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Present Justifying Affirmative Action for Blacks Yi Cai NetID: yc639 Cornell #: 2154373 November 19, 2008 Labor History ILBCB 1100 1 In his book When Affirmative Action Was White, Ira Katznelson, an Irish-American, argues that Affirmative Action is now necessary because government policies dealing with welfare, work, and war during the New Deal, and the decades that immediately followed, systematically excluded African Americans. In addition to an extended exegesis of Lyndon B. Johnson's Commencement Address at Howard University, which was presented in the beginning of the book, Katznelson further juxtaposes the affects of each program on blacks and whites in order to show that Affirmative Action in the past was solely "white." Katznelson's use of the statistics and periodicals, as well as his reliance on court cases, letters from veterans, school records, and secondary sources, help develop his argument and ultimately justify that the failure of the government to provide opportunity in conjunction with freedom led to the ever-widening gap between blacks and whites on the basis of income and education. With supporting evidence from Lizabeth Cohen's Making a New Deal, and John T. McGreevy's Parish Boundaries, Katznelson's argument is thus, exceptionally convincing. During Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration, reforms were "crafted and administered in a deeply discriminatory manner" (Katznelson, 17). The majority of Democrats in the Senate and in the House were southerners, many with seniority and legislative influence. Their predecessors were successful in instituting Jim Crow Laws in the late 1800s which methodically ostracized blacks, while the New Deal Democrats looked to promulgate their legislative legacy of exclusion. They feared that any economic enhancement for blacks would threaten their region's system of racial segregation; Katznelson explains that southern Democrats used three methods to exclude African Americans from receiving the benefits from programs such as the Social Security Act of 1935, the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, and the Fair Labor Standards Act 1938. The southern Democrats fought for the inclusion of racially laden provisions and for the administration of benefits to be controlled at the local levels, where most 2 state and local government officials were white and "hostile to black aspirations" (Katznelson, 23). Furthermore, in an effort to exclude blacks, Southern Democrats refused to permit antidiscrimination provisions in social welfare programs. In particular, the Democratic South focused on the labor market as the key platform of discrimination against blacks. Katznelson emphasizes that black workers were at a constant disadvantage because of the lack of specific non-discriminatory policies in federally funded, labor-related programs. Programs such as the Social Security Act excluded domestic and agricultural workers, thus denying benefits to 60 percent of blacks in the labor force nationwide, and as much as 75 percent in some southern states (Katznelson, 22). The strategic exclusion of domestic and agricultural workers was also prevalent in the Fair Labor Standards Act, which set a national minimum wage, regulated working hours, and prohibited child labor. Furthermore, the National Labor Relations Act banned unfair labor regulations, instituted the National Labor Relations Board, and gave workers in the private sectors the right to organize labor unions to engage in collective bargaining, while again excluding domestic and agricultural employees. As a result, these domestic and agricultural workers, who were predominantly in the South and consisted largely of blacks, were unable to profit, to relieve their debt. Without receiving relief, Katznelson argues that poverty in the South for black men and women deepens. He supports this assertion by including statistical trends in the number of workers, income, heath care, and education. He proclaims that living conditions in the South were horrible, where more than 90 percent of black households had no facilities of any kind, including gas or electricity. In regards to voting rights, Southern blacks had almost none, due to the racially laden provisions of the Jim Crow Laws. Black achievement was relatively low and illiteracy was high, however, "black despair was not confined to the South" (Katznelson, 12). 3 In the North, unions grew rapidly. Workers, both white and black were in favor of the Democratic Party and believed Roosevelt to be their protagonist. Cohen suggested that by 1936, "workers felt that the policies of the national Democratic Party were making a difference in their lives" (Cohen, 257). The policies were, but to different extents for different individuals, beneficial in advancing the economy. Due to the policies in the New Deal, blacks had difficulty in joining labor unions. Even the implementation of the American Federation of Labor (AFL), which mainly represented skilled craft workers (Katznelson, 54), excluded blacks because they were not considered as "skilled workers". The increase in the manufacturing, mining, and nonfarm labor force was significant as changes in workers' attitude, exemplified by the birth of "moral capitalism," allowed workers to participate in the New Deal. This mass cultural revolution affected blacks as they pushed for "black capitalism." By developing a separate "black economy," the black community found ways to exploit their lesser financial assets and more skillfully created opportunities (Cohen, 148). Cohen argues that although it was constructive that blacks were engaged in this new venture towards profitability, she notes that the black community was very much separate from the whites, unable to access many resources outside of the black market. Through her extensive research of industrial workers in Chicago between 1919 and 1939, using sources such as radio scripts, banking and commercial records, and other primary evidence, Cohen supports Katznelson's argument that growth in the white economy grew at an exponentially greater rate than the growth in the black economy, thus widening the economic and social gap between blacks and whites. This widening of the gap was not solely a direct result of the policies in the New Deal. Cohen suggested that Chicago's workers were disparate; Jews, Catholics, and White Protestants were organized in their separate ethnic communities, called parishes. McGreevy showed through prodigious his research using local sources while it was possible for white Protestant and Jewish 4 congregations in the North to relocate in response to the influx of black migrants, the Catholic parish was immovable. Although many tried to further the civil rights cause, others suggested that based on the inability of heavily Catholic neighborhoods to welcome black Catholics, "skin color mattered more than income or culture" (McGreevy, 196). In attempts to deter blacks from the parishes, several Chicago pastors bought "property for sale in their parishes so it could not be purchased by Negros" (McGreevy, 127). This intensity of segregation in the North leaves blacks no means of escaping of the unequal treatment. During the war, unemployment was eliminated; labor movement began to organize blacks in the South. An affect which was mostly due to the increasing number in blacks entering the industrial labor force and whites' workers gone overseas; many of the southern region's Democrats abandoned the New Deal coalition. Katznelson notes quotes that to Republicans, "labor remained an issue of party and ideology", whereas to southern legislators, "labor had become race" (Katznelson, 79). They feared that organizing might stimulate civil rights movements. They feared that the Fair labor Standards Act would enforce wage leveling, increase black's wealth, and most vividly, cause blacks to leave the southern regions. A strategy to avoid those assumptions, southern Democrats joined Republicans in support of the anti-labor TaftHartley Act, which eliminated the National Labor Board's power to initiate investigations and prosecute unfair labor practices. The act decreases the enforcement on minimum wage and maximum hours, thus weakening the effect of the Fair labor Standards Act. Blacks were able to receive benefits later in the implementations of such acts, Katznelon explains, but just when they showed signs of progress or success, the southern legislators found ways to prevents black advancements, even if they had to set aside their party's loyalty and ideological beliefs. 5 Katznelson makes his most cogent argument in favor of Affirmative Action when he examines World War Two and the military' role in the new formation of the "white" class and how black were barred. He mentions that for Jews and Catholics, "the war marked the first moment of full inclusion", yet for blacks, "the war was the last moment of formal exclusion from equal citizenship" (Katznelson, 91). McGreevy analyzed the same migration in Jews and Catholics. He said that as "Catholics and Jews left their immigrant ghetto, they became more American. They become more racist" (McGreevy, 213). The Jews and Catholics, who were considered ethnically different in the past, were now considered part of the white identity, having "white" colored skin. The many programs created by the military for soldiers to acquire skills and most importantly, "literacy" (Katznelson, 107). However under Jim Crow Laws, the Army would "announce training opportunities, only to hurriedly add a proviso that there were no appropriate facilities for Negro troops" (Katznelson, 111). Katznelson exemplified that the Signal Corps was unable to train Negro enlisted men, and when the Air Force had to search for civilians who had the training and experience, found out that Signal Corps began training Negro soldiers. (Katznelson, 111). Therefore, blacks missed the opportunity to enroll with the Signal Corps. Although black did manage to obtain skills and knowledge, the greater effect was created: increasing racial disparity. The southern Democrats still held tightly to the racial policies of the armed services, protecting Jim Crow, hence preventing blacks from practicing complete integration. The implementation of the GI Bill gave millions of Americans the opportunity to buy homes, attend college, start business, and find jobs commensurate with their skills. It increased the authority of Veterans Administration in 1930. The Veterans Administration had hospitals 6 and housing which were racially segregated. Furthermore, the legislation for veterans was passed through "southern hands and garner southern, backing in Congress" (Katznelson, 123). With racially laden provisions in the GI Bill, many black veterans were refused higher education because many did not have the required high-school degree to qualify. Instead, they sought to enroll in vocational programs. Programs which worked towards training veterans, they were highly decentralized. With the white land-owners uninterested in training blacks, Katznelson quotes, "only one percent of the 350,000 Negro veterans who were drafted from farms received training for this vocation at government expense" (Katznelson, 135). Blacks were denied access to loans that the GI Bill promised and this is because the federal government did not issue the loans directly, instead the Veterans Administration did (Katznelson, 139). Katznelson successfully argues that the GI Bill was considered a program in the New Deal which gave incredible benefits to America, but it was organized and administered in a way that produced practices that were more racially distinct and arguably crueler than any other New Deal era programs. The consistent demand from southerners in the legislative process to maintain their region's supremacy, specifically during the New Deal era, has impaired the ability of blacks to achieve equality in income, education, and opportunity. Their strategy to include racially laden provisions and exclude anti-discriminatory provisions, as well as to increase the power of local government, proved successful in their purpose. Even to the extent in which southern legislators left the Democratic Party and joined the Republican. I agree with Katznelson in which Affirmative Action was "white" in programs that were designed to benefit and increase the success of whites in America, is therefore a moral excuse for present affirmative action for blacks. 7 8 Worker Cited Cohen, Lizabeth. Making a New Deal : Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-1939. New York: Cambridge UP, 2007. Katznelson, Ira. When Affirmative Action Was White : An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America. Boston: W. W. Norton & Company, Incorporated, 2006. McGreevy, John T. Parish Boundaries : The Catholic Encounter with Race in the TwentiethCentury Urban North. New York: University of Chicago P, 1998. 9

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