Introduction

In response to the local, state and federal government's abandonment of the poor in New Orleans in the late summer of 2005, FOX commentator Bill O’Reilly served as a mouthpiece for mainstream whites when he suggested that Katrina victims were at fault because they allowed themselves to be poor in the first place.[1] People who agree with him ignore the fact that black poverty and the black ghetto is an unnatural phenomenon created by whites in the twentieth century. The purpose of this paper is to show how white people and white power structures created a segregated black underclass.

The first half of the 20^th century brought an influx of southern, rural African Americans into U.S. cities across the United States. This resulted in organized, aggressive strategies by white mobs, politicians, and the real estate industry to keep African Americans in separate neighborhoods. As a result, people with few resources now live in dilapidated neighborhoods. These people lack educational opportunities, gainful employment, and access to healthy food.

Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal legislation created great economic separation between blacks and whites. This is because, in order to get much of his New Deal legislation passed, Roosevelt had to make compromises with southern congressmen who defended the racial hierarchical system of the South. These men feared that if the New Deal gave African Americans economic independence, the South would lose its cheap labor as sixty percent of working African Americans were low wage farmers or domestics. In order to exclude African Americans from the opportunities extended to whites, New Deal legislation intentionally excluded relief and labor rights to farmers and domestics. Furthermore, local relief fund administrators determined who received the federal money. Thus, African Americans in racist regions did not always get the relief owed to them.

The problem is not that New Deal policy did not extend any help to African Americans. It did. The problem was that the help was unequal, it created economic separation, and contributed to segregated and concentrated poverty. Whites like Bill O’Reilly may not be aware of the advantage they have now because of the New Deal money available to their parents, grandparents, and great grandparents in the 1940s. They may not know how the New Deal welfare program greatly improved their chances for health, wealth and education. They may not know that most African Americans did not receive the support that pulled so many U.S. families out of poverty after the Great Depression.

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[1] Bill O’Reilly, Katrina and the Poor, http://www.billoreilly.com/site/product?printerFriendly=true&pid=19095.