Foregrounding the Freedmen’s Bureau: A Heterodox Welfare State History
- 25 August 2022
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Taylor & Francis Ltd in Journal of Progressive Human Services
- Vol. 34 (1), 1-28
- https://doi.org/10.1080/10428232.2022.2115277
Abstract
The Freedmen’s Bureau was the first national U.S. welfare institution. This fact has not, however, motivated scholars to draw duly substantive connections between the Bureau and the welfare state. This article traces empirical patterns of labor, gender, and race from their first nationalization under the Bureau to their formative influence on the evolution of what is considered to be the welfare state. The article goes on to show the Bureau to mark the first instance of an actual U.S. welfare state. More importantly, the resulting reconceptualization suggests the Bureau to represent the only historical instance of an actual U.S. welfare state, all subsequent formations comprising merely a performative welfare state for lack of their attempt, or even intention, to fully rectify the enduring racial injustice inherited from chattel slavery. The performative welfare state, as it were, has thereby only ever prescribed systemically inequitable normativity antithetical to the notion of welfare.Keywords
This publication has 54 references indexed in Scilit:
- Devolution, Discretion, and the Effect of Local Political Values on TANF SanctioningSocial Service Review, 2007
- White on whiteness: becoming radicalized about raceNursing Inquiry, 2007
- The American Welfare State Decoded: Uncovering the Neglected History of Public‐Private PartnershipsCity & Community, 2006
- The American Welfare State, or States?Political Research Quarterly, 1999
- The Welfare State and the Cultural Reproduction of Gender: Making Good Girls and Boys in the Job CorpsSocial Problems, 1995
- The Uses of History in Teaching Social WorkJournal of Teaching in Social Work, 1988
- Toward a Redefinition of Welfare HistoryJournal of American History, 1986
- The Freedmen's Bureau: From Social Welfare to SegregationPhylon (1960-), 1985
- From Normalcy to New Deal: industrial structure, party competition, and American public policy in the Great DepressionInternational Organization, 1984
- General O. O. Howard and the "Misrepresented Bureau"The Journal of Southern History, 1953