Michael Dawson makes a provocative argument, that segments of the New Deal deliberately excluded black folks and therefore, black folks should be more skeptical of the stimulus than Republicans. Dawson writes:
It is often forgotten that, for all of its benefits, the New Deal reinforced structural black economic disadvantage in many ways. It is certainly true that the Work Projects Administration (WPA) put many blacks to work, and many blacks also benefited from the relief programs.
But it is also true that key programs of the New Deal consciously excluded blacks. Black farmers were excluded directly from the agricultural programs and were often forced off the land. Southern and Southwestern legislators insisted that social security legislation was written to exclude the vast majority of black and Latino workers (tenant farmers and domestic workers). The Home Owners' Loan Corporation and its successor, the Federal Housing Administration, explicitly banned loans to neighborhoods with any blacks, thus excluding black homeowners from the main American engine for generating wealth—homeownership. It was the federal government that invented the notorious practice of redlining, the legacy of which can still be seen in the slower rates at which homes appreciate in black neighborhoods than in white neighborhoods.
Dawson then notes, "Of course, President Obama’s stimulus package and proposed budget do not have the racial exclusions that were contained in the New Deal era legislation." Well it seems to me that is the relevant point, isn't it? All of the examples Dawson cites are deliberate racial exclusions, they weren't the peripheral effect of a bill not focused on alleviating "black problems." If the New Deal specifically excluded black folks in some areas--but Obama's stimulus bill does nothing of the sort, it seems sort of silly to suggest that black people should be really skeptical that the bill will do what it's supposed to do simply because of a more than sixty year old attempt at economic recovery that deliberately excluded blacks.
It seems to me that if black folks are going to be skeptical about the stimulus, we should be skeptical for the same reasons everyone else is, like the fact that even the White House doesn't seem to believe the bill was big enough.
-- A. Serwer
