The Affirmative Action Boosted The Whites Way Of Life

Ira Katznelson focuses on how African Americans were denied access to economic relief during the New Deal. A near 65 percent of African Americans were denied access to many benefits that whites received such as social security, government grants, elderly poor assistance, and unemployment insurance. Local politicians in the south administered these new deals and these new deals were not given to the majority of African Americans. White American citizens had far more civil and political rights then black Americans living in the South had.

The social programs institutionalized racial preferences for white and deepened black rural poverty. Racial inequality was a constitutive part of the New Deal. “During the New Deal, most liberals put other priorities well ahead of civil rights” as they constructed an elaborate and often generous system of state support for Americans who shaped those programs to benefit whites and excluded or greatly eliminated the participation of blacks.

The Government paid out old age pensions in 1939 through Social security and before the end of the 1940s the first arrangements had made strides.

The GI Bill was the largest national program of support in America. New labor laws were passed. America was on the rise, but most blacks were left out of these laws. Blacks were excluded from social security until mid 1950s. African Americans lacked the protection of minimum wages, maximum hours, and the right to join industrial as well as craft unions. People noticed, “Two years after the passage of the GI Bill, Truman Gibson Jr., Veterans Editor for the Pittsburgh Courier, documented “the sorry plight of Negro veterans, and particularly those living in the South” in a story headlined “Government Fails Negro Vets”.

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An example of the GI Bill not helping blacks is that of 3,229 veterans in Mississippi guaranteed home, businesses, and farm loans in 1947 only two were offered to black veterans.

The New Deal and Fair Deal created by Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman provided most Americans with valuable tools to get jobs, acquire economic security, build assets, and gain middle class status, but mainly left blacks to struggle and do everything on their own. Affirmative action boosted the whites way of life and denied the same benefits for African Americans. Lyndon Johnson was one of the presidents to turn America into the civil rights movement. At Howard University “He depicted policies that would not target the black middle-class audience he was addressing, but the poor, the unemployed, the uprooted, and the disposed”. He wanted the federal government to put in effort to close the massive gap not only between blacks and whites, but also between more and less prosperous blacks. The lower class needs to move up into the middle class. Growing the African American middle class creates fair treatment across racial lines more than any recent public policy. Instead of wishing for the New Deal policies that were contaminated with racism to help America, it would be better to return to President Johnson’s plans.

In the Supreme Court case in 1978 of the Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, a conservative Republican Justice Lewis Powell’s opinion “stands out because it both defended and circumscribed affirmative action on grounds that establish clear, indeed principled, standards”. Bakke was a white student being discriminated against based on his race. Four justices agreed that this admission process violated civil rights law banning racial discrimination. Four other justices rejected the white student. Justice Lewis Powell agreed that this violated the constitutional requirement of equal protection. Powell argued that changes to the color-blind polices could be used to eliminate race based disadvantages. There must be a clear link between connecting affirmative action to specific historical harms based on race.

A nonracial way to pursue a goal is always favored and preferred over using race as a benefit. President Johnson’s speech anticipated Powell’s standards. Johnson’s analysis of the racial gap widening, he clarifies the present status of blacks in American society. Affirmative action can be established in ways that transcend race, even while primarily correcting racial injustice. Johnson’s ambitions and Powell’s principles pushed us forward to a framework for public polices that can respond to how racism has hurt this country. A renewed program of affirmative action responds to nonracial racism by creating programs that cross racial lines. This is to correct racial injustice. African Americans have been racial discriminated against only because they are black.

This violates basic human norms of fairness. Affirmative action tries to negate this and help African Americans not because they are black, but because they were subject to unfair treatment in the past. The recipients of those receiving affirmative compensation for what has happened in the past should have a direct relationship to the harm being remedied. To qualify for affirmative action you don’t necessarily have to experience discrimination directly. Their needs to be proof of how discriminatory institutions, decisions, actions, and practices have negatively affected their circumstances. Rectifications could be placed to helped individuals that have been harmed, even from generations in the past. Those excluded from the social security system could be offered one-time grants.

Tax credits to an equivalence of the average loss could be given for the absence of access to the minimum wage. Veterans that didn’t receive access to program under the GI Bill could no get subsidized mortgages, small business loans, and educational grants. Katznelson believes that robust public policy could have redressed America’s racial chasm. It is not only the person, or group of people, who have to be identified, but the specific qualities of racial discrimination. When the government is involved, claims for systemic compensation to match systemic harm become most compelling. Public policies are dividing Americans into different racial groups with vastly different life circumstances and possibilities.