Table of Contents

Contents

Preface

Introduction

1. America’s First Undeserving and Deserving Poor: Beneficiaries of the Freedmen’s Bureau and Civil War Veterans’ Pensions

2. White Security: The Birth of the American Welfare State

3. An Assault on White Privilege: Civil Rights and the Great Society

4. The Path Bends: Retrenchment from Nixon to Reagan-Bush

5. Racially Charged Policy Making: Crime and Welfare Reform in the Clinton Years

6. Addressing "America’s Constant Curse": The Politics of Civil Rights in the Clinton Years

7. Whose Welfare System Is It Anyway? The Three Tracks of Social Citizenship and Racial Inequality

8. "The Problem of Race": American Social Policy at the Dawn of a New Century

Conclusion

Appendix

Index

About the Author

Linda Faye Williams is Associate Professor of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland. She is the author of From Exclusion to Inclusion (1992).

Reviews

"This excellent, passionate, well-researched, and well-written book is a must read!" - S. D. Borchert, Choice; "In The Constraint of Race, a passionately argued book studded with trenchant insights, Linda Williams convincingly demonstrates that the U.S. welfare state was built on the basis of white advantage and black disadvantage. Williams puts race into the story of the American welfare state in a way that cannot be ignored. This is a splendid book by a consummate scholar." -Michael K. Brown, author of Race, Money, and the American Welfare State; "The Constraint of Race is a first-rate book by a thoughtful scholar-participant. Engaging an ongoing controversial debate, the author convincingly sustains her thesis that race continues to be a driving force in the formulation and implementation of social policy in the United States. Williams's analyses link the past to the present in an intelligent, comprehensive way that provides an understanding of the important word in her title, 'legacies.'" -Charles V. Hamilton, Columbia University"