The expression “affirmative action”, which has also become known in Brazil, originates in the United States in the 1960s. Apparently, the expression was created in a document by Lyndon Johnson, when he was still a senator and chaired the Commission on Equal Opportunities of job. Johnson advised President Einsenhower to change federal contracting rules “to impose not merely the negative duty to avoid discrimination, but the affirmative duty to employ plaintiffs.”
From then on, affirmative action was almost automatically identified with the protection of African Americans, although it was more than that. The “racialization” of this policy would have enormous effects on American society, marked as few (but not so few) by the shadow of black slavery.
On a certain occasion, General Collin Powel said something about it:
“For those who say preference systems are bad, I would like to remind you of preference systems they find acceptable: tax deductions on mortgages, benefits for veterans, colleges that eagerly recruit students who are good at football or gymnastics. As you can see, we are not against preferences, we are just against preferences that relate to skin color.” General Colin Powell, USA Weekend, 16 / 11 / 1997
Powell was prompted to give his opinion for a simple reason – he was black and born in Harlem. Literally, he had lived this drama in his own skin. But he was far from being a “radical”. He was part of George W. Bush's team and was even considered as a Republican candidate for president of the republic.
The general-minister's phrase could perhaps serve as an advertising call for a provocative book by Ira Katznelson. Its about When Affirmative Action was White - An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America. The book was published in 2006 and, in a way, opened the way to an intriguing line of investigation. Recently, for example, the following were released on this track: White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide, by Carol Anderson (2016) and The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America, by Richard Rothstein (2017).
The basic theme of Ira Katznelson's (IK, hereafter) book is this: "How the cumulative effects of several federal government policies in the 1930s and 1040s shaped affirmative action for whites." And the subtitle adds a subtopic: this is not talked about.
IK shows how pro-white affirmative actions were many. And of enormous consequences. For example, Roosevelt's New Deal laws in the 1930s favored workers. IK shows how racist Southern politicians skillfully manipulated this distance so as to maintain a constant veto power over Washington's social policies.
IK tells in detail how American history in the 20th century, especially after Roosevelt, was marked by a paradox – “progressive” policies federalized the country, but, at the same time, the execution of these policies was biased by a mischievous use of “federalism” and “local autonomy”. The programs were “universal”, that is, in the lyrics they did not discriminate against black people. The problem is the distance between the letter, the declaration of noble objectives, and the execution (in whose hands it was).
An all-white way of being
In some demonstrations, this fierce defense of state autonomy and opposition to the “tyranny” of the federal government bordered on the unbelievable. See this pearl, in the editorial of Charleston News and Courier in 1934:
“With our local policies dictated by Washington, we will no longer have the civilization we are used to”
This “civilization” to which the newspaper referred was nothing less than the practice of racial segregation – by fire and iron, often literally. A few years after this editorial, Americans would go to arms to force some Germans to give up the “civilization to which they were becoming accustomed.” We know who she was.
Congressmen from the racist and oligarchic “Deep South” were masters of maneuvers that distorted the applications and effects of federal policies. They managed to establish, in practice, a kind of veto power. Funds and general rules were defined by the federal government, confronting the “civilization” of southern whites. They smelled like “universal policies”, without color. But the execution was left in the hands of local powers, who restored the “civilization to which we are accustomed”.
The south had a special trap, white, white. By law, states counted their black population, recorded by the census, to have many deputies. But the states had the power to define who had the right to vote and be voted for. In any election – local or not. And the rules were very curious, to put it mildly. Until the mid-60s, for example, in some Southern states, a white person registered almost automatically. A black man had to appear before a local judge, recite a portion of the constitution, requested by the judge, and then explain that item. The judge determined whether it was sufficient.
In this way, southerners had many deputies (proportional to the population), but only the white party chose these deputies. And they were, evidently, white in skin and white in beliefs. Were blacks counted to increase the strength of the Southern States? It would be more accurate to say that they were counted to increase the strength of their masters.
Let's look at a subtle example of ignoring black people: the social rights implemented by the New Deal in the 1930s – such as access to retirement and labor defense policies. The law simply said that certain categories of workers would not be included in the rules – domestic workers and rural workers. But... more than 60% of the black workforce, at the time, was under these headings. And about 75% of them were in the Southern States. They were outside the retirement law, the minimum wage law, the regulations on working hours, the right to unionize. Without the law talking about skin color. It didn't need to.
Another bias. The other New Deal policies – relief for victims of the depression – were administered by the agency called the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA). The costs of the policies were shared with the states, but close to 60% of FERA's funds came from the federal treasury. This proportion rose to close to 90% in the Southern States, the hardest hit region. However, even though the funds and program design were concentrated in Washington, execution was placed in the hands of local authorities. And then they were filtered discretionarily.
GI BILL – a Marshall Plan for internal use
In other words, the letter of the law did not say that “it was not for black people”. But... The old “deep South”, slave-owning and oligarchic, even a century after the civil war, followed the tradition of the founding fathers. After all, these, almost without exception, were slave owners. The famous George Washington, for example, owned around 400 slaves. And one hundred of them were children – in other words, he wasn't just a slave owner, he had a slave nursery.
It was in this way, in an uneven way, that the famous New Deal was implemented, marking a decade that divided American history into a radically distinct before and after.
But the pro-white bias of notable post-World War II policies was even more surprising. One of them, which changed the face of the country, deserves attention. This is the GI BILL, the so-called veterans law, an aid package for those demobilized from the Second World War. Slightly smaller packages came in later editions of the law – for the Korean, Vietnam, Gulf wars. But the GI BILL of the 1940s was something much bigger. Some considered it a true internal Marshall Plan or a New Deal for veterans and their families. There are several books presenting the program to the general public. For those interested, here's a sample: The Gill Bill - the New Deal for Veterans, by Glenn Altschuler; When Dreams Came True, by Michael Benett; Soldiers to Citizens, by Suzanne Mettler. Keith Olsen's book - The GI Bill, the Veterans, and the Colleges - brings an intriguing collection of period photos, illustrating the narrative.
Was the GI Bill another New Deal, a savior of the nation? Yes, but... once again, this affirmative action had a white face. And, once again, segregation would not occur through the letter of the law, but through the form of its execution, which the southerners forced, once again exploiting the “federalist” aversion against the “tyranny of central power”. In this way, the federal government created a program, gave the money, but the white power in the states and localities decided how to distribute it.
It is not an exaggeration to say that the GI BILL was indeed a Marshall Plan – in fact the resources were greater than that transfusion of resources, which helped to rebuild Europe. IK shows that in 1948, for example, no less than 15% of the federal budget went to the GI BILL!
The package provided for aid of various types. He paid tuition fees and other expenses for those who wanted to pursue higher education – I tell part of this story in my Higher Education in the United States (ed. Unesp)... And this immediately applied to more than 2 million people. In 1949, half of higher education students received scholarships from this program! Another amount went to those who wanted to attend some type of technical or vocational school – and there were more than 5,5 million people. Other aid included financing for purchasing or building your own home – around 5 million properties were purchased or built in this way. Other resources made it possible to purchase agricultural land. Or the creation of a business in the city (a store, a workshop) – more than 200 thousand Americans embarked on this alternative, with money borrowed at negative interest rates.
The GI BILL was a social ladder for a sizable portion of Americans who came from the working class or lower middle class. In many ways, they “made America.” Michael Bennett's comment is eloquent:
“Everything was new: new houses, new cars, new jobs, new markets, new foods, new friends, new forms of entertainment... new schools, even new churches... Rarely in the history of the world have so many people enjoyed of so many new things so quickly. At the same time, these people were transforming into a new people with a social culture defined, above all, by home ownership in the suburbs.” Michael J. Bennett, When Dreams Came True: The GI Bill and the Making of Modern America. (1996).
Bennett highlights the flourishing of this suburban America. The GI BILL was, for suburban expansion, what the Homestead law – for farmland – had been for expansion into the Wild West. And suburbia meant social stratification and spatial separation, deterioration of city centers, swelling of the automobile system and of shopping centers and large supermarkets. A suburban culture of a special kind, American. In the first half of the 20th century, the United States had urbanized rapidly. In the second half, they were suburbanized. And thanks to federal highway policies, subsidies for the purchase and construction of houses, incentives for the purchase of cars and household appliances. And credit for the expansion of small and medium-sized businesses – stores, workshops and so on.
Now, what's the problem? Isn't that what a good interventionist State does? Yes, that's what the American interventionist state did, reinventing the country. Well, some unexpected and perhaps unwanted effects would emerge in the 1960s, with the revolt in the ghettos, the mobilizations of excluded black people and the discovery of poverty, denounced with echo in a book by Michael Harrington that here in Brazil was published under the title of The Other America (ed. Zahar).
The GI BILL had the same skewed profile as New Deal policies. In the letter of the law, universal access, in execution, however, says Michael Bennett,
"at the very moment when a broad set of public policies were providing most white Americans with valuable tools to improve their social well-being – secure their old age, obtain good jobs, have economic security, accumulate assets, gain middle-class status – the Most black people were left behind or left out.”
Two countries, separate but equal, equal but separate
The result produced by the application of these policies is a dramatic scenario, designed by Katznelson:
“Imagine two countries – one of them, the richest in the world, the other, among the most deprived. So suppose a global foreign aid program transferring more than $100 million, but to the rich nation, not the poor one. This is exactly what occurred in the United States as a result of the cumulative impact of the most important domestic policies of the 1930s and 1940s.”
Let's take, for example, loans for homes and investments aimed at starting a business. They would have astonishing effects in crystallizing inequalities and expanding a true apartheid social.
The different credits of the GI Bill had democratized access to capital to “build wealth”. And that is how many families made their biggest investment, that is, their own home. Katznelson shows how mortgage loans and home purchases were systematically difficult, almost impossible, for blacks. The consequences were profound and crystallized:
“In 1984, when GI Bill mortgages had mostly matured, the median family had net wealth approaching $39.135; the figure, for black families, was just $3.397, or 9% of the value of white assets. Most of the difference was due to the lack of home ownership.”
Thus, a tacit, silent, exclusive affirmative action for whites was consolidated. The one about which little is said, which becomes naturalized in the consciousness of “good men”. A scandalous (but very realistic) article on Journal of Blacks in Higher Education drew attention to this “affirmative action” in higher schools, contrasting it with strict sense affirmative action, the quota policy. Among other data, it showed how the number of black people admitted through the quota system was much lower than the so-called “legacy”, the white heirs, the children of former students who had made large donations to these schools, even if they had mediocre results in the standardized tests (SAT).
Another “preference” about which it is convenient to remain silent. Those interested can see it discussed in a book organized by Richard Kahlenberg - Affirmative Action for Rich Today - Legacy preferences in college admissions (Century Foundation Press, 2010).
As can be seen, affirmative action, as it was established and configured in the last decades of the 20th century, is far from being a reparation for trafficking and slave labor – after all, this had already been liquidated in the middle of the 19th century. Those affected by slavery are long dead – and there is no way to offer them reparation. Affirmative action policies refer to correcting a much more recent discrimination with profound consequences for black people today. Perhaps it is worth saying that it refers to a second policy of slavery, without chains or whips. Frantz Fanon once said something like this: colonization deforms the colonized, but also the colonizer. OK?
