IB History Economic Change Notes

Affirmative Action and the Black Middle Class

1. Black median family income was approximately 54 percent of white median family income in 1950.
   1. By 1970, it had risen to 64 percent.
2. The gap narrowed but did not close.
   1. The gains were concentrated among Black Americans who could access the professional and white-collar jobs that the Civil Rights Act's Title VII employment protections opened.
3. The policy mechanism that drove the expansion of the Black professional class was affirmative action.
   1. President Kennedy's Executive Order 10925 (1961) was the first to use the term, requiring federal contractors to take affirmative action to ensure employees were not discriminated against by race, creed, colour, or national origin.
   2. President Johnson's Executive Order 11246 (1965) required federal contractors to develop affirmative action plans.
4. Nixon's Philadelphia Plan (1969) went further, requiring construction contractors on federal projects to meet numerical goals for hiring minority workers.
   1. Black college enrolment tripled between 1960 and 1975.

The Persistent Wealth Gap and Urban Poverty

1. Income gains masked a deeper problem.
2. The racial wealth gap was not closed by civil rights legislation.
   1. Wealth, as distinct from income, is accumulated over generations, primarily through home equity.
   2. Decades of redlining had excluded Black families from the suburbs where housing values were rising fastest.
   3. The Fair Housing Act (1968) banned discrimination but could not redistribute the accumulated equity of the preceding decades.
   4. Black families had less collateral, less inherited wealth, and less access to credit on equal terms.
3. Urban poverty remained concentrated in Black communities.
   1. Black unemployment was consistently double white unemployment throughout the 1960s.
4. The deindustrialisation of Northern cities from the early 1970s hit Black workers hardest: they had been the last hired in industrial jobs and were the first laid off.
5. The Great Society programmes, including Head Start (1965, pre-school education for low-income children) and the Model Cities programme (1966), targeted structural poverty but were underfunded and politically contested.
6. The Kerner Commission (1968) warned that without sustained federal investment in jobs, housing, and education in Black communities, economic polarisation would deepen.
   1. Its predictions were largely correct.
7. King's final campaign, the Poor People's Campaign, demanded a federal jobs programme and income guarantee.
   1. He was assassinated before it produced results.
   2. The economic agenda of the movement was never addressed with the same legislative force as the voting rights agenda.

Further evidence: access expanded faster than wealth equality

1. Civil-rights law widened formal labour access. Title VII prohibited employment discrimination and created a federal process for complaints, investigation, and later litigation.
2. The EEOC began with weak enforcement power. It could investigate and conciliate but initially lacked direct authority to issue binding orders or file every case itself.
3. Executive Order 11246 expanded contractor obligations. Johnson required federal contractors to take affirmative action, linking government purchasing power with workplace change.
4. The Philadelphia Plan introduced measurable goals. Nixon's administration required construction contractors to pursue minority hiring targets, making affirmative action more specific.
5. Affirmative action addressed accumulated exclusion. Supporters argued that formally neutral hiring could preserve networks, credentials, and practices built under discrimination.
6. Opponents reframed remedy as reverse discrimination. Legal and political challenges increasingly emphasized individual colour blindness over group-based correction.
7. Public employment created middle-class opportunity. Federal, state, and municipal agencies hired more Black teachers, administrators, postal workers, social workers, police, and professionals.
8. Government jobs often provided stable benefits. Union coverage, pensions, standardized pay, and promotion systems supported household security beyond wages alone.
9. Political representation influenced contracting. Black mayors and legislators developed minority-business programmes and directed public investment toward excluded communities.
10. The Black middle class expanded after 1960. Higher education, professional access, government work, corporate recruitment, and anti-discrimination law increased incomes for many families.
11. Gains were uneven by gender and class. Black women entered public and clerical employment but continued to face wage gaps, care burdens, and occupational segregation.
12. Union access remained important. Collective bargaining could raise wages and benefits, yet discriminatory seniority, apprenticeship, and craft-union practices limited equality.
13. A. Philip Randolph connected jobs with freedom. The 1963 March on Washington demanded employment, wages, and federal action rather than legal desegregation alone.
14. King moved toward economic redistribution. The Poor People's Campaign called for jobs, income, housing, and national commitment across racial groups.
15. The Memphis sanitation strike joined dignity and wages. Workers' demand that I Am a Man connected recognition, union rights, workplace safety, and economic justice.
16. Black-owned businesses gained visibility. Banks, insurance firms, shops, publishers, and service companies became symbols of autonomy and community investment.
17. Black capitalism received federal promotion. Nixon supported minority enterprise as an alternative to redistribution, appealing to ownership while leaving wider market inequality intact.
18. Access to credit remained unequal. Discriminatory banks, limited collateral, redlining, and lower inherited wealth constrained business formation and survival.
19. Housing became the main engine of wealth inequality. Home ownership and appreciation built white family assets, while exclusion from mortgages and suburbs denied comparable gains to many Black households.
20. The FHA institutionalized discriminatory risk maps. Federal underwriting favoured white suburban development and treated Black neighbourhoods as hazardous investments.
21. Restrictive covenants and violence reinforced exclusion. Even after courts stopped enforcing covenants, brokers, owners, lenders, and neighbourhood groups maintained segregation.
22. The Fair Housing Act changed legal standards. Passed in 1968, it prohibited discrimination but initially offered limited federal enforcement.
23. Urban renewal destroyed community assets. Highways, civic projects, and redevelopment displaced residents and businesses from Black neighbourhoods without adequate replacement.
24. Suburbanization moved jobs and tax bases. Manufacturing, retail, and middle-income households left central cities, weakening employment access and public services.
25. Deindustrialization removed well-paid work. Factory closures and automation from the 1970s hit cities where Black workers had only recently gained industrial access.
26. Residential segregation increased spatial mismatch. Workers lived farther from suburban jobs and faced weak transport, employer discrimination, and restricted housing mobility.
27. School finance reproduced neighbourhood inequality. Property-tax systems connected segregated housing and wealth with unequal educational resources.
28. The War on Poverty expanded social provision. Head Start, community health, legal services, food assistance, and job programmes reduced hardship and built institutions.
29. Community Action challenged local control. Requirements for maximum feasible participation gave poor residents influence but provoked conflict with mayors and established organizations.
30. Great Society programmes did not create full employment. Training and services could not replace large-scale jobs lost through economic restructuring.
31. Urban uprisings caused and reflected economic damage. Rebellion followed policing and exclusion, while property loss, insurance withdrawal, and disinvestment could deepen neighbourhood hardship.
32. The Kerner Commission identified structural causes. Its 1968 report emphasized segregation, unemployment, housing, and white institutions rather than blaming disorder on criminality alone.
33. Law-and-order politics weakened redistribution. Public reaction to protest and riots supported policing, punishment, and tax resistance over sustained anti-poverty investment.
34. The racial wealth gap remained cumulative. Differences in inheritance, property appreciation, pensions, business assets, debt, and exposure to predatory markets reproduced inequality across generations.
35. Economic change was real but incomplete. Civil-rights policy expanded access and built a larger Black middle class, while housing segregation, deindustrialization, wealth gaps, and unequal institutions limited mass material equality.

Evidence and analytical judgement

1. Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 declared segregated public schooling unconstitutional.
2. The Montgomery Bus Boycott from 1955 to 1956 ended bus segregation after sustained local action.
3. The Little Rock crisis in 1957 required federal troops to enforce school integration.
4. The Civil Rights Act of 1957 created a federal Civil Rights Division but provided weak enforcement powers.
5. Sit-ins beginning in Greensboro in 1960 spread rapidly through student networks and challenged segregated businesses.
6. The Freedom Rides of 1961 forced federal enforcement against segregation in interstate travel.
7. The Birmingham campaign of 1963 exposed violent resistance and increased pressure for federal legislation.
8. The March on Washington in 1963 joined civil rights demands with calls for employment and economic justice.
9. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited discrimination in public accommodation and employment.
10. Freedom Summer in 1964 combined voter registration with education and drew attention to racist violence in Mississippi.
11. The Selma campaign in 1965 connected local voting restrictions to national legislative action.
    1. This establishes the legal baseline for the article's judgement.
12. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 authorized federal action against discriminatory registration practices.
    1. The evidence links local pressure to a broader institutional response.
13. Executive Order 11246 in 1965 required federal contractors to take affirmative action against employment discrimination.
    1. Its significance lies in the gap between formal change and implementation.
14. The Fair Housing Act of 1968 prohibited major forms of housing discrimination but faced weak local enforcement.
    1. This example shows how organization converted grievance into public leverage.
15. The Kerner Commission in 1968 identified racism, unemployment, and segregated housing as causes of urban unrest.
    1. The result reveals both an achievement and a limit of the movement.
16. School integration produced uneven results because white flight and residential segregation preserved racial separation.
    1. The case connects leadership choices with structural conditions.
17. Black elected representation increased after 1965 as federal voting protection widened political participation.
    1. This development changed the available methods of political action.
18. Black studies programmes and cultural institutions changed curricula and public representation.
    1. The evidence helps separate immediate impact from long-term transformation.
19. Persistent wealth and wage gaps showed that formal equality did not remove accumulated economic disadvantage.
    1. Its effects differed by class, gender, location, and access to institutions.
20. Policing practices and mass incarceration later demonstrated the limits of legal reform to racial power.
    1. The example tests whether national reform altered everyday experience.