You first have to own bootstraps

April 2, 2008

The Honest Partisan highlights something I was surprised to discover in my own reading recently:

For everyone who claims that their grandparents and great-grandparents did just fine when they got off the boat without any affirmative action, or whatever, let’s bust this myth now. The modern predominantly white American middle class is a product of government policies that, while successful, actively excluded African-Americans. The Fair Labor Standards Act. The GI Bill. Social Security. Collective bargaining. Subsidized home ownership. (Details here). The separate water fountains and riots when black people showed up at Little Rock High schools and public housing for veterans in Chicago is just gravy. [ Racism, today ]

My mother says in order to pull yourself up by your bootstraps, you must first own bootstraps. I don’t think that’s original with her. But it’s true nonetheless. These programs and policies are justly credited with helping raise people out of poverty, and if not poverty at least squalor. They gave poor people the bootstraps they needed.

Well gave them to poor white people. The US government explicitly barred black people from many of the progressive economic reforms enacted in the first half of the twentieth century.

There’s an assumption among some that black people have had everything handed to them since pretty close to the end of slavery, while white people have had to claw for every inch they’ve achieved. But as you can see that’s simply not the case. It’s not lack of will or refusal to take responsibility that’s the problem; it’s systematic legal and economic oppression.

Posted in Race