[Jill Quadagno] The Color of Welfare : How Racism Undermined the War on Poverty(pdf){Zzzzz}[BЯ]

Thirty years after Lyndon Johnson declared a War on Poverty, the United States still lags behind most Western democracies in national welfare systems, lacking such basic programs as national health insurance and child care support. Some critics have explained the failure of social programs by citing our tradition of individual freedom and libertarian values, while others point to weaknesses within the working class. In The Color of Welfare, Jill Quadagno takes exception to these claims, placing race at the center of the "American Dilemma," as Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal did half a century ago. The "American creed" of liberty, justice, and equality clashed with a history of active racial discrimination, says Quadagno. It is racism that has undermined the War on Poverty, and America must come to terms with this history if there is to be any hope of addressing welfare reform today.
From Reconstruction to Lyndon Johnson and beyond, Quadagno reveals how American social policy has continually foundered on issues of race. Drawing on extensive primary research, Quadagno shows, for instance, how Roosevelt, in need of support from southern congressmen, excluded African Americans from the core programs of the Social Security Act. Turning to Lyndon Johnson's "unconditional war on poverty," she contends that though anti-poverty programs for job training, community action, health care, housing, and education have accomplished much, they have not been fully realized because they became inextricably intertwined with the civil rights movement of the 1960s, which triggered a white backlash. Job training programs, for instance, became affirmative action programs, programs to improve housing became programs to integrate housing, programs that began as community action to upgrade the quality of life in the cities were taken over by local civil rights groups. This shift of emphasis eventually alienated white, working-class Americans, who had some of the same needs--for health care, subsidized housing, and job training opportunities--but who got very little from these programs. At the same time, affirmative action clashed openly with organized labor, and equal housing raised protests from the white suburban middle-class, who didn't want their neighborhoods integrated. Quadagno shows that Nixon, who initially supported many of Johnson's programs, eventually caught on that the white middle class was disenchanted. He realized that his grand plan for welfare reform, the Family Assistance Plan, threatened to undermine wages in the South and alienate the Republican party's new constituency--white, southern Democrats--and therefore dropped it.
In the 1960s, the United States embarked on a journey to resolve the "American dilemma." Yet instead of finally instituting full democratic rights for all its citizens, the policies enacted in that turbulent decade failed dismally. The Color of Welfare reveals the root cause of this failure--the inability to address racial inequality.

Editorial Reviews
From Booklist
Conservatives and defenders of consensus may deplore them, but Florida State University sociology professor Quadagno demonstrates convincingly that race, class, and gender are essential analytical categories for those who hope to understand the nation's past and to design public policies for its future. Her timely, well-researched study of the War on Poverty and the "equal-opportunity welfare state" it produced begins by dissecting the New Deal's crucial compromise: providing some economic security for working men and their families while reinforcing the color line. When the War on Poverty--under pressure from the civil rights movement--challenged that color line, its community action, housing, and job training programs came to be seen as benefiting only African Americans and indeed as threats to middle-class white Americans, the major beneficiaries of the New Deal. The Color of Welfare challenges the more accepted explanations of American exceptionalism, and insists that "the continual reconfiguration of racial inequality" is "the motor driving American history." Only by overcoming racial inequality can the U.S. reform its welfare system and redeem its democratic principles. Mary Carroll --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Kirkus Reviews
A pointed reinterpretation of the history of antipoverty policy, arguing that racism most explains why our welfare state is feeble compared with other industrialized nations. Quadagno (Sociology/Florida State Univ.; The Transformation of Old Age Security, not reviewed) proceeds with several case studies, which could have used a bit of leavening with political context and journalistic verve. The author notes that black agricultural workers and domestic servants were denied Social Security protection because of white political opposition in the Roosevelt era. Similarly, New Deal programs seeking to bolster the housing market actually reinforced housing segregation. The Office of Economic Opportunity, the main engine of Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty, didn't receive enough funding, nor did it establish a policy of redistribution, the author notes. Her discussion of government job-training programs and affirmative action, in which she attacks William Julius Wilson's well-known critique of group rights, is not fully convincing; nor does it address some latter- day issues like the ``race-norming'' of job tests. More potent is her analysis of federal housing policy, which in the 1980s retreated from its commitment to subsidizing housing for the poor. Also, she shows how Richard Nixon's Family Assistance Plan, which promised a guaranteed annual income to the poor, threatened Southern political and business powers, who led the political opposition. She does suggest that the country's lack of commitment to universal child care can be blamed less on racism than on general social conservatism. In the end, Quadagno establishes that the US, compared to other industrialized nations, does the least to fight poverty. However, she would have set the stage better for discussion of solutions had she mentioned America's changing multiracial landscape, debates about the impact of culture on poverty, and current proposals for such policies as workfare. Mainly for students and policy wonks. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Publisher: Oxford University Press (April 11, 1996)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0195101227
ISBN-13: 978-0195101225