Description

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A groundbreaking work that exposes the twisted origins of affirmative action.

In this "penetrating new analysis" (New York Times Book Review) Ira Katznelson fundamentally recasts our understanding of twentieth-century American history and demonstrates that all the key programs passed during the New Deal and Fair Deal era of the 1930s and 1940s were created in a deeply discriminatory manner. Through mechanisms designed by Southern Democrats that specifically excluded maids and farm workers, the gap between blacks and whites actually widened despite postwar prosperity. In the words of noted historian Eric Foner, "Katznelson's incisive book should change the terms of debate about affirmative action, and about the last seventy years of American history."

About the Author

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Ira Katznelson is Ruggles Professor of Political Science and History at Columbia University and Deputy Director of Columbia World Projects. A former president of the American Political Science Association, he is the author of many celebrated books, including Fear Itself, winner of the Bancroft Prize in History.

Praise For…

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A fresh, highly readable, first-rate history.
— Sanford D Horowitt - San Francisco Chronicle

A penetrating new analysis.
— Nick Kotz - New York Times Book Review

Ira Katznelson has made a major contribution to the affirmative action debate…[His] book makes as strong a case as I have ever seen for vigorous action to bring about equal opportunities for African-Americans.
— George M. Frederickson - New York Review of Books

A gem of a book.
— David Oshinsky - The Nation

Katznelson’s explosive analysis provides us with a new and painful understanding of how politics and race intersect.
— Henry Louis Gates Jr.

When Affirmative Action Was White was one of the first books that helped me concretely understand how racism was embedded into federal policy.

— Clint Smith, author of Counting Descent