<p>and the creation of African-American slums in port cities, with families headed by single moms.</p>
<p>During World War II, the government encouraged a massive migration of Black women from the South to port cities (Los Angeles/Long Beach, Tacoma, Washington, Oakland, California, Detroit/Windsor, Michigan, etc. to build ships for the Navy. The posters of Rosey the Riveter showed a redhead; the reality was that she was likely African-American. Wages were some 20 times what these women earned in the rural South. Culture was rich. The women purchased homes in East L.A., etc. Storefronts thrived.</p>
<p>Then, when WWII ended, the women (still without men) were thrown out of work, semi-permanently; what few jobs were left in shipbuilding, and all the jobs on the docks, were given to returning white veterans, who also received welfare funds, housing funds, and education funds under the GI bill. My father, barely a highly school graduate and barely literate, was one of the beneficiaries. (Black veterans also had GI education benefits, but large numbers of state universities refused to accept Black students, and more of the Black veterans had been high school dropouts.) No one gave any benefits to the Black women without whom the War couldn’t have been fought. And once welfare did arrive in the cities, it penalized intact Black families where they existed, providing incentives for Black men to leave the household if they wanted their wives and children to be able to eat. For those who worked, with Black life expectancy for men to be in the 50s, Social Security was a massive wealth redistribution program, from Black men to white women.</p>
<p>Let’s just remember who created the environments in which these IQ scores pop up.</p>