Psychology assignment.

THE CREATION OF THE WELFARE STATE-THE NEW DEAL PROGRAMS CREATED UNDER THE NEW DEAL WERE GENDER CATEGORICAL, NOT UNIVERSAL, NOT RACE, CLASS, AND GENDER NEUTRAL

! Question 5 from from Lectures and Williams (especially from Chapter 2)

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Question 5 Critically discuss in detail how the New Deal policies (rather than eliminating White privilege) expanded White privilege legally, and excluded many African Americans and the poor from many of its programs.

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New Deal ■ New Deal was in response to the Great Depression and criticisms of the Roosevelt

Administration ■ New Deal helped to preserve capitalism and keep the market functioning ■ There was a increase of protests therefore they expanded provisions ■ Social Security Act of 1935-first national welfare system in the U.S.

– White men were the key players in shaping the Social Security Act of 1935 ■ Unemployment insurance provided a safety net ■ Child labor was outlawed and the minimum wage law was passed ■ Labor Unions increased from 3 million members in 1929 to 14 million in 1945 ■ The number of federal government employees doubled from 1929 to 1939 ■ Two legs of the social welfare state

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Leg 1 of the Welfare State: For the Middle and Upper Classes

■ Social Insurance and Private Sector Programs ■ For those who work in selective occupations (middle and upper class) and based on job ■ Received more generous aid ■ Social Security Act of 1935

– Old Age Insurance (OAI) ■ excluded farm laborers, domestic service workers, the self-employed,

schoolteachers, and clerics where most blacks were employed ■ Over 40% black males were excluded compared to 29.7% white males, and

79.3% of black females compared to 26.5% of white females – Survivors’ disability insurance

■ Medicare ■ Private Retirement package (401k) and pension ■ Home Mortgages- renters do not have the same opportunities

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Leg 2 of the Welfare State: For the Working Class and Poor ■ Public Assistance Welfare Programs ■ For people that were missed in Leg 1-income below level set by government ■ Not indexed-there is not a national standard ■ Very stingy and most despised social welfare ■ TANF ■ Medicaid ■ Food stamps ■ Federal Housing Administration

– FHA policies mandated the selection of tenants by race and racially segregated areas (redlining)

■ Old Age Assistance (OAA) – Disproportionally served blacks

■ Aid to Dependent Children (ADC) 5

Other New Deal Programs ■ Blacks were either excluded or discriminated upon ■ Federal Emergency Relief Act (FERA)

– The first New Deal federal aid program – Both whites and blacks received governmental support

■ The proportion of Blacks receiving assistance was only half of that of Southern whites, even through the rate of impoverished for Blacks was substantially higher

■ Employment Programs – Works Progress Administration (WPA) – Civilian Conservative Corps (CCC) – The CCC and WPA created jobs for millions of Americans but at the same time many

Blacks were placed in dead end jobs in declining areas or were excluded from employment all together

– More than ¾ of black women were forces to become domestic workers or unskilled jobs which had lower wages

– Black farmers and sharecroppers were adversely affected by the New Deal

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Hidden Welfare System ■ Grew out of the National Labor Relations Act ■ Unions were controlled by whites

– Private benefits were derived from collective bargaining and unionization was ties to professional status

– Excluded jobs where blacks and women were occupied in because they were not employed in jobs that received benefits

– Private pensions

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New Deal Racial Implications ■ Membership in the higher class reduces risks of heart attacks, diabetes, infectious disease,

arthritis, and some cancers – Ones social class is a higher predictor of health and mortality outcomes than genetics or

exposure to smoking – Higher classes can afford better medical care

■ New Deal was used to restore the prior positions of privilege which was affected by the Great Depression. It did not dismantle the system of white privilege

■ Legally extended white male privilege by giving the most benefits to white dominated occupations, leaving aid distribution to local governments, and supporting racial segregation practices in the workplace

■ State Rights gave power to the states

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Politics of the New Deal ■ President Roosevelt was not concerned with relief. Welfare to him was “a narcotic and subtle destroyer

of the human spirit” ■ The American Welfare state of the 1930’s reproduce (not transformed) the exploitation, oppression,

domination, and discrimination of Blacks and other minorities ■ The election of FDR created an uneasy coalition among Northern Democrats, representing northern

capital, Midwestern farmers, and organized labor who favored national programs operated by the federal government

■ Southern Democrats opposed any possibility of federal inclusion in the South’s cheap labor system ■ A compromise among the Democrats in Congress led to strengthening the committee system and

thereby in favor to the South. Southern Democrats gained regional autonomy on questions of race, gender and class

■ Southern states in the cotton plantation areas dictate the rate and structure of assistance in ways that ensured that the Black sharecropper tenant dominate planter class relationship continue to thrive , thus ensuring maximization of profits by the dominant planter class.

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Politics of the New Deal ■ Southern politics, the federal government, congressional politics, and the federal government

lack of action in enforcing equality, and the politics of race, class, gender and exploitation dictated the types of social, economic, and political well-being of Blacks

■ The South manipulated federal funds in a way to maintain cheap labor force, maximize profits and keep Blacks at the bottom of the nation’s economy even with government assistance.

■ According to Williams, “...the political economy of the South, Southern dominance of the committee system in Congress, the political needs of FDR, and the Democratic Party, the concomitant politics of race, dictated by the structure of the American welfare state at its official birth. The result was segmented politics that would not undermine the control of African American labor by the dominant planter class. In consequence, the private practices that isolated Blacks in the plantation South and in low paid unskilled employment in declining areas of the economy and in the ghetto areas of the North received tacit official sanction and reinforcement from the federal government” (2003: 90).

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