The Color of Welfare: How Racism Undermined the War on Poverty Book

Thirty years after Lyndon Johnson declared a "War on Poverty," the United States still lags behind most Western democracies in national welfare systems, lacking such basic programs as national health insurance and child care support. Some critics have explained the failure of social programs by citing our tradition of individual freedom and libertarian values, while others point to weaknesses within the working class. In The Color of Welfare, Jill Quadagno takes exception to these claims, placing race at the center of the "American Dilemma." From Reconstruction to Lyndon Johnson and beyond, Quadagno reveals how American social policy has continually foundered on issues of race. Drawing on extensive primary research, Quadagno shows how the anti-poverty programs became inextricably intertwined with the civil rights movement. As progress for job training, a guaranteed annual income, and housing for the poor became linked to such controversial issues as affirmative action, welfare reform, and racial intergration of the suburbs, a white backlash arose that undermined support for the welfare state. Once again America witnessed a "continual reconfiguration of racial inequality in the nation's social, political, and economic institutions." In the 1960s, the United States embarked on a journey to resolve the "American Dilemma." Yet instead of finally instituting full democratic rights for all its citizens, the policies enacted in that turbulent decade failed dismally. The Color of Welfare reveals the root cause of this failure--the inability to address racial inequality.Read More