File: powell final for Darby 2009] Created on: 3/15/2009 12:55:00 PM Last Printed: 4/3/2009 10:11:00 AM POST-RACIALISM OR TARGETED UNIVERSALISM 795 white women.46 In fact, there was no single greater instrument for widening the racial gap in postwar America. The Bill provided for local and state administration with Congressional oversight, which was controlled by Southern congressmen.47 As a result, Blacks were excluded, rejected, and discouraged from partaking in the benefits of a generous federal program. This disparity was challenged by women in an important Supreme Court case, Personnel Administrator of Massachusetts v. Feeney.48 In that case, women were able to show that ninety-eight percent of the benefit for some portions of this policy went to men.49 The Court found there was no discrimination because there was no proof of any explicit conscious desire to exclude women.50 The Court was narrowly focused on intentional design, not impact or results. The fact that the program was for veterans, and that women were not likely to be veterans, was coincidental and not legally or morally significant. And while the disparities were not as stark, there were also a disproportionate number of white men that benefited from this program. This universal program that helped create the middle class was insensitive to the conditions of women and non-white men. This is what Ira Katznelson calls an affirmative action program for white men.51 There are several reasons why the program worked out this way. One was that white men were disproportionately represented in the military. The reason for this was the racialization and sorting of benefits in other parts of our society. Among other things, there was an explicit discriminatory barrier for non-whites trying to join the military. But there were also impediments from other non-military institutions that impacted their ability to join the service. For example, the service had reading and writing requirements for enlistment. Given the state of black education, this disproportionately limited the number of Blacks who could join the military.52 Even the black men that did join the military did not receive benefits on parity with their white counterparts. As Amartya Sen notes, they were not able to utilize this benefit to the same extent as whites.53 This was partly because in the area of education, Blacks could only use the educational benefits from the VA in a limited number of poorly equipped historical black colleges. One of the major assumptions today is that if universal programs focus on an area where a marginalized group is overrepresented, such as poverty, then the benefit will disproportionately 46. Id. at 114-15; see also Theda Skocpol, The G.I. Bill and U.S. Social Policy, Past and Future, SOC. PHIL. & POL’Y 95, 114 (June 2007). 47. KATZNELSON, supra note 22, at 127. 48. 442 U.S. 256 (1979). 49. Id. at 284. 50. Id. at 279–81. 51. KATZNELSON, supra note 22, at 112. 52. Id. at 107. 53. AMARTYA SEN, DEVELOPMENT AS FREEDOM 136 (Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. 1999).