The Color of Welfare: How Racism Undermined the War on Poverty
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 Welfarechallenges 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.