Sociology 3901: Outline--Week Two
I. The theorists discussed in week one, and particularly Marx and Mills, primarily interested in class conflicts and social policy... but in the United States, isn't it likely that race is every bit as fundamental?
A. The New Deal/Fair Deal public policy explosion viewed through the lens of race (Katznelson, When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in 20th Century America, 2005)
1. The National Labor Relations Act... Employees shall have a right to organize unions and bargain collectively with their employers... but not farm workers or domestic workers.... and they were disproportionately black (or Latino in the Southwest)... the CIO was organizing industries that included black workers, but they were typically in the dirtier, more dangerous, and lower paying jobs (see UMD Library's video, "Struggles in Steel")
2. Social Security
a. Old age insurance: 1936 Government Pamphlet on Social Security But the initial Social Security Act did not include provisions for farm workers or domestic workers, employees of the restaurant and service industries, or health-care providers ... and they were disproportionately black... 65% of black adults fell outside the new program (it also excluded employees of the restaurant and service industries and health-care providers)
b. Unemployment compensation and Aid to Dependent Children, administered at the state and local level, which allowed for the almost total exclusion of Southern blacks
3. Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, establishing a federal minimum wage(25 cents in year 1 and 40 cents within six years) and maximum working hours (44, soon going to 40)... but farmworkers and domestic workers were excluded
Florida Representative James Wilcox: "There is another matter of great importance in the South and that is the problem of our Negro labor. There has always been a difference in the wage scale of white and colored labor. So long as Florida people are permitted to handle the matter, the delicate and perplexing problem can be handled."
B. The Selective Service Readjustment Act... by 1948, 15% of the federal budget... Funding from the federal government, but again, implementation to be carried out under state and local control.... Also allowed banks and colleges to serve only those veterans they would choose to assist or admit...
1. GI Bill for education. De Facto quotas outside the south... 1 million black GIs, but in 1948, President Truman's committee on civil rights concluded: "In many of our northern educational institutions... there is never more than token enrollment of Negroes." And in the South, blacks accepted only at historically black colleges, which were far too small and underfunded to gear up for this wave of potential students.
Katznelson: "Of veterans born between 1923 and 1928, 28% of whites but only 12% of black enrolled in college-level programs. Furthermore, blacks spent fewer months than whites in GI Bill schooling
2. GI bill for housing: 13 million new homes between 1945 and 1954, 5 million financed with VA mortgages and most of the rest with FHA mortgages, which copied VA mortgages in their practice of "redlining." K: "the vast majority of financial institutions refused to make loans to African Americans." not just in the South. "In New York and the northern New Jersey suburbs, fewer than 100 of the 67,000 mortgages insured by the GI Bill supported home purchases by non-whites."
home ownership and wealth
The net result, as K points out, is that although more blacks got assistance under the GI bill than under previous government programs, the gap between black and white was substantially widened by the GI Bill.
SECOND BIG BOOM IN SOCIAL POLICY: THE 1960S
II. Civil rights movement and black victories in public policy...See Eyes on the Prize video series in UMD library
A. Doug McAdams, Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930-1970 .... put causal diagram on the board
1. Organizations
2. Political opportunities
3. Social control
4. Collective attributions (consciousness)
B. Aldon Morris, Origins of the Civil Rights Movement
1. The role of "local movement centers" and charismatic leaders at the local level
local movement center = a social organization within a community of a subordinate group, which mobilizes, organizes and coordinates collective action aimed at achieving the ends of that subordinate group
2. Example: Birmingham, Alabama. "The Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights attacked the tripartite system of domination along several fronts: the right to have black police patrol black communities; discrimination in hiring; bus and train segregation; disfranchisement at the polls; segregation of public schools; and segregation at swimming pools, libraries, and retail stores. In Birmingham, the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, president of the ACHMR, personified the spirit the new direct action era even more than King..." (Morris, 70-71)
3. Nonviolent direct action, pioneered by Gandhi in India's struggle for independence from England... sometimes called "passive resistance," but in fact, nothing passive about it. Elites borrow strategies and tactics for maintaining power but so do social movements borrow strategies for gaining power.
C. Role of students in the civil rights struggle in Nashville, Tennessee. "Eyes on the Prize: Ain't Scared of Your Jails" UMD Library: VC 962. David Halberstam, The Children... What is there in the social situation of students that makes them a powerful force in social movements more generally?
1. Workshops training students in nonviolent direct action, led by Reverend Jim Lawson
2. Sit-ins led by Diane Nash, John Lewis, and others
3. Founding of SNCC in 1960
D. Long-term victories in terms of laws and public policy changes
1. Civil Rights Act of 1964: equal access to public accomodations and to jobs
2. Voting Rights Act of 1965
3. Fair Housing Act of 1967: main impact on upper middle class blacks, who moved to the suburbs, leaving inner city ghetto neighborhoods less crowded but in much tougher shape--see William Julius Wilson, The Truly Disadvantaged, When Work Disappears... this becomes an important theme in part II of our course
A. Why did the War on Poverty happen when it did? If Lowi is right that the corporate elite only loses control during periods of crisis, what was the crisis during the 1960s?
B. Why was the Vietnam War allowed to take priority over the War on Poverty in terms of the federal budget? (Why did the United States become involved in that war in the first place?)
1. Mills: trunk, branch, and twig decisions
2. Spitzer: social dynamite and social junk, the fiscal crisis of the capitalist state
C. Why was the War on Poverty created in such a haphazard way? Is that typical of government programs? Shouldn't there be pilot programs and careful program evaluation?
D. What were the successes and failures of the War on Poverty, and why did it eventually come to be seen by many as a failure?
E. If we view the 1960s as a crisis period (and I do), it raises some interesting questions about how such crises are resolved... unfortunately no evidence of an "invisible hand" that guarantees a resolution that favors the less powerful... a thoroughly mixed result, or a result that favors the elites, seem just as likely.... elections of Reagan as governor in California and Nixon as president, based on "law and order" campaigns...