Jill Quadagno is the author of the book, The Color of Welfare. My critique will be based off her first chapter, “Unfinished Democracy”, which mainly focuses on democratization. The author focuses on how the United States lagged in creating a fair democracy linked to racial inequality compared to other industrialized nations .Quadagno describes the background and gives historical evidence relating to events of citizenship and individual economics as the introduction. The author break down the highlighting issues into six subheadings:Unfinished Democracy, Creating the Racial Welfare State Regime,The Repression of Rights,Destabilizing the New Deal, The Search for Rights and The Equal-Opportunity Welfare State.
Quadagno begins by introducing a British sociologist, by the name of T.H. Marshall, who states how democratization has proceeded into…show more content… Quadagno proceeds explaining the struggle for civil rights emerged out of a feudal heritage where serfdom locked workers to the land .The author further explains how this struggle led to the transition from servile to free labor which introduced the notion of citizenship as the right to pursue occupation of one’s choice. The first phase of democratization began by the start of the nineteenth century which the principle of individual economic freedom was accepted as axiomatic, unquestionable. Quadagno goes on to explain voting rights in most European nations which in the nineteenth century only belonged to the aristocrats, monarchs and bureaucrats which was the second phase of democratization. The author states that by the 1920’s adult males had full voting rights in seventeen nations, while nine had given women the right to vote. Further into the text, the author gives historical evidence of voting rights in the United States. The reader is given information on how women couldn’t vote until 1920 and slaves were not granted even then most ‘rudimentary’ privileges of citizenship. The previous items were the