Race, Institutions, and the Administration of Social Policy

Abstract

The New Deal marked a critical conjuncture of civil rights and welfare policy in American political development. During the Progressive Era, civil rights policy and social policy developed independently and often antithetically. While the American state expanded its reach in economic regulation and social welfare, laying the institutional and intellectual groundwork for the New Deal, policies aimed at protecting the rights of minorities progressed barely at all (McDonagh 1993). But with the Great Depression, the welfare and civil rights agendas came together powerfully. For African Americans, who had already been relegated to the bottom of the political economy, the Depression created even more desperate conditions, and issues of economic opportunity and relief became paramount. The African American political community pursued an agenda that linked advances in civil rights to expansions of the state's role in social welfare (Hamilton and Hamilton 1992).