreased by only three percent. He declared that etween 1952 to 1963 the average percentage of the income of white men that black men earned, fell from 57 to 52 percent. The infant mortality of non-whites in the U.S. was 70 percent greater than whites in 1940. By 1962, it was 90 percent greater. LBJ stated that white and black unemployment rates were about equal in 1940 but by 1965 black unemployment was twice as high.

LBJ's speech is the foil for the exposition of the learned professor in this book........

For Katnzelson, as others have pointed out before him of course, the shaping of such New Deal policies of Social Security, public works jobs, housing mortgage subsidies, the Wagner act empowering workers to organize, minimum wage laws, and so on were dependent on the votes of Southern Democrats. They worked to insure that agriculture and domestic work were excluded from the minimum wage law of 1938 and the Wagner Act and the Social Security Acts of 1935. Agriculture and domestic workers, of course, were very disproportionately in the South represented in their work force by African Americans. The majority of African Americans lived in the South, the poorest people in the poorest region in the country. They worked to ensure that benefits and subsidies of these Federal programs would be distributed by local officials--thus in the South officials worked with a great deal of success to exclude blacks from the programs that whites had access to. Southern politicians wanted to keep Blacks in semi-slave conditions and so succeeded to a very large extent in excluding blacks from income accumulating opportunities that were available to Whites, such as the government guarantee of organizing for higher wages, benefits and conditions guaranteed by the Wagner Act and the programs of subsidies to the poor. When Blacks did receive subsidies from these programs in the South, they were considerably less than the same benefits accorded to Whites.

Blacks had considerably less access to the training programs offered to white service men during World War II. They were often placed in menial jobs. The Republican Secretary of War Henry Stimson believed that blacks should be kept from the battlefield as much as possible because of their alleged inherent incompetence at those tasks. Some black servicemen did have access to literacy training, combat experience and vocational training. Unionized black workers in the North benefited and blacks in the South were pulled along in the new prosperity but at very small distances compared to the benefits won by white veterans. In an endnote, he quotes Eisehnower that rural working class Britian lacked the strong race consciousness of Americans--thus white GIs stationed in England during the War were horrified by the sight of white British girls dating Black GIs and often responded violently. According to Ike, they were also upset that the British press seemed not at all perturbed by this dating.

Funding for college education, housing mortgages on easy terms, superior vocational training and so on were provided in massive amounts by the GI bill. The latter has been declared by Freddie Mac advertisements and Democratic politicians, quite plausibly as significantly contributing to the creation of the post-War middle class in this country. Once again, the programs of the GI bill were run by local VA officials and others in the South, the home of the majority of black veterans. The house mortgage and educational loans were distributed by private lenders in the north and south who at best loaned the money to black veterans infrequently but of course did so regularly for whites. Blacks eligible for higher education were either not allowed access to education or directed towards Southern Black universities and vocational schools that received much less funding than comparable white schools and were otherwise bad jokes as educational institutions. Northern white colleges, of course, engaged in extensive unofficial racial discrimination in admissions and student housing.

The subsidies and education which the families of white veterans and their descendants have benefited from show up in contemporary statistics, Katznelson shows. Many whites who took advantage of the GI bill were able to subsequently accumulate fairly comfortable assets in terms of stock ownership, retirement funds, savings and so on. Home ownership, providing by easy GI bill mortgage loans, was a major key. Such benefits, of course, have passed down through the generations. According to Katznelson, by the end of the 20th century, the median household net worth was $81,000 for whites but $8,000 for blacks.

Katznelson turns to the interesting question as to how a real affirmative action program should be implemented, even one that can be technically color neutral, getting away from the feeble arguments of Jesse Jackson & co. The affirmative action programs that have been implemented, Katznelson argues, have reduced significantly the inequalities between Black and White middle class incomes, if not net worth. But the large majority of African Americans have had their fortunes decline....

Of course, we need a popular movement to force our neoliberal politicians like Edwards, Senator Clinton, Senator Obama, and the rest to even begin to seriously address the issue.