"I Do Not Suppose That Uncle Sam Looks at the Skin": African Americans and the Civil War Pension System, 1865-1934

Shaffer, Donald R.

doi:10.1353/cwh.2000.0049

Cited by 16 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…The many limits on Black agency under slavery created a path dependency that carried over into bureaucratic procedures that followed abolition. Black veterans were less likely to be literate, less likely to have the financial resources necessary to engage with bureaucrats and navigate the arbitrary bureaucratic hurdles than white veterans (Shaffer 2000;133). Because many Black veterans dropped their enslaver's name following emancipation, newly Racially marginalized groups more dependent on meanstested programs that consume more time and effort to establish eligibility and maintain benefits.…”

Section: Social Rights: Racialized Burdens In the Safety Netmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Racialized Burdens: Applying Racialized Organization Theory to the Administrative State

Ray¹,

Herd²,

Moynihan³

2020

Preprint

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Administrative burdens allow a form of hidden politics to shape people’s experience of the state. But what do those politics hide? In this paper we seek to partly answer this question by developing the concept of racialized burdens. Racialized burdens are the experience of learning, compliance and psychological costs, which serve as tools to reinforce racial inequality; they are the handmaidens of the racialized state. To develop this concept, we examine the role of administrative burdens in the US state from the theoretical perspective of racialized organizations. This framework puts the focus on the effects of organizations on individuals, rather than using individual agency – of the client, or bureaucrat – as the starting point for analysis. Using examples from attempts to access citizenship rights – via immigration, voting and the social safety net – we show how burdens have historically been used to normalize and facilitate racially disparate outcomes from public organizations that promise fair and equal treatment.

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Section: Social Rights: Racialized Burdens In the Safety Netmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…freed slaves often lacked the paperwork necessary to satisfy documentation requirements (Shaffer 2000;136). As a result, a much smaller fraction of Black veterans accessed these pensions relative to white peers.…”

Section: Burdens Legitimate Unequal Distribution Of Resourcesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Racialized Burdens: Applying Racialized Organization Theory to the Administrative State

Ray¹,

Herd²,

Moynihan³

2020

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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Race, immunity, and lifespan: Unraveling the effect of early-life exposure to malaria risk on lifespan

Hong,

Hwang

2024

Economics & Human Biology

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“Great Injustice”: Social Status and the Distribution of Military Pensions after the Civil War

Johnson

2011

J. gilded age prog. era

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In recent years, historians have paid increased attention to the Civil War pension system created for Union army soldiers and their families. It has come to be seen as a milestone in the evolution of U.S. social policy. Despite the overall appearance of generosity and of unbiased treatment for applicants, however, individuals actually experienced the system very differently based on the social status of the soldier involved. Looking at pension legislation, its implementation, and nearly one thousand pension claim files, this article argues that three types of status discrimination appeared in the distribution of pensions: Pension laws paid larger amounts to officers and their families, the Pension Bureau used ability to perform manual labor to determine the level of disability regardless of the applicants' true ability to earn a living, and claims based on the service of officers generally were decided more quickly and more favorably than those of enlisted men. Because military ranks reflected the soldiers' civilian social position—most manual laborers served as enlisted men, for example—these biases meant that individuals of higher social status received significantly better treatment than those of lower civilian status.

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"I Do Not Suppose That Uncle Sam Looks at the Skin": African Americans and the Civil War Pension System, 1865-1934

Cited by 16 publications

References 5 publications

Racialized Burdens: Applying Racialized Organization Theory to the Administrative State

Racialized Burdens: Applying Racialized Organization Theory to the Administrative State

Race, immunity, and lifespan: Unraveling the effect of early-life exposure to malaria risk on lifespan

“Great Injustice”: Social Status and the Distribution of Military Pensions after the Civil War

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