"The debate over welfare suffers from lack of historical perspective. Now come Mink and Solinger to transform our understanding with a clearly articulated, carefully organized, and judiciously selected collection of key sources and illustrative documents that illuminates the past and present of aid to poor women and their children. Essential for classroom use, this book also belongs on the desks of policy makers and activists alike."
—Eileen Boris, Hull Professor of Women's Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara
"A stirringly dramatic narrative of welfare policy history. Through the documents they select, Mink and Solinger bring to life an immensely important human drama, and they do so in a way that paves a path to a higher awareness of the deeply ingrained biases of gender, race, and class that operate in welfare policy."
—Social Service ReviewFederal welfare policy has been a political and cultural preoccupation in the United States for nearly seven decades. Debates about who poor people are, how they got that way, and what the government should do about poverty were particularly bitter and misleading at the end of the twentieth century. These public discussions left most Americans with far more attitude than information about poverty, the poor, and poverty policy in the United States.
In response, Gwendolyn Mink and Rickie Solinger compiled the first documentary history of welfare in America, from its origins through the present. Welfare: A Documentary History of U.S. Policy and Politics provides historical context for understanding recent policy developments, as it traces public opinion, recipients' experiences, and policy continuities and innovations over time. The documents collected range across more than 100 years, from government documents and proclamations of presidents throughout the 20th century, to accounts of activist and grass roots organizations, newspaper reports and editorials, political cartoons, posters and more.
They enable readers to go straight to the source to find out how public figures racialized welfare in the minds of white Americans, to explore the origins of the claim that poor women have babies in order to collect welfare, and to trace how that notion has been perpetuated and contested. The documents also illustrate how policymakers in different eras have invoked and politicized the idea of dependency, as well as how ideas about women's dependency have followed changing characterizations of poor women as workers and as mothers.
Welfare provides a picture of the government's evolving ideas about poverty and provision, along side powerful examples of the voices too often eclipsed in the public square—welfare recipients and their advocates, speaking about mothering, poverty, and human rights.
]]>Thabit emphasizes the central role of local institutions in contributing to urban disinvestment and decline.
— Journal of Urban History
"Walter Thabit has written a highly personal and compelling piece of retrospective analysis."—Journal of the American Planning Association
"Thabit's writing is lucid and heartfelt."
—Urban Studies
"An excellent source of data and intelligence on the formation of ghettos and the life and struggle within them."
—Science & Society
"How East New York Became a Ghetto describes the shift of East New York from a working-class immigrant neighborhood to a largely black and Puerto Rican one, and shows how a series of racially biased policies caused the deterioration of this once-flourishing area." "An interesting and worthwhile read, especially for its descriptions."—Supplement "Walter Thabit's book works as a slice of urban sociology, history, and political science. It should whet the appetites of students and scholars to inquire into the longue duree of the subject more extensively." The book powerfully coveys the forces behind the ghettoization of one urban community and illustrates the difficulties of community development. "A comprehensive account of the decline of East New York in Brooklyn into a typical urban slum and of the efforts since the 1960s to redevelop the neighborhood. Anyone interested in urban social problems and improving the quality of life for urban poor should read this astounding analysis of urban decay and rebirth." "Thabit does a Herculean task of documenting the various factors that led to the ghettoization of East New York." "Thabit is in a unique position to document the destruction of the once working class Brooklyn neighborhood. . . Toward the book's conclusion, Thabit sounds a faint note of hope to the emerging community groups." "This thoughtful, important analysis is recommended for academics, professionals, and a concerned public library audience." "Walter Thabit eloquently tells the story of East New York, a neighborhood in eastern Brooklyn, complementing his close observation of events in the neighborhood with astute analyses of the bearing of larger forces on this big city slum. Events in East New York reveal in microcosm the turbulent national forces that have determined the fate of inner city ghettos across the country over the past 40 years." "The grim descriptions of civil neglect, community disorganization and institutional racism make this a difficult read, particularly when one realizes that this is the story that can be told about thousands of other neighborhoods in scores of citiies by hundreds of people. Perhaps if more planners like Thabit had told their stories, we might not have found oruselves in this predicament." In response to the riots of the mid-'60s, Walter Thabit was hired to work with the community of East New York to develop a plan for low- and moderate-income public housing. In the years that followed, he experienced first-hand the forces that had engineered East New York's dramatic decline and that continued to work against its successful revitalization. How East New York Became a Ghetto describes the shift of East New York from a working-class immigrant neighborhood to a largely black and Puerto Rican neighborhood and shows how the resulting racially biased policies caused the deterioration of this once flourishing area. A clear-sighted, unflinching look at one ghetto community, How East New York Became a Ghetto provides insights and observations on the histories and fates of ghettos throughout the United States.
—Arab-American Affairs
—New York History
— Urban History Review.
—Multicultural Review
—Progressive Planning
— New York
—Library Journal
—from the Foreword by Frances Fox Piven
—ADPSR NY