emopf.blogg.se - When Affirmative Action Was White by Ira Katznelson

Conceding that 'we are not completely sure why this is', he stressed the need to adopt bold new policies of affirmative action to remedy the disabilities following from two centuries of oppression.

In June 1965, President Lyndon Johnson asked in a sweeping and assertive address why the black population of the United States had fallen even further behind the country's white majority during the two decades since the end of the Second World War, despite the era's sustained national prosperity.

It also misses the chance to come to terms with how the federal government in the 1930s and 1940s contributed to the persistence of two Americas. But that nostalgia requires a heavy dose of historical amnesia.

Others, taking a longer view, yearned for a burst of activism patterned on the New Deal. Understandably, most commentators focused on the woeful federal response. Hurricane Katrina's violent winds and waters tore away the shrouds that ordinarily mask the country's racial pattern of poverty and neglect.