When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America

by Ira Katznelson

A combination of social conventions, racist ideas, economic compulsion, theological justification, political institutions, and harsh enforcement by police, courts, and prisons, buttressed by private violence, supported the unyielding inequality mandated by Jim Crow.

Social Security, as passed and signed by President Roosevelt in August 1935, produced a stark outcome. Across the nation, fully 65 percent of African Americans fell outside the reach of the new program; between 70 and 80 percent in different parts of the South.

Harry Byrd, the leader of Virginia’s powerful Democratic machine, cautioned that unless adequate protections were introduced, Social Security could become an instrument by which the federal government would interfere with the way white southerners dealt with “the Negro question.”

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) testified against the bill, arguing quite correctly that it was “like a sieve with holes just big enough for the majority of Negroes to fall through.” The National Urban League strongly advocated the alternative bill proposed by Congressman Lundeen because it included “farmers and domestic workers and personal service workers.”

Writing about slavery and its legacies, the political theorist Judith Shklar has taken note of how often its neglect in general histories subsequently helped erase its impact on the consciousness of most white Americans.