New Deal policies institutionalized racial disparities and tacitly endorsed exploitation of workers of color

[Danyelle, Connor Maxwell, Abril Castro, “Systematic Inequality and Economic Opportunity,” CAP – Center for American Progress, August 7, 2019, https://www.americanprogress.org/article/systematic-inequality-economic-opportunity/, accessed July 7, 2023, GDS-LL]

New Deal programs helped institutionalize racial disparities in wages and benefits

During the Great Depression, the United States enacted a series of policies under the New Deal to assist struggling families and expand access to economic mobility. These policies included, but were not limited to, strengthened labor standards for wages and working conditions and increased protections for collective bargaining. The New Deal helped millions of families find work, increase their wages, and secure employment benefits,17 but lawmakers reserved most of these benefits for white workers while restricting and excluding people of color. These actions helped institutionalize and validate racial disparities in economic well-being, and the effects are felt to this day.

The New Deal’s Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA) introduced a 40-hour work week, banned child labor, and established a federal minimum wage and overtime requirements.18 While the FLSA boosted wages and improved working conditions for thousands of white workers, it largely excluded African American workers from receiving these benefits by exempting many domestic, agricultural, and service occupations.19 This policy decision trapped families in poverty and tacitly endorsed the continued exploitation of workers of color. Lawmakers amended the FLSA to include some of these occupations in subsequent decades, but agricultural and domestic workers—many of whom today are Latinx or Asian American—remain some of the least protected employees in the United States.20 Many agricultural workers are still denied access to overtime and minimum wage protections.21 For example, children as young as 12 years old are legally allowed to work in the fields.22 Live-in domestic service workers, babysitters, and companions for the elderly—all occupations in which people of color are disproportionately represented—also remain excluded from many FLSA protections.23