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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]This weekend at a get together the subject of government assistance came up and I made the statement that I thought the entire system should be scrapped and a better more cohesive one put in place. I feel like people aren't getting the hand up that they need and that should be the focus, to get the support they need until they can stand on their own. I feel like if all assistance went through one agency we could better provide for each specific case and maybe weed out fraud (there will always be some fraud I am sure). I feel like the system is overwhelmed and overburdened and one of the reasons is its just so large and spread out. Some people who might not even know all the help that is available to them. A central agency could even collect data on charitable organizations for easy access to those who needs match the service.

Anyway, for this I was called a racist. Straight up to my face, "Wow, that is racist, I wouldn't expect that from you" then a lecture about my white privileged and not "grasping the concept".

I rarely curse but WTF just keeps going through my mind. Seriously was that racist? Wanting people who are in need be able to get better assistance and easier access?[/quote]

1. I do not think what you said was "racist." I do think that it does not sound like an informed opinion of someone who understands much about the public assistance system in this country, but it does not read as racist to me.

2. However, when talking about issues related to the public assistance system in this country, there is a very strong prevailing narrative that the system is being abused by people of color. [b]The "welfare queen" held up by Reagan as a standard for why welfare must be reduced was not a young black woman with many children. It was a middle aged white woman (who may or may not have been multiracial, but who definitely self-identified as white).[/b] However, the term "welfare queen" has mostly been used to mean young black women with many children. When you start having conversations about welfare reform, people who feel strongly about it are likely to have the kneejerk reaction you described, if only because that reaction would be the correct one in many, many cases.

3. I agree that there is much that can be done to overhaul the system. I think that the introduction of EFT and debit cards for SNAP was a huge thing for food assistance, both to cut down on the stigma associated with using that benefit as well as the fraud that occurred previously. Regarding fraud, the majority of SNAP fraud is on the business end, not the consumer end. If we are going to talk about malfeasance, it needs to be institutional as well as personal. I think that what you're talking about sounds like a great idea, but I would be very worried about implementing the kinds of sweeping reforms you're suggesting in the current political climate. Right wing politicians, who are basically in charge right now, are CUTTING benefits, not expanding them. I do not believe that their motivation is to help, and I would not want the programs that provide life saving assistance to poor people to be reformed by a party who demonstrates their contempt for poor people over and over and over.[/quote]

Great information in this post.

I'm AA and I don't know anything about the welfare system.  However, I have heard the term "welfare queen" often and I know when I hear it, the speaker is referring to what you described.  If what you say is true, specifically the above in bold, how did it evolve to referring to black women with many children? Why are white people blaming black people, if a large population of white people are on welfare as well? Honest question.  Is it the usual standby reason?  The ratio statistics?[/quote]

This NPR story gives a ton of background.  The short version is that the racial lens was there from the beginning, particularly because the woman singled out by Reagan was at best racially ambiguous and possible a light-skinned Black woman "passing" for white.  http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/12/20/255819681/the-truth-behind-the-lies-of-the-original-welfare-queen[/quote]

I'm the original PP who called out the "welfare queen." The NPR article gives a pretty good history. The issue of race and public assistance is huge and complicated. It is related to perceptions of morality and promiscuity based on the values of the dominant class, which in this country has been "upper middle class white men" for pretty much as long as this has been a country. It has to do with the denigration of black men's ability to care for their families ("deadbeat dads") and the evolution of black women as the primary heads of household in many black families. It has to do with poverty, particularly inner city poverty, which is related to housing issues, financial issues, labor issues, you name it. It has to do with drug use, crime, and incarceration.

"Welfare" as it existed before 1996 was called Aid to Families with Dependent Children. Those families were families making very little money, with young children. One of the goals of providing that aid was so that women would be able to raise their children, rather than working. Then those same women were condemned for raising their children instead of getting jobs. The debate became about teen pregnancy, particularly urban teen pregnancy. My personal experience as a white person on welfare in the 80s in the rural midwest was that when teens in my almost exclusively white community got pregnant, their parents made them get married. So you had a lot of young families, with a mother who dropped out of high school, a father who maybe graduated but now works at a gas station or something. My best friend who grew up in SE DC told me that in her experience, teenagers who got pregnant had the baby but didn't get married to the father, who also was not always around later on. As a result, the images you see are young white families and young black single moms.

It is basically impossible to detangle race and poverty in this country, which is probably why OP's suggestion that we reform the public assistance system was met with accusations of racism.[/quote]

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