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...

• 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 credited with that action. Of course, this information cannot be taught in Florida schools. The education bill has a provision that History must be taught as inerrant gospel. No revisionist thought allowed in Florida schools. They plan to keep the children ignorant of what Southern politicians did from 1864 to 1964.

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 that were rapidly turning all-black. There has been much research done showing that the FHA and VA both participated in redlining, and refused to provide home mortgages in neighborhoods which were all black, or on the verge of becoming all-black. Therefore, any black veteran who wished to purchase a home using his/her V.A. benefits would be severely restricted, by A) not being able to buy a home outside of a black neighborhood, where mortgage funds were readily available and B) being able to find a home in a black neighborhood, but not being able to receive mortgage money to purchase it. Check out the book "From the Tenements to the Taylor Homes: In Search of an Urban Housing Policy in Twentieth-Century America" to see that what I am saying is correct.

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 either denied benefits or prevented from getting them by local bureaucrats. This is proof that we have barely begun to correct the effect of racial segregation on generations of Americans. White men benefited from quotas in the past. They want to lose no priviledges. Libertarians and conservatives want to keep those advantages for themselves and deny fair competition to all those against whom they discriminated in the past. Color-blind policies now simply perpetuate the unfairness of a color-segregated past.

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 politicians had enough clout to stop all of the New Deal legislation if it were made truly color blind. As is often the case, it took a politician from the affected states to force legislation through the Congress to right this wrong. Lyndon Johnson had been in long enough that he truly understood how to get what he wanted through the congress. In this book, the author explains how nominaly racially blind legislation and programs were in fact deliberatly and subtly were able to exclude blacks from participation. He uses this to make a plea to eliminate poverty and inequality in America.

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 with equity loans from the GI Bill. Plumbing companies, carpentry shops, dentists, truckers.... African Americans had no access to that wealth creation. None. Now people like Mr Frantzen pretend that everyone competes on a level playing field. But all he has to offer in support of his contention is rhetoric not facts. Get the book!