File: powell final for Darby 794 Created on: 3/15/2009 12:55:00 PM Last Printed: 4/3/2009 10:11:00 AM DENVER UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW [Vol. 86.Obama This is not just a problem with the New Deal programs, it is likely that most universal programs will exacerbate existing inequalities. Some universal programs were designed to benefit whites more than nonwhites, but let us consider programs where this was not the clear design. Defined as one of this country's greatest accomplishments, the Interstate Highway Act of 1956 used federal dollars to subsidize the creation of the suburbs. This was the largest public works project in American history at the time. It gave impetus to waves of migrating middle- and upperclass families to abandon the central cities for the suburbs. At the same time, many downtown regions were surrounded or demolished by massive highway construction, and the revenue generated by these projects did not return to the communities that were losing their churches, schools, and homes. As one author put it, “[h]ighways made suburban housing available on one end while destroying urban housing on the other.”41 The ensuing arrangement of racially isolated urban dwellers and equally racially isolated suburban residents, hastened by the white flight that followed Brown v. Board of Education’s integration mandate the same year, is a pattern we live with today. Simply put, ostensibly universal programs have no less potential to exacerbate inequality than to ameliorate it. Treating people who are situated differently as if they were the same can result in much greater inequities. Consider also the Veterans Administration (VA) programs. These programs helped millions of Americans attend college, acquire homes and start businesses. Veterans Administration mortgages paid for five million new homes.42 It was the GI Bill and New Deal policies that made home ownership within the reach of the majority of Americans.43 Prior to these policies, borrowers would be required to have a down payment of up to 50% and to retire the loan within five years. The new programs allowed for the borrower to put down 10% or less and retire the loan in thirty-years. For the first time, it became cheaper to buy a home than to rent a home. Under these policies, from 1945 to 1954 the United States added 13 million new homes.44 Equally impressive were the educational benefits of VA programming. By 1950, the federal government spent more on schooling for veterans than on expenditures for the Marshall Plan and literally created a new middle class.45 For the first time, millions of Americans acquired a college degree. These programs were race- and gender-neutral in their design. Yet, in practice, they increased disparity between Blacks and whites and between white men and 41. Kevin Douglas Kuswa, Suburbification, Segregation, and the Consolidation of the Highway Machine, 3 J.L. SOC’Y 31, 47 (2002). 42. KATZNELSON, supra note 22, at 115. 43. Id. at 116. 44. Id. 45. Id.