Big Government and Affirmative Action: The Scandalous History of the Small Business Administration - Hardcover

by Jonathan Bean (Author)

" David Stockman, Ronald Reagan's budget director, proclaimed the Small Business Administration a "billion-dollar waste-a rathole," and set out to abolish the agency. His scathing critique was but the latest attack on an agency better known as the "Small Scandal Administration." Loans to criminals, government contracts for minority "fronts," the classification of American Motors as a small business, Whitewater, and other scandals-the Small Business Administration has lurched from one embarrassme

Front Jacket

Since its emergence, the United States' two-party political system has been criticized for polarizing public opinion. Instead of objective deliberation of major issues such as race relations, partisanship has too often undermined the process and distorted the outcome. One group of thinkers, however, has refused to be defined by either conservative or liberal classifications -- classical liberals have shaped the history of the nation, including the fight for abolition and the allied struggles against Chinese exclusion, abuse of Native Americans, Japanese internment, Jim Crow, and other racial distinctions in the law. Nevertheless, the nation's preoccupation with left-versus-right politics has overshadowed the role of classical liberals in the history of race and liberty in America.Race and Liberty in America: The Essential Reader, edited by Jonathan Bean, explains the major themes of the antiracist, classical liberal tradition of individual liberty and equality, demonstrating how it has inspired individuals to improve race relations in the United States. Advocating for freedom from governmental interference, abolition of prejudicial law, equality under a uniform rule of law guaranteed by the Constitution, and market-based entrepreneurial opportunity, classical liberals have lent their voices to a wide range of causes.Bean offers numerous documents, from the Declaration of Independence to the 2006 Open Letter on Immigration and beyond, as well as government statutes, party platforms, and speeches that demonstrate how classical liberalism was at the forefront of the fight to change America's racial inequality. Each chapter investigates a specific time period in American history, ranging from the Revolution to the present, and addresses major events and concerns, including the antislavery movement, post--Civil War Reconstruction, Progressive era, Republican era of the 1920s, Great Depression and World War II, and civil rights era. Citing such influential Americans as Thomas Jefferson, Louis Marshall, and Frederick Douglass, as well as individuals missing from previous investigations, Bean demonstrates the major impact of classical liberal thought on race relations and investigates how it has helped shape both law and public opinion.Jonathan Bean, Research Fellow at the Independent Institute and professor of history at Southern Illinois University, is the author of Big Government and Affirmative Action: The Scandalous History of the Small Business Administration and Beyond the Broker State: Federal Policies toward Small Business, 1936--1961.Cover photos, from left to right: Frederick Douglass (Library of Congress); Branch Rickey and Jackie Robinson (reprinted by permission of National Baseball Hall of Fame Library); San Francisco schoolchildren, 1942 (Library of Congress); Zora Neale Hurston (Library of Congress).

Author Biography

Jonathan Bean, Research Fellow at the Independent Institute and professor of history at Southern Illinois University, is the author of Big Government and Affirmative Action: The Scandalous History of the Small Business Administration and Beyond the Broker State: Federal Policies toward Small Business, 1936--1961.