Race, Money, and the American Welfare State

Michael K. Brown is Professor of Politics at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He is the author of Working the Street: Police Discretion and the Dilemmas of Reform.

A sound understanding of the present must begin with the kind of analysis of the past that Brown provides in this provocative piece of scholarship.- Joseph P. McCormick II, Howard University (American Political Science Review) Brown offers an original and a provocative interpretation of the American welfare state and its limits.... By showing how policy decisions have structured and restructured the political environment shaping policy, his analysis of the interplay of policy and politics is a masterful contribution to social theory and history. And his argument about the disproportionate exclusion of African Americans from America's welfare state is one that should concern all scholars. Indeed, it should concern all citizens.- Gerald Friedman, University of Massachusetts at Amherst (Journal of Economic History) Historians will find Brown's synthesis on race, welfare, and taxes provocative.- Julian Zeilizer, State University of New York, Albany, NY (The Journal of American History) This is an important book for students of race and social policy.- Dalton Conley, Yale University (American Journal of Sociology) Brown provides an exceptionally rich history of the emergence of a 'racially stratified welfare state' during the New Deal.... Brown's analysis of the systematic exclusion of blacks from mainstream economic reforms and private benefits and the stigmatizing ways in which they are admitted to public programs has important implications for sketching the political economy of American democracy and for assessing contemporary responses to inner-city poverty.(Virginia Quarterly Review) Political scientist Michael K. Brown believes that race penetrates the deepest roots of America's welfare state. Although Brown departs from the focus on gender popular in recent welfare state historiography, he remains alert to its impact, and his observations about gender are trenchant.... Striking and controversial insights pepper his discussion of these other corners of the welfare state.(American Historical Review)