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

By Ira Katznelson

Book Overview

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."

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393328511
• ISBN13: 9780393328516
• Release Date: August 2006
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.5" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

LBJ was the one who really freed the slaves

Just finished an outstanding book by Ira Katznelson on the untold history of racial inequality in America. Those who oppose affirmative action should get it and see who has really benefitted from The New Deal, the Fair Deal, Social Security and the GI Bill after WWII. I cannot see how anyone can read this book and not agree with me that Lincoln did not free the slaves. The slaves were not freed until 1964 and LBJ should be...

Book is right on the mark

Regarding the comments of Mr. Greenberg and Mr. Frantzman: yes, blacks may have been heavily represented in the military, but no, they were NOT able to take advantage of the G.I. Bill to obtain Veteran's mortgage loans. Due to legal restrictions, restrictive convenants, and general violence and protests, blacks in the U.S. in the 1940's and 1950's were limited to obtaining housing in only all-black neighborhoods, or in neighborhoods...

NOT A LEVEL PLAYING FIELD YET

This book is a thoughtful and well-documented antidote to libertarian and conservative propaganda. It shows exactly how racial discrimination permeated every layer of public and private life in both North and South -- and lasted well into the 1970s. Before the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and during legal racial segregation, especially under the GI Bill of Rights, whites -- especially men -- benefited immensely and blacks were...

A Story of Hidden Prejudice

As I read this book I was reminded of the Broadway play and subsequent movie '1776' about the creation of the Declaration of Independence. In the play the Southern representatives agreed to support the Declaration only if words prohibiting slavery were taken out. Politics is the art of compromise, and without the Southern states there would have been no Declaration. So slavery was left in. In the time of Roosevelt the Southern...

Affirmative Action For Whites--You'd Better Believe It.

I don't know what Mr. Frantzman was smoking, but here's a quote from the book. In New York and New Jersey, "fewer than 100 of 67,000 mortgages insured by the GI Bill supported home purchases by nonwhites." It has been an easy mantra of the Right that government should not be involved in social engineering after the white majority has drunk so generously from the public trough. 80% of small business in the US were begun...