The White Response to the New Deal

The push to universalize the promises of economic security of the New Deal, from which black people had been excluded, took place at the very moment when that system was going into severe crisis. There was a crisis because of stagflation, the oil shock, intensifying global competition and capitalists. If that context had been one of plenty instead, one of a deepening welfare state rather than one that was getting eviscerated, I think that would have mitigated, though certainly not eliminated the white reaction.