All Rise!
Tonights lesson:
The Government Has Always Been The White Mans Boots.
When whites make comments like the one I quoted, it's time to show the white man how he "lifted himself up by the bootstraps."
In the history of this country, I as a layman ordinary average joe can point to 3 specific instances where whatever government was in power, whether a colonial or constitutional republic, provided direct economic stimulus or assistance primarily to whites. Headlights, The Homestead Acts, and the New Deal to include the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act.
In 1618, the Virginia colony passed "the Great Charter of privileges, orders, and laws." Among these laws was a provision that any person who settled in Virginia or paid for the transportation of another person to settle in Virginia would get fifty acres of land for each immigrant. The right to receive fifty acres per person, or per head, was called a headright. It got even better for colonists as those who paid for slaves also got 50 acres per slave. The practice was continued by the government of Virginia remaining in effect for 161 years until May 1779. Headrights were not only limited to Virginia. The
headright system was used in Maryland, Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. Headrights were just the first of many government handouts of free stuff or guarantees providing whites with economic development assistance.
The Homestead Acts passed in 1862, gave away 246 million acres of land. Research shows that 99.73 percent of that land went to whites, including white immigrants. 1.5 million white families were given free land or the equivalent of a minimum of $500,000 per family. Today 93 million whites still live on homestead land, which is at least 40 percent of the white population in America. That land has helped whites accumulate the wealth they have today.
The National Housing Act was a law passed by Congress and signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1934. This law created the
Federal Housing Administration or the FHA. The National Housing Act is probably the policy that has provided the greatest impact on individual wealth accumulation in modern America. Unfortunately, the formation of the FHA and its guaranteed loan program only worked to increase the white advantage. This law expanded the power of the federal government which was beneficial to its monitoring of the American economy. Many of today’s republicans complaining about how government expansion is wrong, benefitted from this government expansion. I say this because the FHA was able to create a guaranteed home loan program whereby potential homebuyers could get bank loans guaranteed against default by the government. But the government had standards and most of those standards were based on racist beliefs.
Between 1934 and 1968, the FHA implemented and put into practice a policy that still negatively impacts communities today. It began by publishing
The Underwriting Manual which set the guidelines real estate agents used to assess the value and creditworthiness of homes and neighborhoods. This manual promoted racist real estate practices by defending racially restrictive covenants and segregated communities. Due to this manual, the FHA was able to establish a neighborhood grading system based purely on false racist perceptions.
Redlining was the name of that grading system.
The Social Security Act of 1935 created the
Social Security program, state unemployment insurance, and assistance to single women with children. Today most Americans love the program. However, when the act was signed, the law was made to exclude occupations that were mainly occupied by blacks. When President Roosevelt signed the law, 65 percent of blacks in America were ineligible. So for years a majority of blacks were excluded from social security savings and could not get unemployment.
The assistance to single women with children part of the Social Security Act. Title 4 or IV of the Social Security Act of 1935 called for grants in aid to be provided to each stated as Aid To Dependent Children.
“For the purpose of enabling each State to furnish financial assistance, as far as practicable under the conditions in such State, to needy dependent children, there is hereby authorized to be appropriated for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1936, the sum of $24,750,000, and there is hereby authorized to be appropriated for each fiscal year thereafter a sum sufficient to carry out the purposes of this title. The sums made available under this section shall be used for making payments to States which have submitted, and had approved by the Board, State plans for aid to dependent children.”
Eventually, the name of the program was changed to Aid to Families with Dependent Children. This was welfare folks.
Assistance for single moms with children without daddy at home. In 1935. Blacks were excluded.
The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 created the minimum wage and time and a half overtime pay for working over forty hours a week. Child labor was eliminated by this act. All these were good things but… This is the trouble with so many things in the history of America. There is always a but. Being imperfect, we all have buts and not just the ones we sit on. Yet in some cases, the word but comes before critical facts that change how we see things. In every law that was passed as part of The New Deal, Roosevelt had to make a compromise with southern representatives to get the votes he needed. In the case of the FLSA, he decided that industries would be excluded from the regulations where the majority of workers were black. Because of this, blacks were paid less than the minimum wage.
On June 22, 1944, President Roosevelt signed the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act, better known as the G.I. Bill. This law provided benefits for veterans returning from the Second World War. Funds were paid for college tuition, low-cost home loans, and unemployment insurance. As in every other program during this time southern congressmen fought passage of these laws unless there were provisions that limited access to blacks. The G.I Bill was no different.
Democratic congressmen in the south fought against provisions of the GI Bill out of fear that returning black veterans might be able to pressure southern whites using public support for veterans to end the white dependence on cheap black labor and the white racial preferences better known as, “the southern “way of life.” Southern Democrats using the same tactics they used to make certain other policies in the
New Deal helped as few black people as possible, wanted benefits to be administered by the states. Mississippi Congressman John Rankin was the ringleader in that regard. He and other Southern Democrats knew doing that would allow southern states to do what each state had been doing since the Civil Rights Cases. That would be states implementing policies full of loopholes and restrictions that would be enforced on blacks but not whites thereby ensuring the GI Bill would primarily benefit whites.
Northern Republicans gave southern Democrats what they wanted.
The reality of the G.I. Bill is that black veterans were sabotaged at nearly every opportunity. Due to the racism in our society that overflowed into the military, blacks were disproportionately dishonorably discharged. Dishonorable discharge disqualified veterans from benefits, so that stopped some black veterans. Acts by white terrorists were committed against black veterans. Some black veterans survived the war, came home, tried to use the benefits they so rightfully earned, and ended up getting lynched. Due to segregation, black veterans could often not access the same classes or training as their white counterparts. When the VA wasn’t trying to send black veterans to vocational schools, it was sending the large majority of them to black colleges that had been underfunded since the 1890 Morrill Act and the Plessy decision.
Northern universities were slow to admit blacks.
“In 1947, some 70,000 African American veterans were unable to obtain admission to crowded, under-resourced black colleges. The University of Pennsylvania—one of the least-discriminatory schools at the time—enrolled only 40 African American students in its 1946 student body of 9,000.” Southern universities? Forget about it. “
After World War II, blacks wanting to attend college in the South were restricted to about 100 public and private schools, few of which offered education beyond the baccalaureate and more than a quarter of which were junior colleges, with the highest degree below the B.A.”
I am going to present a policy here that many will not believe has benefitted whites. However, the statistics regarding white wealth between the time the policy was implemented until now shows that this program has benefitted white families more than anyone else by increasing family income due to the creation of more double wage-earning families. That policy is Affirmative Action.
“Hoping to create in white men and women a shared sense of victimization at the hands of people of color, conservatives have made sure to ignore whatever gains have come to women through affirmative action and have sought to “racialize” the debate and its attendant imagery.”
Tim Wise
Some will ask, “How do you figure? Affirmative Action was made for blacks! Wrong! Affirmative Action was created to combat discrimination and blacks have not been the only ones discriminated against. So here we introduce another protected group, women. That includes white women.
The increases in white women graduating college then entering into higher-paying fields formerly dominated by men increased the earnings of white women. Since white men were already disproportionately represented in high-paying positions, as white women married those men, their earnings combined with his further increased white wealth.
So when a white person says something like this:
It shows they are completely ignorant.
HERE ENDETH THE LESSON!
