When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America

by Ira Katznelson

Overview

A groundbreaking work that exposes the twisted origins of affirmative action.

In this "penetrating new analysis" (New York Times Book Review) Ira Katznelson fundamentally recasts our understanding of twentieth-century American history and demonstrates that all the key programs passed during the New Deal and Fair Deal era of the 1930s and 1940s were created in a deeply discriminatory manner. Through mechanisms designed by Southern Democrats that specifically excluded maids and farm workers, the gap between blacks and whites actually widened despite postwar prosperity. In the words of noted historian Eric Foner, "Katznelson's incisive book should change the terms of debate about affirmative action, and about the last seventy years of American history."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393347142
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	03/04/2013
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	NOOK Book
Pages:	272
Sales rank:	421,133
File size:	963 KB

About the Author

Ira Katznelson is Columbia University's Interim Provost, Ruggles Professor of Political Science and History, and Deputy Director of Columbia World Projects. Having served as president of the American Political Science Association, he is a member of the Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. He is also the author of When Affirmative Action Was White and Fear Itself, winner of the Bancroft Prize in History (2014).

What People are Saying About This

Henry Louis Gates Jr.

Katznelson’s explosive analysis provides us with a new and painful understanding of how politics and race intersect.

Editorial Reviews

"[An] intriguing study" ---Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher

A penetrating new analysis.

Nick Kotz - New York Times Book Review

A fresh, highly readable, first-rate history.

Sanford D Horowitt - San Francisco Chronicle

When Affirmative Action Was White was one of the first books that helped me concretely understand how racism was embedded into federal policy.”

Clint Smith

Katznelson’s explosive analysis provides us with a new and painful understanding of how politics and race intersect.

Henry Louis Gates Jr.

Ira Katznelson has made a major contribution to the affirmative action debate…[His] book makes as strong a case as I have ever seen for vigorous action to bring about equal opportunities for African-Americans.

George M. Frederickson - New York Review of Books

A gem of a book.

David Oshinsky - The Nation

A fresh, highly readable, first-rate history of public policy that gives us new insights and arguments for addressing . . . undemocratic gaps of income and wealth.”— Sanford D Horowitt

San Francisco Chronicle