The book
backlash against welfare mother past +present by Ellen Reese focuses on
the backlash against welfare mothers is a forceful examination of how and why a
state-level revolt against welfare begun in the late 1940s, was transformed
into a national-level assault that destroyed a critical part of the nation's
safety net, with tragic consequences for American society. With a wealth of
original research, Ellen Reese puts recent debates about the contemporary
welfare backlash into historical perspective. Her research reveals both the
continuities and the changes in American welfare opposition from the late 1940s
to the present.
The writer
Ellen Reese argues that ideologically conservative and low-wage employers led
the backlash against welfare in the 1940s and 1950s. They used race and gender
bias to demonize welfare recipients in the eyes of the broader public, building
support for welfare restrictions especially in the South, in the form of the
“suitable home” and “employable mother” rules. According to Sanford F. Schram,
Reese further argues that this backlash eventually took hold on the national
level in the wake of the failure of the push for a guaranteed income. A
sustained campaign using propaganda, especially from right-wing think tanks,
resulted in the welfare retrenchment that came in the form of the Personal
Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (U.S. Public Law
104-193). The act abolished Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) and
replaced it with Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.
This blog will
focus on Part 1 of welfare opposition causes and consequences, “deferred dreams
broken families, and hardship welfare reform is supposed to help people, but
instead it is causing me hardship…Welfare reform is nothing more than reducing
caseloads, cutting people off of welfare pushing us into greater poverty.”- Anonymous
welfare mother. The program was suppose to help people move out of poverty is
the negative of that the program is putting people to work and stopping public
assistance, and it doesn’t matter what type of work your doing. Also we will
address how race and poverty are now so closely entwined that it is hard tobelieve there was a time when discussions of American poverty neglected blacksaltogether. African Americans have always been disproportionately poor, butblack poverty was ignored by white society throughout most of our history.
In 1996, the
following mounting attacks on Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC),
Congress passed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation
Act, which significantly restricted poor-families right to income and social
services. It ended their federal entitlement to Welfare, froze welfare expenditures,
and replaced AFDC with a more decentralized and selective program called
Temporary Aid to Needy Families (TANF).
The aim of the new welfare law was to promote self-sufficiency, through
work and marriage, among low-income mothers, who make up about 90 percent of
adult TANF recipients. (PRWORA) Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity
Reconciliation Act targeted legal immigrants for the most drastic cuts, denying
most of them access to federal public assistance during their first five years
in the country.
A central goal
of welfare reform is to increase employment among low-income mothers. Many are
unable to obtain employment because they lack education and training. About 44
percent of adults receiving TANF lack a high school diploma or GED, which
significantly lowers their employment prospects. National studies suggest that
welfare-to-work (WTW) programs that emphasize job quality lead to better
employment outcomes than those based on “work first” approach, which encourages
participants to take the first job offered. The “work first” philosophy presumes, often
wrongly, that “a job, any job, is better than no job.”
Many people who
have unexpected pregnancies feel like the world will shame them for being on
welfare. A freshmen in college got pregnant and was afraid, she felt like world
was dark and scary place to have an child and couldn’t figure out how she would
afford an child until her and her husband decided to apply for Aid to support
our new family, and still be able to attend school. She felt ashamed like she
was a failure because she knew that this decision that they was making would
shape the kind of life they would lead, so she made sure to stay in school and
not give up the dream of obtaining an degree because that was the only knew would
ensure that her family wouldn’t live in poverty forever. Other WTW regulations
also prevent welfare mothers from attending school. For example, one recipient
had to drop out of college because she was told she qualified for subsidized
child-care only if she worked. Another recipient dropped out of technical
school after she was told that she could not qualify for welfare while
receiving financial aid. This system was against anyone achieving to do better
in life and made them become dependable on the system that is against anyone
succeeding once on welfare because once you try to get off of welfare people
face greater problems obtaining support services, making it difficult for them
to make ends meet and remain off of welfare. Participation in Food Stamps and
Medicaid declines dramatically after families leave TANF, because of program
rules, confusion over eligibility, and faulty administrative practices.
With the
implementation of welfare reform’s tough new eligibility rules, many poor
families were denied or discouraged from using welfare. For example, RWORA
denied public assistance to most legal immigrants for their first five years in
the country. The new rules had a “chilling effect” on immigrant welfare
applications. Confusion over the new rules and fear that welfare receipt would
interfere with their ability to obtain citizenship discouraged qualified
immigrants from obtaining welfare. As a result, the number of immigrant welfare
applications approved dropped sharply 71 percent between January 1996 and
January 1998, while their use of TANF declined 60 percent between 1994 and
1999. A number of immigrants, fearful about their loss of benefits,
contemplated or actually committed suicide. Poor families were also discouraged
from seeking aid through “diversion programs,” adopted in twenty states that
encourage prospective welfare application. Many welfare mothers also face a
variety of other obstacles such as substance abuse problems, extreme
depression, learning disabilities, men who stalk them, or homelessness that
make it difficult for them to find or keep a job.
The Part 2
Attack Welfare, Promoting Work and Marriage that the welfare system became an
enemy of individual effort and responsibility, with dependence passed from one
generation to the next. The United States, one of the richest nations on earth,
have such an obsession with purging the “undeserving poor” from the welfare
rolls. How did a program that was originally designed to keep poor mothers at
home with their children become transformed into a draconian workfare program
forcing poor mothers to accept “a job, any job” This book addresses these
questions by examining the political forces generating attacks on welfare
mothers’ rights from the end of World War II until the present. Since World War
II, there have been several waves of attacks on welfare mothers. The first
major backlash against Aid to Dependent Children (ADC, later renamed AFDC)
emerged in the late 1940s in response to the postwar expansion of welfare and
its rising use among unwed mothers and racial minorities. Second, politicians
created and popularized racist images of black and brown welfare mothers to
justify welfare cutbacks, images that have since become pervasive. Opposition
to welfare also reflects a classist and racist double standard regarding
maternal obligations. While white middleclass married women are encouraged to
limit work outside the home to take care of their children, the caretaking work
of poor mothers, especially non-whites, is devalued, as race-centered and
feminist scholars point out, opposition to welfare rose after World War II,
when it increasingly served women of color and single mothers confront strong
moral disapproval because they fail to conform to the “marriage ethic” of
getting and staying married. Moreover, “the faces summoned by welfare by
welfare mothers “as dishonest and irresponsible individuals who purchase
bottles of vodka with food stamps intended to help feed their children to rip
off the welfare system for more benefits.”
It was said that
poor people were over using welfare to avoid work and their familial
obligations was encouraged by the rise of conservative ideas in the 1950s.
Structuralist views of poverty and the belief that the state had a responsibility
to help the poor declined as a “cold war liberal” ideology took hold. This
ideology viewed the free enterprise system and economic prosperity, democracy,
and equality. Not only was the poor less numerous, but they were also less
visible as white working- and middle class people moved to suburbs and
increasingly relied on cars for transportation. 1986 CBS News Special Report:
The vanishing family crisis in Black America.
Q1: How many of
you want to marry your baby father?
Only one raised
her hand and when asked why not the ladies said you already have your child to
take care of, they only hold you back; you have to care for them financial, and
in today’s society its no need for a male figure in the household. (Basically
saying that they grew up without a father figure so they see the importance of
having one for their children.)
Timothy the baby father of one of the ladies
Alice said when the girl decides to get pregnant and keep the baby that’s on
her. (In other words saying that she basically got herself pregnant and wanted
to become a mom, and that wasn’t his plan. Or that he don’t plan on getting
married until he has a stable job.)
Q2: What about
birth control or condoms?
Timothy said
girls don’t like them things, and they tell us to take it off because when a
man wears a condom they think we are calling them dirty, un-pure. (Basically
blaming the women for whatever happens because she told him to take the condom
off; did you know that the pill is only 99.9 percent effective and 5 out of 10
women misuse the pill because of failure to be teached the right way to use
them.)
Black Americans
are still the strong backbone of America. It use to be 3 out of 4 children that
had both parents at home but over the years this has changed and no longer true
because now most children are growing up without a father figure. But this
cycle is becoming never ending because most children copy and repeat what they
see and half the black parents are only single household then why will anyone
think that they need both parents. 60 percent of children are born out of wood
lock and Timothy said that none of his children is his problem the mom decided
to have them so they are left to take care of them with the help of welfare.
This is the tradition now for traditional families its no more both parents its
only single parent households, which has grown in the population. With parents
being uneducated and young like 16-18 years old who is really teaching the
child because the child is running around doing whatever, fooling around, so
the real question is how will they learn what a traditional family is suppose
to look like when the parents are usually your example, or enforce wait to have
sex when married. Instead of focusing on racism we must fight the lack of
motivation in the black community because we are destroying ourselves for
Amerikkka.
The focus that
this video takes on focusing on Newark NJ is just only one of Americas “inner
city” another word for poor black ghetto. Those who usually don’t live in the
ghetto only know about the ghetto based off pictures they seen or violence in
the media (news). In order to understand the statistics better you must go to
the community to understand the problem because for black children things are
getting worse. Black men said that for them to be safe in the community they
have to carry weapons because of threats going on, they basically compared
being on the street to war and talked about how black crimes are increasing and
when a black man carries protection he is usually locked up and put in jail,
along with the continuing cycle of pregnant teen moms and women looking for
love in their children.
Q3: Why is the
cycle continuing to happen?
·
No
role modes
·
Looking
for love
·
No
belief in marriage
·
Think
it will keep the man
·
Usually
all they know
Q4: How will you
stop the cycle?
·
Self
love
·
Birth
control
·
Educate
·
Safe
sex (Condoms)
In 1986
mainstream media only showed white America in the commercials so really
children had no second option to look up to because if you didn’t learn it at
home you wouldn’t on Television or school because its all white washed and
usually their life is different.
Alice and
Timothy
Alice unlike
most of the ladies in he film graduated high school and attended 1 year of
college to major in business but with an unexpected pregnancy wanted to keep
the baby. She is the mother 2 children, expecting a third child soon; these
unexpected pregnancies caused her to dropout of college and depend on welfare.
She said that she kept her child because she always wanted to be a mom to care
and love someone (child).
Timothy is a
high school drop out with 6 children who has a talent for art, 4 different baby
mothers, out of work, criminal record (been arrested before).
Alice said that
she probably wouldn’t have had her kids if she didn’t think welfare would help.
She said that if Timothy had a job then she knows he would care for his
children but he is out of work because he has a fear of Alice slipping away, so
she depends on welfare. Every first of the month the women seat outside waiting
for the mailman to come for welfare checks which to them is like mothers day
they said, Alice gets $385 a month and $112 in food stamps which she isn’t too
proud of because she said she does not like being lazy and depending on a
monthly check when she is used to getting paid every 2 weeks.
Poverty
appeared overwhelmingly as a “white problem” in the national news media. But in
a very brief period beginning in 1965, the media’s portrayal of American
poverty shifted dramatically. Although the true racial composition of the
American poor remained stable, the face of poverty in the news media became
markedly darker between 1965 and 1967.
The
most obvious explanations for the news media’s changing racial portrayal of the
poor—the civil rights movement and the urban riots of the mid-1960s—played a
role, but cannot account for the nature or timing of the shifts in media
images. Nor is this change in the media’s portrayal of poverty merely a refection
of the increasing visibility of African Americans in the news more broadly.
Instead, the changing
racial images of the poor in the mass media are best understood as reflecting
two very different processes that converged in the mid-1960s. First, the stage
was set by a series of historical changes and events that made black poverty a
less remote concern for white Americans. These included the migration of
African Americans from the rural South to the urban North, the increasing
representation of blacks among AFDC beneficiaries, the civil rights movement,
and the riots of the mid-1960s. But these changes only created the environment
in which racial portrayals of poverty were transformed. The proximate cause of
that transformation was the shift in the moral tone of poverty coverage in the
news. As news stories about the poor became less sympathetic, the images of
poor blacks in the news swelled. The association of African Americans with the “undeserving poor” is evident not only in the changing media coverage of poverty during the mid-1960s, but throughout the period studied. From the early 1950s through the early 1990s, images of poor blacks increased when the tone of poverty stories became more critical of the poor and decreased when coverage became more sympathetic. Similarly, images of African Americans were most numerous in news stories about the least sympathetic subgroups of the poor. As I discuss below, these differences in the racial portrayal of the poor cannot be accounted for by true changes in the racial composition of the poverty population or by racial differences across subgroups of the poor. Rather, the media’s tendency to associate African Americans with the undeserving poor reflects—and reinforces— the centuries-old stereotype of blacks as lazy.
Racist organizations and politicians were the
other major group pushing for welfare cutbacks. In response to civil rights
gains and the influx of blacks, Puerto Ricans, and Mexicans in the North and
West, whites mobilized to maintain the racial backlash status quo. As more
nonwhite women gained access to welfare, this racial backlash lent support to
the 1950s welfare backlash. Attacks on black, Puerto Rican, and Mexican welfare
mothers’ rights provided an outlet for racial anger, reinforced the racial
status quo among poor mothers, and maintained a ready supply for cheap labor
for employers. Racialized opposition was most commonly directed at blacks,
however. Welfare critics in the 1950s constructed a new association that
continues to this day. One of the most enduring legacies of this backlash was
the stereotype of the black welfare queen. In the context of justifying new
restrictive welfare. While news, this image drew on old stereotypes,
constructed during slavery, of blacks as lazy and hyper sexed, reckless
breeders. Black unwed mothers were commonly viewed as the product of “an
‘accepted way of life’ in an inferior culture.” The black welfare queen
stereotype also drew on the long-standing view of unwed mothers as “fallen
women” who deserved punishment for their sins. Racist opposition to welfare was
likely to be more powerful where there was a larger black population and blacks
made up a greater share of welfare cases. Welfare cutbacks were also more
likely to occur where the tax base was lower.
Finally,
Congress should help working parents balance their dual obligations to their
employers and dependents by improving work time regulations, providing paid
family leave, and expanding subsized early education and child care programs.
In terms of such policies, the United States has much to learn from Western
European social policies. Members of the European Union have much stricter
regulations regarding work time than the United States, giving Europeans
workers are guaranteed at least four weeks of paid vacation each year. Workers
have no similar rights in the United States, giving employers tremendous
discretion over vacation policies. Currently, only very poor families qualify
for subsidized childcare in the United States, and only 10 to 20 percent of
families that qualify for this care actually receive it.
This ideology
can relate to the Cultivation Theory on how violence might affect us because
with the definition of cultivation theory states that high frequency viewers of
television are more susceptible to media messages and the belief that they are
real and valid. Heavy viewers are exposed to more violence and therefore are
effected by the Mean world syndrome, this belief that the world is a far worse
and dangerous place then it actually is. It also relates because theorist in
cultural studies maintain that the media represents ideologies of the dominant
class in a society. Because media are controlled by corporations, the
information presented to the public is necessarily influenced and framed with
profit in mind. Cultural Studies theorists, therefore, are concerned with media
influenced and framed with profit in mind. Cultural Studies theorists,
therefore, are concerned with media influence and how power plays a role in the
interpretation of culture. This means that when Black America has no influence
from people who look like them or no one in the household helping them then why
would they not know that its more to life when it was said that children say,
repeat everything they see. In the world war against women, the article
anti-feminist backlash and violence against women worldwide lets us take a look
first at how it is played out in a nation that has long touted women’s
equality. The guiding theoretical framework for the present paper is Susan
Faludi’s concept of backlash.
My aim is to develop this concept further by
discussing two forms of backlash against women in the world today. 1. Institutionalor politically based backlash and 2. Against women that operates at the morepersonal level. Let us look first at Faludi’s (1991) theoretical contribution. Backlash,
as Faludi indicates, is borne out of success; one party makes claims, advances
and another party feels left out, resentful threatened. Faludi argues that the
anti-feminist backlash has been set off not by women's achievement of full
equality but by the increased possibility that they might win it. It is a
pre-emptive strike that stops women long before their goals are achieved. She
describes the "countercurrents and treacherous undertows" of the
backlash – which are highly effective in that even those who see themselves as
feminists can be dragged down by them. “This counterassault,” writes Faludi
(1991, p. xviii), “stands the truth boldly on its head and proclaims that the
very steps that have elevated women’s position have actually led to their
downfall.” Liberation, as Faludi further suggests, has now became the true
American scourge. Just when women’s quest for equal rights had started to gain
ground with extensive affirmative action programs in place; just when women had
joined the ranks of virtually all the male dominated and prestigious and even
macho professions; just when laws protecting rape victims and battered women
from being belittled and attacked in court, almost predictably an antifeminist
resistance set in. For everyone or two steps forward, there has been one step
back.
Refences:
