'When Affirmative Action was White'; the title of a book written by Ira Katznelson in ~ 2005 who is one of the guests Melissa Harris Perry invited to discuss how government programs including the G.I. Bill (Servicemen's Readjustment Act) which helped to..
"launch the modern middle class"
..co-sponsored by a
segregationist (putting it gently) from Mississippi..
"who was terrified that AA soldiers, a bit over a million of them, coming home with those benefits would be part of this new middle class and would no longer be willing live under the system that kept them down."
- Ira Katznelson
This fear didn't go away.The G.I. Bill and other social programs spurred an on-going drive from the right, fearful of shared opportunity, that today manifests in continued actions to not only end affirmative action programs but to turn
affirmative action programs existence into a partisan attack for political gain as Ta-Nehisi Coates identified in 2012:
The Myth of an Affirmative-Action President
Ta-Nehisi Coates, a national correspondent @ the Atlantic has stirred things up lately on a subject he acknowledges has been thoroughly researched debated, misunderstood, re-researched and debated some more yet remains an issue that comes up every so often but that's about it. It comes up every so often. U.S. Representative John Conyers (D) of Michigan can attest to that. He has fought to get a Bill to the floor for 25 years . A Bill designed to form a committee to address these issues where law making (in a normal functioning congress that is) is supposed to be done. By our representative law-makers.
Ta-Nehisi Coates's latest/recent work: The case for Reparations: Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole. has done it again. and it's a very good thing he's done.
Vyan of Daily Kos has an excellent analysis of Coates' work with some important points filling out the story of the plundering of wealth from the AA community. Daily Kos bobswern collected interviews with Ta-Nehisi Coates and Bill Moyers covering institutionalized racism in this country that - imo - should also be required reading/viewing.
Daily Kos chaunceydevega wrote about Ta-Nehisi Coates' article pushing back on a meme from the right comparing reparations to "winning the lottery" stating..
Reparations, of any form, are an act of acknowledgement that a crime has occurred, and said victim should be made whole both materially and financially, as well as through the moral gesture of an apology.
..and at the time chaunceydevega was awaiting and curious how Melissa Harris Perry would take this on.
So here is a conversation including Rep. John Conyers, Salamishah Tillet, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Ira Katznelson
Melissa Harris Perry speaks with Rep. John Conyers (D) Michigan who has introduced a Bill H.R. 40 every year for the past 25 years. A Bill titled: Commission to Study Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act
Full Title
To acknowledge the fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality, and inhumanity of slavery in the United States and the 13 American colonies between 1619 and 1865 and to establish a commission to examine the institution of slavery, subsequently de jure and de facto racial and economic discrimination against African-Americans, and the impact of these forces on living African-Americans, to make recommendations to the Congress on appropriate remedies, and for other purposes
…that has never made it to the floor in all that time
Professor of political science and history at Columbia University Ira Katznelson who wrote the book titled:
When Affirmative Action was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America and written up @ NYT by By NICK KOTZ | (Published: August 28, 2005) in this article:
'When Affirmative Action Was White': Uncivil Rights
In the article are concrete examples of institutionalized white affirmative action in practice.
Here are some bullet points from Nick Kotz article:
• President Lyndon Baines Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act on Aug. 6, 1965
• The 1964 Civil Rights Act struck down the South's segregation laws, outlawed employment discrimination and forbade discrimination in federal programs.
• For black Americans living in the South, the voting rights law finally secured the right to the ballot.
• President Johnson initiated a sweeping new government policy called affirmative action. Its purpose was to overcome at least some of the accumulated human damage caused by 350 years of slavery and Jim Crow, and to ensure further progress toward equality
That was the law.
This is the reality (a small part that is):
• 1960 's, a black middle class has prospered and grown rapidly. Yet millions of African-Americans remain mired in poverty in a nation bitterly divided over whether special help to minorities should continue.
• Affirmative action programs have long been under siege, vigorously attacked in Congress and the federal courts and criticized for ' ' discriminating ' ' against the white majority.
• Katznelson's principal focus is on the monumental social programs of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal and Harry Truman's Fair Deal in the 1930 's and 1940 's. He contends that those programs not only discriminated against blacks, but actually contributed to widening the gap between white and black Americans--judged in terms of educational achievement, quality of jobs and housing, and attainment of higher income.
• the federal government discriminated against black citizens as it created and administered the sweeping social programs that provided the vital framework for a vibrant and secure American middle class.
• At the time, most blacks in the labor force were employed in agriculture or as domestic household workers. Members of Congress from the Deep South demanded that those occupations be excluded from the minimum wage, Social Security, unemployment insurance and workmen's compensation.
• African-American veterans received significantly less help from the G.I. Bill than their white counterparts. ' ' Written under Southern auspices, ' ' he reports, ' ' the law was deliberately designed to accommodate Jim Crow.
• thousands of black veterans in the South--and the North as well--were denied housing and business loans, as well as admission to whites-only colleges and universities.
• In New York and northern New Jersey, ' ' fewer than 100 of the 67, 000 mortgages insured by the G.I. Bill supported home purchases by nonwhites. ' '
To be clear: my bullet points do not cover the fact that Ira Katxnelson's criticism is not of the social programs; the 'New Deal' & the 'Fair Deal' or the G.I. Bill themselves, but the unequal implementation of them by those that sought the division this inequality provided to a purpose
Also in the discussion is Salamishah Tillet author of the book:
Sites of Slavery: Citizenship and Racial Democracy in the Post–Civil Rights Imagination
First video is Melissa Harris Perry & Ta-Nehisi Coates
(short ad – sorry)
Link to Melissa Harris Perry & Ta-Nehisi Coates: http://video.msnbc.msn.com/...
Then Rep. John Conyers & Ira Katznelson
(short ad – sorry)
Link to Melissa Harris Perry with more video discussions with Ta-Nehisi Coates; Rep. John Conyers and others; fair housing; GI Bill; separate but "equal"; http://video.msnbc.msn.com/...
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Everything we are seeing today; the gutting of the Voting Rights Act, massive Red state Jim Crow voter suppression laws (H/T to Denise Oliver Velez), Stand your Ground laws, absolute rejection of any progress on immigration reform including a long list of assaults on civil rights, has been the republicans platform; and that includes the republican activist half of the Supreme Court.
The GOP is the enemy of progress, the environment and of people, and despite their claims of "bootstraps" or "self made" or "we built this", what the GOP is desperate to hide and nearly every action or piece of legislation and their transparent 'projection', lying and refusal to accept facts proves, is that they believe none of this as they tell it. (see Paul Ryan in the video at the very bottom of the page)
Equal opportunity is anathema to the Grand Old Party, it always has been; Inequality of opportunity is at the very core of it, even the name "Grand" "Old" "Party" reeks of privilege and unshared opportunity these days - We Dems are exposing that. Let's keep it up :)
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So this is more of a compilation of what I've been fortunate to have read by all these authors in the last few days or so. And a H/T to them all. I hope putting all this work together in one place will make it easier to reach more people. (If I've overlooked other authors on this, any comments with links will be greatly appreciated)
Also too; I thought to put some focus on the RWNJ platform of gutting affirmative action once again
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Thx for stopping by & best wishes on this memorial day weekend everybody :)