The history of advantages offered to most whites and denied to many blacks in New Deal and Fair Deal policies is a particular story of targeted official institutional bias and great consequence. By understanding how the playing field fashioned by such fundamental public policies as Social Security, the Wagner Act, military segregation, and the GI Bill was racially skewed by design, and how their powerful negative effects have compounded in the past two generations, Lyndon Johnson’s specific type of affirmative action can be advanced.
