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Michael K. Brown

Michael K. Brown   
Michael K. Brown
    Title:  Research Professor of Politics
    Email:  popcorn@ucsc.edu
    Phone:  (831) 459-2052 Office
(831) 459-3125 Fax
    Office:  114 Merrill
    Office Hours:  Fall 2009 Tuesdays 3-5 PM

Research Focus 
Professor Brown is currently investigating the relationship between changing conceptions of equality of opportunity and racial inequality since the end of slavery in the United States. This research investigates why culturally acceptable social policies invariably fail. The study focuses on three key moments in American history that defined the scope and meaning of equality: Reconstruction, the New Deal, and the Great Society. (For further information see his paper, "Political Culture and Antipoverty Policies in the New Deal and Great Society."

Selected Publications 
"The Death Penalty and the Politics of Racial Resentment in the Post Civil Rights Era," DePaul Law Review 58:3 (2009): 645-670

"Embedding the Color Line: The Accumulation of Racial Advantage and the Disaccumulation of Opportunity in Post-Civil Rights America," Du Bois Review 2:2 (2005): 187-207.

Michael K. Brown, Martin Carnoy, Elliott Currie, Troy Duster, David B. Oppenheimer, Marjorie M. Shultz, and David Wellman. Whitewashing Race: The Myth of a Color-Blind Society. University of California Press, September 2003.

Race, Money and the American Welfare State. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1999.

"Ghettos, Fiscal Federalism, and Welfare Reform," in Race, Welfare and the Politics of Reform. Richard Fording, Joe Soss, and Sanford Schram, eds. Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Press, 2003.

"Is Race Experienced as Class?" Labor History, 41:4, 2000, pp. 513-16.

"Race in the American Welfare State: The Ambiguities of 'Universalistic' Social Policy Since the New Deal." In Without Justice for All: The "New Liberalism" and the Retreat from Racial Equality, A. Reed Jr. (ed.). Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1999.

"Bargaining for Social Rights: Unions and the Reemergence of Welfare Capitalism, 1945-1952," Political Science Quarterly, 112:4, Winter 1998.

Courses Taught 
POLI-120B-01 - Society & Democracy in American Political Development

Education History 
Ph.D., University of California, Los Angeles, 1976