Segregated Origins of Social Security
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A01=Mary Poole
Aid for Dependent Children (AFDC)
Author_Mary Poole
Category=JBSL
Category=JK
Category=JKSB
Category=NHK
committee on Economic Security
Congressional Southerners 1930s
discrimination
Edwin Witte
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Federal Children's Bureau
Grace Abbott
NAACP
New Deal
public policy
Social Security Act
U.S. race relations
W. E. B. DuBois
Walter White
welfare
Product details
- ISBN 9780807856888
- Weight: 420g
- Dimensions: 170 x 233mm
- Publication Date: 30 May 2006
- Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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The relationship between welfare and racial inequality has long been understood as a fight between liberal and conservative forces. Mary Poole challenges this basic assumption. Meticulously reconstructing the behind-the-scenes politicking that gave birth to the 1935 Social Security Act, Poole demonstrates that segregation was built into the very foundation of the welfare state because white policy makers - both liberal and conservative - shared an interest in preserving white race privilege. Although northern white liberals were theoretically sympathetic to the plight of African Americans, Poole says, their primary aim was to save the American economy by salvaging the pride of America's ""essential"" white male industrial workers. The liberal framers of the Social Security Act elevated the status of Unemployment Insurance and Social Security - and the white workers they were designed to serve - by differentiating them from welfare programs, which served black workers. Revising the standard story of the racialized politics of Roosevelt's New Deal, Poole's arguments also reshape our understanding of the role of public policy in race relations in the twentieth century, laying bare the assumptions that must be challenged if we hope to put an end to racial inequality in the twenty-first.
Mary Poole teaches history at Prescott College in Arizona. She previously served as an analyst with the Washington State Senate, where she drafted the budget for state and federal welfare programs.
