Having written a lot about liberalism and urban politics, Ira Katznelson's new book, When Affirmative Action was White, joins the issues by analyzing the problem of affirmative action. A professor of political science and history at Columbia University, Katznelson enters the fray with this provocative book, which tries to historically justify for continuing affirmative action programs. This book is held together by one overall theme. The majority of African Americans were excluded from the programs made by the New Deal, which dealt with welfare, work, and war in the 1930s and 1940s. The reason for this discriminations was because the Democratic leaders needed southern representatives' support to pass their legislative programs. The south was
