An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States

problems that Black people faced. On the other hand, in the observations,
we can see a trend that continues today: the need to compare two forms of
oppression and ignore the complexities of the conditions that another
oppressed group faces.
During the 1930s and through the 1940s, New Deal policies offered new
protections for white Americans. This was a period of great reform that also
further embedded racism. For Indigenous people, they experienced
significant changes as a result of the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934
(IRA), albeit with mixed results. Signed into law by President Franklin
Roosevelt as the Wheeler-Howard Act, the IRA was designed to compel
tribal nations to implement constitutions that would be legible to the US
government; however, it often created other problems, including
undermining traditional leadership styles for particular nations and
effectively forcing them to reform their structures of governance, in order to
receive federal funds. It seems eerily similar to the logic of postwar
structural adjustment policies forced upon countries on the African
continent and in South America! Above all, the IRA created an unclear
notion of tribal sovereignty in regard to the exercise of power and the
ability to govern tribal members and implement justice. 2
Throughout the 1940s, Black Americans also continued to experience
different forms of oppression. They moved from southern states to northern
cities to escape Jim Crow racism in the South. What they thought was a
promised land of integration ended up being one of segregation. In northern
cities like Detroit, a combination of white homeowners, homeownership
organizations, local government officials, and federal housing policies was
created to keep Black people from integrating into all-white
neighborhoods. 3 At the same time, the US carved an easy path to middle
class stability through the creation of suburbs, Social Security, and housing
policies that fostered homeownership. As political scientist Ira Katznelson
contends, this was a period when “affirmative action,” which we typically
think is for African Americans and other people of color, benefited white
people. To be clear, affirmative action as an official policy did not emerge
until the late 1960s, but, as Katznelson asserts, contemporary conservative
arguments that the federal government “gives” people of color handouts via
affirmative action ignores the longer history of the federal government
actually creating policies that supported white people largely. These
policies, such as the homeownership subsidies that created the racial wealth