The best books about racism and the politics of public investment

I loved The Sum of Us because it tells the political and economic history of race relations and investment in public infrastructure, benefits, and services in a readable and accessible manner. 

McGhee recounts shocking stories of the ways that, in the midst of the Civil Rights Movement, hundreds of communities across the United States—governed by White people—chose to close or bulldoze public amenities like pools, parks, and campgrounds rather than desegregate them.

This is a sad story of the way that a generation of White Americans cut off their own nose to spite their face. In the decades since, more and more local amenities because privatized and fee-based, making it harder for poor and working-class people of all races to enjoy their communities.

The Color of Welfare is a classic text on the history of American social policy.

The American welfare state was created by President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal in the wake of the Great Depression. Quadagno explains how Roosevelt compromised with conservative southern members of Congress in order to enact the New Deal into law. These consequences shaped early anti-poverty policies in ways that disproportionately excluded African Americans by design. 

Quadagno then traces how this legacy of racially discriminatory social policymaking continued through President Johnson’s War on Poverty in the 1960s. The Color of Welfare taught me why the American welfare state is so underdeveloped compared to the nations of Western Europe and why it is characterized by so many racial disparities.

Manufacturing Decline educated me about the reasons why the steady loss of jobs, infrastructure, and population from Rust Belt cities in the latter half of the twentieth century was not a natural, unavoidable consequence of changes in the economy.

Hackworth tells a compelling history of the ways that Republican-controlled state legislatures enacted a variety of zoning, tax, and spending policies that facilitated the flow of resources out of cities (disproportionately populated by African Americans and Latinos) toward suburbs (disproportionately populated by White Americans).

The book includes a number of shocking quotes from Republican political advisors who admitted later in life that they knew how their policies would hurt Black communities.

Why Americans Hate Welfare has been very influential to my own scholarship. 

Gilens examined a paradox: a majority of Americans consistently express support for government spending to aid people experiencing poverty, but a majority also consistently express opposition to welfare—which is, itself, government spending to fight poverty! 

Through a careful analysis of data, Gilens demonstrates that Americans hate welfare because they associate that word with the stereotype that African Americans are lazy and prefer to live off government handouts rather than work. 

Think about President Reagan’s infamous condemnation of “welfare queens.” Gilens’ book is one of the clearest examples I’ve encountered of the ways that cynical political appeals to racism can sabotage public support for government spending for the common good.

I love The Government-Citizen Disconnect because it examines the relationship between social policy and politics. 

Mettler demonstrates that over 90% of Americans receive financial benefits from the government, but most of these are submerged in the tax code (like the home mortgage interest deduction). People who only receive submerged benefits believe that the government does little to improve their personal lives. In contrast, the more antipathy they feel toward people who receive visible government benefits (like food stamps), the more they also express cynical, negative attitudes toward government in general.

Since White Americans are more likely to receive submerged benefits than Americans of color, this pattern fuels racialized “us vs. them” attitudes when, in fact, the government financially buffers most Americans from the full costs of the free market in a variety of ways.