> Okay, call me naive but would we rather the government have done nothing? I understand racism still exists but you can't act like we haven't made any progress.
The Black-white income and wealth gaps are as large today as they were in the 1960s: https://images.app.goo.gl/s1YD3sxKeuG289GfA. While the reasons for that are complex, New Deal programs that redlined African Americans, strengthened unions that excluded them, introduced segregation through the WPA into northern cities that hasn’t been segregated before, etc., played a significant role.
I’m not objecting to the government doing things. My objection is to OP’s invocation of the New Deal as the template for action. Last time we tried empowering white central planners to construct housing and infrastructure, they played out their prejudices in their decisionmaking to the detriment of non-white people.
There’s lots of things you can do that aren’t in the New Deal model. For example, if you’re worried about homelessness, instead of having the government build public housing (the New Deal approach) you can give people money to buy housing (the Nixon-Ford Section 8 voucher model). That’s what the government is doing now. It’s just giving people money and stabilizing the economy. (That’s also what every OECD country is doing.) It’s a better approach.
