This is how the image of families with dependent children used to look like (when there was only black and white photography):
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| "Aid to dependent children keeps families together." |
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| Safe & Secure! |
Did you notice the whiteness of the first image of an American family? It is a picture of a white single mother with many kids--5 kids. And the second photo had the image of a white woman with her white baby.
Now pay attention to the shift of family image when the AFDC program changed to Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) in 1996.
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| Temporary Assistance for Needy Families |
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| Contemporary American Family |
This is US society's dominant image of the families that are poor and are in need. Americans have been made to think that families like these are leeching off of the government. Politicians make these poor families seem like they are having a life of extravagance.
USA is known as having the richest poor of the world. For instance, the poor in the US have microwaves and a roof over their heads compared to the extremely poor in India where poor Indians hardly have anything. This comparison is out of proportion. This comparison is only a tactic for class warfare. It makes Americans go against the poor in their country and eventually will lead to more havoc.
Notice how historically, the white single mothers who were getting government financial aid through the AFDC program were also never known as welfare queens.
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| Anti-racist activist |
After reading the congressional record for why the congressmen voted for the main cash welfare program for single mothers and kids, Wise found out how they wanted to have these programs so that white mothers would be able to stay at home to raise their children without having to go into the paid workforce, while their husbands left to find work during the great depression. For the record, the congressional vote for welfare program also applied to white single mothers and white widows.
Now, the big question is:
"Is this the narrative today about cash welfare?"
Should we still encourage people to stay at home and raise their children, today?
NO!
The purpose for which the welfare programs were created was to allow white women to stay at home and not have to sell their labor to someone else for a wage. But once women of color gained access to the program, which didn't happen until the 1960's, all of a sudden that rhetoric changed. All of a sudden people started shouting about how the struggling and needy mothers in poverty need to get a job--that they're so lazy just sitting around getting money for nothing, merely raising children only. The poor are labeled pathological, dysfunctional and worthless.
The rhetoric of women living in the home wasn't seen as a bad thing until women of color began gaining access to financial aid from the government. This is not to over simplify the situation. It is to make you understand how all of this is racially connected. (Here I summarize Wise's ideology analysis of the anti-government and anti-tax narrative debate)
Questions for the readers: What observations have you made about the Welfare Queen myth and society?
Compare that to what is known as "housewives" today to the black
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| *Cha*~*Ching*!* |
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| Doing the Laundry |
Your observation of the racialized narrative brings Patricia Hill Collins into conversation with Betty Friedan's book in necessary and complex ways. The juxtaposition of images is stunning. There's no question that early social security programs, intended to be temporary, were create for white families; black families didn't have the same legal rights for access. And they failed to imagine civil rights legislation that would extend access. When that happened, dominant groups had to shift the social narrative or lose cheap/free labor in the workforce. (We have to keep in mind that women's work in the home has always been free labor that benefits the economy, although upper class women gain social privilege in return, as you point out.) That brings me to class. The "Contemporary American Family" in the image above appears middle class in contrast to the family in the first AFDC photo. What message is the "Contemporary American Family" image trying to convey? How do you reconcile class with insightful argument about race? You don't have to answer these complex questions here, but they are bound to resurface. Perhaps another post will pick up on the topic?
ReplyDeleteAs always, it's always a pleasure to read your comments. I love the questions! I will keep these questions in mind as we study more about family and the work place.
ReplyDeleteMo, I really enjoyed reading this post, and the previous one as well. This is a really valuable observation and not one that is talked about! I wrote a paper for another class titled "From Mammies and Jezebels to Welfare Queens: The Genocidal Disregard for America’s Black Babies," which touches on your observation here. If you're interested, I can definitely send you my paper to read! Basically I write about the structures that perpetuate the disparities in black/white infant mortality rates and how Black mothers (and their babies) are not seen as desirable and wanted, compared to white mothers, and the consequences of this attitude. Here's a section of my paper that very much supports your argument:
ReplyDeleteA section from my paper:
ReplyDeleteAnother specific example of the structural effects on Black mothers and infant mortality rates is the racialization of welfare assistance policies (Gillens, 1996; Thomas, 1998). In the past, governments coerced, pressured or deceived minority women who were receiving welfare assistance to submit to forced sterilization. Today, instead we find a subtler and seemingly nonracialized policy changes of welfare assistance: the limiting of assistance for women with dependent children (Jackson, 2007). Negative stereotypes of Blacks as being lazy and manipulative and popping out babies indiscriminately fuels Whites' opposition to social policies that advance or improve the conditions of Blacks at the expense of Whites. Countless studies have found that racial attitudes play a role in welfare policy preferences and that race composition has a large independent effect on welfare benefits and reforms (Johnson, 2003; Schram, 2003).
Studies found that states with the smallest proportions of Blacks offered the highest average Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) benefits, and states with the lowest benefits had among the highest number of African-Americans who were recipients. This was found to have nothing to do with inability to fund programs, but instead was due to racial hostility (Schram, 2001). Discriminatory welfare policies towards Blacks go back to 1910. Studies found that states that enacted mothers' pension programs (assistance to single mother households) was hardly enacted in Southern states and the few states that did had the lowest rates of Black single motherhood. In states with high rates of Black female headship, the lowest levels of welfare benefits was documented, in an examination of welfare generosity across states in the 1960s. These patterns still exist today, which show that the most generous states in 1919 were still the most generous states today (Moehling, 2007). Additionally, although single motherhood was more prevalent among Blacks, in 1931 Black mothers made up only 3% of aid recipients. Southern states at the time, where the majority of Blacks lived, saw a stalling of enactment of the mothers' pension laws (Moehling, 2007). Today, states with highest levels of welfare benefits remained states with lowest Black single motherhood (Moehling, 2007).
More recently, "family caps" (Wallace, 2009), a policy that aims to reduce the birthrate of mothers receiving welfare assistance by prohibiting any additional cash assistance to mothers that have a newborn child conceived while the mother is receiving welfare, essentially abandons newborn children without assistance from poverty by treating them as nonexistence. States that are predominantly White and have a low proportion of Blacks, such as Kansas, Maine, Oklahoma, and Virginia, did not impose the caps provision (Smith, 2006).
Deeming welfare reform as a "Black issue" results in discriminatory practices that negatively affect Black families (with the most vulnerable being Black infants and children) who fall to welfare assistance due to structures that make it difficult for them to combat poverty (i.e. segregation, discrimination in job hiring, low wages, and racism), and perpetuates racial inequalities and disparities in Black/White infant mortality rates. This sends negative and harmful messages to Blacks and Whites that Blacks don't have the right to have family because they're poor, that society doesn't care about the well-being and health of Black infants and children, and messages that denigrate the dignity and equality of Blacks (Smith, 2006).
Thanks so much, Arwa! Yes, please email me your paper!
ReplyDelete