On Class-Not-Race

Authors

Samuel R. Bagenstos, University of Michigan Law SchoolFollow

Document Type

Book Chapter

Publication Date

2015

Abstract

Throughout the civil rights era, strong voices have argued that policy interventions should focus on class or socioeconomic status, not race. At times, this position-taking has seemed merely tactical, opportunistic, or in bad faith. Many who have opposed race-based civil rights interventions on this basis have not turned around to support robust efforts to reduce class-based or socioeconomic inequality. That sort of opportunism is interesting and important for understanding policy debates in civil rights, but it is not my focus here. I am more interested here in the people who clearly mean it. For example, President Lyndon Baines Johnson—who can hardly be accused of failing to support robust race-based or class-based interventions—advised Dr. Martin Luther King after Congress passed the Voting Rights Act that the race-neutral, class-based Great Society programs had to be counted on to eliminate race inequality from that point forward.

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Publication Information & Recommended Citation

Bagenstos, Samuel R. "On Class-Not-Race." In A Nation of Widening Opportunities? The Civil Rights Act at Fifty, edited by S. R. Bagenstos and E. D. Katz. Ann Arbor, MI: Michigan Publishing, 2015.