American Dream Deferred

Contrary to the myth that black employees were welcomed in the federal sector in the latter half of the 20
century, Frederick W. Gooding, Jr.’s American Dream Deferred shows that the struggle for equal treatment was just as steep in government workplaces as it was in everyday life. . . . What Gooding, Jr. does well is examine the tortoise pace of progress for black federal workers and how that progress was thwarted at nearly every turn.

American Dream Deferred is a pioneering work of scholarship about one of the most significant struggles of the modern black freedom movement, one that has been almost completely untold until now. Frederick Gooding’s vivid narrative about the long and difficult struggle of African-Americans who worked in the federal government reveals that more than laws and regulations were needed to gain equality and respect. Only when black men and women in the nation’s capital organized for themselves did they gain the rights and opportunities they had always deserved.

In this timely and critically important study, Frederick Gooding, Jr.’s meticulous research illuminates the understudied history of African American federal workers from World War II to the Reagan era. With perceptive analysis, Gooding, Jr. explores not only the causes and costs of systemic racism in the federal workplace, but also the heroic efforts made by ‘black collared’ workers to uproot it.

American Dream Deferred presents a cogent analysis of the persistence of racial inequities in the one institution commonly considered the benchmark of meritocratic impartiality. It is also an important meditation on the capacity of institutionalized racism to limit upward mobility, inflict psychological damage, and quash dreams of a better life.

Gooding...show[s] the degree of resistance black federal employees faced in their new positions. . . .The American Dream of public sector employees was deferred as they waged private battles for dignity and respect, using the few legal and social mechanisms at their disposal for grassroots change. Good posits, as he writes in the introduction, that "a 'good government job' did not secure freedom as much as it secured the fantasy of freedom."

Gooding argues that while the federal government did provide thousands of jobs to Black workers—stretching from maintenance to clerical to professional and leadership positions—the promise was elusive and did not significantly improve economic prospects for African Americans.