The constraint of race

"American social policies have reproduced racial hierarchy and the American welfare state has been an instrument more often of social stratification than of social equality...The American construction of race has powerfully influenced political and social policy strategies--privileging whites, wreaking havoc upon people of color, rendering organized labor less powerful, and generating the least comprehensive, most laggard and segmented welfare state among all the advance industrialized democracies of the west." [Introduction].