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

As I read this book I was reminded of the Broadway play and subsequent movie '1776' about the creation of the Declaration of Independence. In the play the Southern representatives agreed to support the Declaration only if words prohibiting slavery were taken out. Politics is the art of compromise, and without the Southern states there would have been no Declaration. So slavery was left in.

In the time of Roosevelt the Southern politicians had enough clout to stop all of the New Deal legislation if it were made truly color blind. As is often the case, it took a politician from the affected states to force legislation through the Congress to right this wrong. Lyndon Johnson had been in long enough that he truly understood how to get what he wanted through the congress.

In this book, the author explains how nominaly racially blind legislation and programs were in fact deliberatly and subtly were able to exclude blacks from participation. He uses this to make a plea to eliminate poverty and inequality in America.



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