ISHCABITTLE

Jefferson Sessions’ recent concerns about discrimination against white reflects a hundred years of US policies to exclude minorities from the most obvious benefits from major social programs, like Social Security, the GI Bill, the Fair Labor Act, and the National Housing Act, because we don’t want ‘those people’ to have the same benefits as white people, do we?:

In fact, today’s socioeconomic order has been significantly shaped by federally backed affirmative action for whites. The most important pieces of American social policy — the minimum wage, union rights, Social Security and even the G.I. Bill — created during and just after the Great Depression, conferred enormous benefits on whites while excluding most Southern blacks.

Southern Democrats in Congress did this by carving out occupational exclusions; empowering local officials who were hostile to black advancement to administer the policies; and preventing anti-discrimination language from appearing in social welfare programs.

New Deal and Fair Deal initiatives created a modern middle class by enabling more Americans to attend college, secure good jobs, buy houses and start businesses. But in the waning days of Jim Crow, as a result of public policy, many African-Americans were blocked from these opportunities and fell even further behind their white counterparts. The country missed the chance to build an inclusive middle class.

The congressmen from the 17 states that practiced legal segregation constituted a pivotal bloc. When Southern-led congressional committees drafted the law that created the Social Security program in 1935, they excluded maids and farmworkers, the two dominant job categories for Southern blacks and Southwestern Latinos, from the program. This denied benefits to 66 percent of African-Americans across the country, and as much as 80 percent of Southern blacks. It also disproportionately hurt Mexican-Americans.

These exclusions “reinforced the semblance of a caste system of labor in the South and Southwest,” according to a recent study by the scholar David Stoesz. “Absent a government safety net, minority workers had to work at any wage available, until they dropped.” Although the exclusions were eliminated in the 1950s, it proved difficult for these workers to catch up, since the program required at least five years of contributions before benefits could be received.

Southern legislators introduced the same job category exclusions into other New Deal laws: the Wagner Act of 1935 that helped to expand industrial unions, the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 that mandated a 40-hour workweek and a minimum wage that explicitly left out agricultural and domestic workers.

Representative James Wilcox, a Depression-era Florida Democrat, explained the region’s position during the Fair Labor Standards Act debate: “You cannot put the Negro and the white man on the same basis and get away with it,” he declared.

When Congress passed the G.I. Bill in 1944 to help white veterans buy homes, attend college, get job training and start business ventures, it could have done the same for blacks. But at Southern lawmakers’ insistence, local officials administered these benefits. As a result, Southern blacks were left out, except for low-level vocational training. The law accommodated segregation in higher education, created job ceilings imposed by local officials, and tolerated local banks’ unwillingness to approve federally insured mortgages or small-business loans for African-Americans and Latinos.

When the federal government aided home buyers with the National Housing Act of 1934, which insured private mortgages, it might also have warded off housing segregation and helped blacks purchase homes. Instead, it supported racist covenants and typically denied mortgages to blacks. This legacy persists. The median household wealth for white families, which consists primarily of equity in housing, stands today at $134,230, according to the Economic Policy Institute. But for African-American families, it is just $11,030.

The unsettling history of this affirmative action for whites significantly widened racial gaps in income, wealth and opportunity that continue to scar American life.