History of White Affirmative Action & the Legacy of Racism

The Racial Equity Institute, LLC

1705-50 Acres, 30 shillings, 10, bushels of corn and a musket.1776- Declaration of Independence declares…..All “Men” created equal.1785 Land Ordinance Act-640 Acres of Land @ $1 per acre.1790-Naturalization Act-This law limited naturalization to immigrants who were "free white persons" of "good moral character. Could Own Land and Vote….1800-Land/Homestead Acts- 320 acres, payable in 4 installments @ $1.25 an acre.1848-Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo- 55%of Mexican land made available to US, included, ca.,az,nm,nv, small parts of co, wy,ks,ok. 1862-Homestead Act- !60 acres of land, Crops, 12x14 ft dwelling on land1863-Emanicipation Proclamation (re-enslavement of African Am.-”RECONSTUCTION)1922-Alien/Citizens Land Acts-Stripped thousands of aces of land from Asians after Thind case.1933 –HOLC-Home Owners Loan Corporation1934-Federal Housing Administration FHA-120 Billion in loans-98% to whites.1935-Social Security Act-Initially omitted Agricultural and Domestic Workers1944-GI Bill-Education, Employment, Mortgages/Home Loans1978-Proposition 13-18-California People Initiative for Tax Relief

40 Acres & a Mule• As Union soldiers advanced through the South, tens of thousands of freed slaves left

their plantations to follow Union general William Tecumseh Sherman's army.

• To solve problems caused by the mass of refugees, Sherman issued Special Field Orders, No. 15, a temporary plan granting each freed family forty acres of tillable land on islands and the coast of Georgia. The army had a number of unneeded mules which were also granted to settlers.

• News of "forty acres and a mule" spread quickly; freed slaves welcomed it as proof that emancipation would finally give them a stake in the land they had worked as slaves for so long.

• The orders were in effect for only one year. By June 1865, around 10,000 freed slaves were settled on 400,000 acres (160,000 ha) in Georgia and South Carolina. Soon after, President Andrew Johnson reversed the order and returned the land to its white former owners

• Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/40_acres_and_a_mule & www.pbs.org

50 acres, 30 shillings, 10 bushels of corn and a musket

 Virginia, in 1705, passed a law “requiring masters to provide white servants whose indenture time was up with ten bushels of corn, thirty shillings, and a gun…  Also, freed servants were to get 50 acres of land.”    Morgan, Edmund S.  American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia, NY: WW Norton, 1975.

Freedom dues given on completion of servitude were fixed at "10 bushels Indian corn, 30 shillings in money or goods, one well fixed musket or fusee of the value of at least 20 shillings". Women were to receive 15 bushels of corn and 40 shillings.

Source:http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~jcat2/18centvalaw.html

http://pages.suddenlink.net/phelpsdna/Southern_Phelps_Research/Non-state/Was%20Your%20Ancestor%20an%20Indentured%20Servant.htm

Land Ordinance Act of 1785

Congress set the minimum amount of land that could be purchased at one section—640 acres—and the purchase price at one dollar per acre.

Small purchases on credit were not allowed. The $640 minimum purchase placed the cost of western lands far

outside the budget of most U.S. citizens. Most of the lands went instead to wealthy land speculators, who were

also given the option of buying on credit. The speculators bought lands from the government, divided them up, and then resold them to small farmers at a profit.

Source:http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3406400516.html

1848-Treaty of Guadalupe Hildago The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the U.S.-Mexican War. Signed on 2

February 1848, it is the oldest treaty still in force between the United States and Mexico. As a result of the treaty, the United States acquired more than 500,000 square miles of valuable territory and emerged as a world power in the late nineteenth century. Resulted in a massive transfer of land, 55% of Mexico’s land base, including California, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada….. Within a generation the Mexican-Americans became a disenfranchised, poverty-stricken minority.

The US assumed an attitude of moral superiority in their negotiations of the treaty. They viewed the forcible incorporation of almost one-half of Mexico's national territory as an event foreordained by providence, fulfilling Manifest Destiny to spread the benefits of U.S. democracy to the lesser peoples of the continent. Because of its military victory the United States virtually dictated the terms of settlement. The treaty established a pattern of political and military inequality between the two countries, and this lopsided relationship has stalked Mexican and US relations ever since.

Source: http://www.pbs.org/kera/usmexicanwar/war/wars_end_guadalupe.html

Homestead Acts 1800 1862

By 1800, the minimum lot was halved to 320 acres, and settlers were allowed to pay in 4 installments, but prices remained fixed at $1.25 an acre until 1854. That year, federal legislation was enacted establishing a graduated scale that adjusted land prices to reflect the desirability of the lot. Lots that had been on the market for 30 years, for example, were reduced to 12 ½ cents per acre.

Source: http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/homestead-act/

In 1862, the Homestead Act was passed and signed into law. The new law established a three-fold homestead process: filing an application, improving the land, and filing for deed of title. Any U.S. citizen, or intended citizen, who had never borne arms against the U.S. Government could file an application and lay claim to 160 acres of surveyed Government land. For the next 5 years, the homesteader had to live on the land and improve it by building a 12-by-14 dwelling and growing crops.

1863-Emanicipation Proclamation and the Re-Enslavement of African Americans A cynical new form of slavery was resurrected from the ashes of the Civil War and

re-imposed on hundreds of thousands of African-Americans until the dawn of World War II.

Under laws enacted specifically to intimidate blacks, tens of thousands of African Americans were arbitrarily arrested, hit with outrageous fines, and charged for the costs of their own arrests. With no means to pay these ostensible “debts,” prisoners were sold as forced laborers to coal mines, lumber camps, brickyards, railroads, quarries and farm plantations. Thousands of other African Americans were simply seized by southern landowners and compelled into years of involuntary servitude. Government officials leased falsely imprisoned blacks to small-town entrepreneurs, provincial farmers, and dozens of corporations—including U.S. Steel Corp.—looking for cheap and abundant labor. Armies of "free" black men labored without compensation, were repeatedly bought and sold, and were forced through beatings and physical torture to do the bidding of white masters for decades after the official abolition of American slavery.

Source:http://www.slaverybyanothername.com/the-book/

1920 ‘s Alien Land Acts - The OZAWA Case

Whiteness was key to citizenship. In 1790 Congress had passed an act declaring that only "free white" immigrants could become naturalized citizens.

By 1920, a series of alien land acts prohibited many non-citizens from owning or leasing land. Takao Ozawa came from Japan, went to the University of California at Berkeley, uh, for a few years, then moved to Hawaii, where he had, um, a family. And he applied to become a naturalized citizen in 1915.

The Court ruled that according to the best known science Ozawa was not Caucasian, but of the Mongolian race. But the Court would not be bound by science in policing the boundaries of whiteness.

1920’s Alien Land Acts- The Thind Case

Only three months after Ozawa, the Court took up the case of Bhagat Singh Thind, a South Asian immigrant and U.S. Army veteran, who petitioned for citizenship on the grounds that Indians were of the Aryan or Caucasian race, and therefore white.

The same court that used science to determine whiteness in Ozawa three months before, now refuted its own reasoning in Thind. Thind might well be Caucasian, the high court said, but he was not white. The justices never said what whiteness was, only what it wasn't. Their implied logic was a circular one: Whiteness was what the common white man said it was.

The consequences of the unanimous verdict in U.S. vs. Thind were catastrophic for the Indian community. South Asians who had naturalized before the verdict were stripped of their citizenship and property.

Now, as "aliens ineligible for citizenship," many growers were unable to purchase or even lease land to stay in business. Thousands of acres were seized from Japanese immigrants and sold to white farmers.

Source: http://newsreel.org/transcripts/race3.htm

Roosevelt’s - NEW DEAL1933-Home Owner’s Loan Corporation

1934 FHA

The New Deal's Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC) instituted a redlining policy by developing color-coded maps of American cities that used racial criteria to categorize lending and insurance risks. New, affluent, racially homogeneous housing areas received green lines while black and poor white neighborhoods were often circumscribed by red lines denoting their undesirability. Banks and insurers soon adopted the HOLC's maps and practices to guide lending and underwriting decisions.

The Federal Housing Administration, created in 1934, also used the HOLC's methods to assess locations for federally insured new housing construction.

Like other forms of discrimination, redlining had pernicious and damaging effects. Without bank loans and insurance, redlined areas lacked the capital essential for investment and redevelopment. As a result, after World War II, suburban areas received preference for residential investment at the expense of poor and minority neighborhoods in major cities .

REDLINING MAP

1935-SOCIAL SECURITY ACTIn the 1930s with Roosevelt's New Deal, aimed to

protect the working class but revised by Congress to safeguard racial segregation as well.

The Social Security Act excluded domestic and agricultural workers from old-age pension and unemployment compensation. Three-quarters of the black population, from domestics to self-employed sharecroppers, fell through the net.

Similarly the Wagner Act, which empowered unions, also allowed labor to shut black workers out from closed shops.

Source:http://www.justicejournalism.org/projects/lehrman_sally/lehrman_colorblind.pdf

1944-THE G. I. BILL

EDUCATION

EMPLOYMEN

T & UNEMPLOYM

ENT

BENEFITS

LOW INTEREST MORTGAGES

EDUCATION & THE GI BILLThe Black middle class failed to keep pace with the white middle

class because blacks had fewer opportunities to earn college degrees.

In addition to the other obstacles, gaining admission to universities was no easy task for blacks on the G.I. Bill. Most universities had strict segregationist principles underlying their admissions policies.

By 1946, only one fifth of the 100,000 blacks who had applied for educational benefits had been registered in college. Furthermore, historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) came under increased pressure as rising enrollments and strained resources forced them to turn away an estimated 20,000 veterans..

As a result of racist practices in Southern states such as these, 55% of black veterans who wanted to take advantage of the G.I. Bill's educational opportunities were turned away from black institutions due to lack of space.

JOB TRAINING & THE GI BILLJob placement was no more equitable. Of the 28,000

veterans who received on-the-farm training in the South thanks to the G.I. Bill, only 11% were black

veterans–representing only 1% of the black veterans who were drafted from farms to go to war.

The United States Employment Service (USES), mandated by the G.I. Bill to place veterans in jobs that

matched their level of skill, placed 6,500 black veterans who had once worked on farms in non-farm jobs. 86% of skilled and semi-skilled positions were filled by white veterans while 92% of the unskilled

positions were filled by black veterans.

HOUSING & THE GI BILL Banks and mortgage agencies refused loans to blacks, making the G.I. Bill even

less effective for blacks. Federal agencies "endorsed the use of race-restrictive covenants until

1950" and explicitly refused to underwrite loans that would introduce "‘incompatible’ racial groups into White residential enclaves."[46] These government policies were also adopted by the private sector. For example, from the 1930s to the 1960s the National Association of Real Estate Boards issued ethical guidelines that specified that a realtor "should never be instrumental in introducing to a neighborhood a character or property or occupancy, members of any race or nationality, or any individual whose presence will be clearly detrimental to property values in a neighborhood."[47]

Together, these federal agencies financed almost half of all suburban homes in the 1950s and 1960s, helping the American homeownership rate to increase from 30 percent in 1930 to more than 60 percent by 1960.[48] However, these discriminatory lending policies resulted in the widespread use of race to determine eligibility for housing credit.[49] Consequently, Whites received essentially all (98 percent) of the loans approved by the federal government between 1934 and 1968.[50]

Source: http://www.civilrights.org/publications/reports/fairhousing/historical.html

Proposition 13 (officially named the People's Initiative to Limit Property Taxation) was an amendment of the Constitution of California enacted during 1978, by means of the initiative process. It was approved by California voters on June 6, 1978.

The most significant portion of the act is the first paragraph, which limited the tax rate for real estate:

Section 1. (a) The maximum amount of any ad valorem tax on real property shall not exceed one percent (1%) of the full cash value of such property.

Proposition 13-1978 Tax Relief