A UBI would push past racial exclusions – historically proven. The risk of exclusion does not eliminate the need to adopt a UBI

Rogers is spot on to warn us that basic income could be “designed to serve white nationalist ends.” We know this from our own historical experience. Seemingly “universal” social policies, from the New Deal to the Great Society, have had intended and unintended consequences of maintaining or exacerbating existing racial and gender inequalities. Many supposedly “universal” policies ultimately were not. But Rogers’s rightful skepticism and warning about a white nationalist basic income comes down to a question of political power. President Franklin D. Roosevelt compromised on his New Deal programs because southern Democrats insisted on it. The race-based occupational exclusions of agricultural and domestic workers were ultimately included in Social Security, the National Labor Relations Act, and the Fair Labor Standards Act to appease political elites protecting the southern Jim Crow racial and economic regime over the protests of racial justice organizations. Black workers were excluded as a result of this previous iteration of white nationalism and populism. But advocates for a truly universal social policy did not give up, eventually winning racial inclusion in Social Security but not the other two major New Deal policies. Similarly we should not limit our political imaginations about the promise of a basic income because of the very perilous questions around race, immigration, and exclusion. Quite the opposite. We should imagine a robust basic income that advances racial and gender justice while simultaneously addressing the ills of twenty-first-century capitalism.