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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," as Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal did half a century ago. The "American creed" of liberty, justice, and equality clashed with a history of active racial discrimination, says Quadagno. It is racism that has undermined the War on Poverty, and America must come to terms with this history if there is to be any hope of addressing welfare reform today. 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, for instance, how Roosevelt, in need of support from southern congressmen, excluded African Americans from the core programs of the Social Security Act. Turning to Lyndon Johnson's "unconditional war on poverty," she contends that though anti-poverty programs for job training, community action, health care, housing, and education have accomplished much, they have not been fully realized because they became inextricably intertwined with the civil rights movement of the 1960s, which triggered a white backlash. Job training programs, for instance, became affirmative action programs, programs to improve housing became programs to integrate housing, programs that began as community action to upgrade the quality of life in the cities were taken over by local civil rights groups. This shift of emphasis eventually alienated white, working-class Americans, who had some of the same needs--for health care, subsidized housing, and job training opportunities--but who got very little from these programs. At the same time, affirmative action clashed openly with organized labor, and equal housing raised protests from the white suburban middle-class, who didn't want their neighborhoods integrated. Quadagno shows that Nixon, who initially supported many of Johnson's programs, eventually caught on that the white middle class was disenchanted. He realized that his grand plan for welfare reform, the Family Assistance Plan, threatened to undermine wages in the South and alienate the Republican party's new constituency--white, southern Democrats--and therefore dropped it. 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.

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CHOICE Review

Quadagno raises a very significant policy question: Why, compared to most European countries and Canada, has the US lagged behind in enacting national welfare programs such as family and child allowances or national health insurance? According to the author, political theorists have argued historically that the American tradition of liberal values (individual rights, private property, and the distrust of state authority) and the lack of a strong labor-based political party are the two major reasons why the country has been considered lagging in social policy. Although Quadagno does not totally reject these explanations, the major theme of the book is that political theorists have ignored the factor of race in explaining this phenomenon. In an analysis of social welfare policy from the New Deal to the Community Action programs of the 1960s, she presents the position that racial segregation and/or American racism is the major impediment for not using social policy in the European and Canadian tradition to improve the quality of life for all Americans. A very significant work as the country, especially the 104th Congress, prepares to debate the issue of social welfare reform. All levels. E. A. McKinney; Cleveland State University

Booklist Review

Conservatives and defenders of consensus may deplore them, but Florida State University sociology professor Quadagno demonstrates convincingly that race, class, and gender are essential analytical categories for those who hope to understand the nation's past and to design public policies for its future. Her timely, well-researched study of the War on Poverty and the "equal-opportunity welfare state" it produced begins by dissecting the New Deal's crucial compromise: providing some economic security for working men and their families while reinforcing the color line. When the War on Poverty--under pressure from the civil rights movement--challenged that color line, its community action, housing, and job training programs came to be seen as benefiting only African Americans and indeed as threats to middle-class white Americans, the major beneficiaries of the New Deal. The Color of Welfare challenges the more accepted explanations of American exceptionalism, and insists that "the continual reconfiguration of racial inequality" is "the motor driving American history." Only by overcoming racial inequality can the U.S. reform its welfare system and redeem its democratic principles. --Mary Carroll

Notas de autor provistas por Syndetics

Jill Quadagno is Professor of Sociology and Mildred and Claude Pepper Chair in Social Gerontology at Florida State University. She is the author of The Transformation of Old Age Security.