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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Segregated Origins of Social Security: African Americans and the Welfare State

The Segregated Origins of Social Security: African Americans and the Welfare State

Poole, Mary

Paperback

20th Century United States HistoryBlack American StudiesGeneral Political Science

ISBN10: 0807856886
ISBN13: 9780807856888
Publisher: University of North Carolina Press
Published: May 29 2006
Pages: 272
Weight: 0.90
Height: 0.65 Width: 6.72 Depth: 9.20
Language: English
The relationship between welfare and racial inequality has long been understood as a fight between liberal and conservative forces. In The Segregated Origins of Social Security, Mary Poole challenges that basic assumption. Meticulously reconstructing the behind-the-scenes politicking that gave birth to the 1935 Social Security Act, Poole demonstrates that segregation was built into the very foundation of the welfare state because white policy makers -- both liberal and conservative -- shared an interest in preserving white race privilege.

Although northern white liberals were theoretically sympathetic to the plight of African Americans, Poole says, their primary aim was to save the American economy by salvaging the pride of America's essential white male industrial workers. The liberal framers of the Social Security Act elevated the status of Unemployment Insurance and Social Security -- and the white workers they were designed to serve -- by differentiating them from welfare programs, which served black workers.

Revising the standard story of the racialized politics of Roosevelt's New Deal, Poole's arguments also reshape our understanding of the role of public policy in race relations in the twentieth century, laying bare the assumptions that must be challenged if we hope to put an end to racial inequality in the twenty-first.

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