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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - IV. Economics - 15. The Negro in the Public Economy - 7. Social Security and Public Assistance
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354 An American Dilemma
domestic service. We must go into some detail in describing how the Negro
fares in this substitute form of breadwinning.*
Prior to the New Deal period public relief was entirely insignificant in
this coxmtry. Until the First World War even a state like New York
expended less money for relief through public agencies than it did through
private charities. In the South such a situation prevailed imtil the beginning
of the ’thirties.®* Participation on the part of the federal government was
restricted to aid to veterans and similar special groups. Most of the states,
prior to 1929, enacted programs for aid to dependent children and for
workmen’s compensation; and some states made special provisions for the
blind and for the aged. Otherwise most of the social welfare work was
carried on by counties and cities, or by private charity organizations; the
poor farm or the almshouse was the main local institution of public wel-
fare.®^ The practice was based on the theory: “. .
.
making relief deterrent
by sending all destitute people to a local almshouse would be a means of
preventing pauperism.”®* It was the time of “rugged individualism.”
We have previously characterized the institution of large-scale public
relief during the ’thirties as the one bright spot in the recent economic
history of the Negro. Negroes, for obvious reasons, have gained even more
from it than have whites. This is not to say, however, that their needs have
everywhere been as much considered as have those of white families in
economic distress. On the contrary, in many instances there has been
pronounced discrimination against the Negro. Negroes have often found
it more difficult to receive any relief at all than have whites in similar
•We cannot give anything like an exhaustive treatment of the subject. We shall omit,
for instance, any discussion of the institutionalized welfare programs—asylums, reform
schools, institutions for crippled children, child nurseries. We shall fail to deal with the
implications to the Negro of certain major gaps in the social welfare system. Had we dis-
cussed all these things, our picture would scarcely be any brighter. Indeed, it would
be darker. It is a well-known fact that all institutions for handicapped groups tend to
be less adequate for Negroes than they are for whites in the South. The result is that the
proportion of feeble-minded and insane persons who are not taken care of in institutions
is higher for Negroes than it is for whites—something which, of course, affects the
Negro crime ratej a whole Negro community may have to pay for what one subnormal
Negro does to a white woman. Negro reform schools in the South usually have a lower
standard and are more crowded than are white reform schools. The consequence is that
a greater proportion of Negro than of white juvenile delinquents has to be cared for in
homes j in the Negro communities there are fewer homes which £t the purpose than there
are in white communities. Other juvenile delinquents arc simply sent to ordinary peniten-
tiaries when they cannot be taken care of in reform schools. Negroes need more child
nurseries than do white people, since their homes are less adequate for the purpose of
rearing children, and Negro homemakers more often have to take up gainful work. Yet,
at least in the South, they have fewer of them than have whites. There is no public health
insurance in America. This is more serious for Negroes than it is for whites, since Negroes
have higher rates of sickness. The absence of any adequate form of aid to migrants, likewise,
hampers Negroes more than it does whites.
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