Name: When Affirmative Action Was White
ISBN: 9780393328516

When Affirmative Action Was White

Many mid 20th century American government programs created to help citizens survive and improve ended up being heavily biased against African-Americans. Katznelson documents this white affirmative action, and argues that its existence should be an important part of the argument in support of late 20th century affirmative action programs.

What Hacker News says

mandevilMar 2025

Indeed I am!

I am trying to make the case that something like social security is economically efficient even setting aside any moral case for taking care of vulnerable people. I believe social security pencils out as a huge positive to the overall economy, and that it is emotional "I don't want to help them with my taxes" nonsense that leads people to oppose it. As an example, look at all of the hard work, documented by Katznelson in _When Affirmative Action Was White_ and _Fear Itself_, by lots of racists to keep African-Americans from benefiting from Social Security when that program was created.

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alphonsegastonApr 2016

I believe the parent is referring to the fact that the GI Bill and home loans for returning WW II veterans were written in such a way to systematically discriminate against blacks in this country. The explicit prohibitions you mention obviously existed at that time in the form of segregation, but whites were also given extra advantages by the racist way these programs were implemented. The extension of these benefits overlaps precisely with growth of sprawl, as whites used the increased purchasing power afforded to them by these programs to buy homes in the emerging suburbs (essentially following the incentive). Ira Katznelson of Columbia University wrote a good history of this in his book,"When Affirmative Action was White"

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charlescearlAug 2019

It is reminiscent of the WPA of the New Deal. In the U.S. these efforts have historically been undermined by racism. “When Affirmative Action was White” (https://www.amazon.com/When-Affirmative-Action-White-Twentie...) makes a case for the G.I. Bill, New Deal and other efforts being compromised by segregationist policies. The current U.S. president’s proposal to link social services to country of origin seem to indicate that proposals like “Summer camp” (let alone reparations) are likely to face similar opposition.

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