Return-Path: <nifl-womenlit@literacy.nifl.gov> Received: from literacy (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by literacy.nifl.gov (8.10.2/8.10.2) with SMTP id f9QHGH000172; Fri, 26 Oct 2001 13:16:17 -0400 (EDT) Date: Fri, 26 Oct 2001 13:16:17 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <200110261713.f9QHDQ0L012064@icicle.winternet.com> Errors-To: alcrsb@langate.gsu.edu Reply-To: nifl-womenlit@literacy.nifl.gov Originator: nifl-womenlit@literacy.nifl.gov Sender: nifl-womenlit@literacy.nifl.gov Precedence: bulk From: Mev Miller <mev@litwomen.org> To: Multiple recipients of list <nifl-womenlit@literacy.nifl.gov> Subject: [NIFL-WOMENLIT:1788] Fwd: [BRC-NEWS] The Link Between Welfare And Racism X-Listprocessor-Version: 6.0c -- ListProcessor by Anastasios Kotsikonas Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Status: O Content-Length: 8870 Lines: 196 ---------------- Begin Forwarded Message ---------------- Date: 10/18 10:17 PM Received: 10/26 7:34 AM From: Noel Cazenave, cazenave@uconnvm.uconn.edu Reply-To: vbmartin@aol.com To: brc-news@lists.tao.ca http://ctnow.com/news/opinion/columnists/hc-martin-1004.column Hartford Courant October 4, 2001 The Link Between Welfare And Racism By Vivian B. Martin <vbmartin@aol.com> This week, the state ended welfare benefits to 231 families, mostly women and children, the first group of people to meet the five-year limit on benefits set in 1996. Another 149 families will lose benefits by year's end. Many people applaud the state and federal governments' efforts to turn welfare recipients into workers. Data, however, show that although the country may be ending welfare dependency, it is not decreasing poverty. Welfare reform policies may even be exacerbating hardship. Perhaps the debate can use the perspective offered by two University of Connecticut sociologists who say that the widespread misconception of welfare as a "black problem" has led to mean-spirited policies, from man-in-the-house prohibitions that have threatened the benefits of women who have live-in boyfriends to policies restricting reproduction. Such policies hurt all recipients, including poor whites who receive welfare in about the same numbers as blacks and recent immigrants. The professors, Kenneth J. Neubeck and Noel A. Cazenave, call the phenomenon "welfare racism," and they say it can be found in historical accounts of programs that used to exclude blacks from welfare benefits and in the recent actions of politicians who have played the race card to enact harsher welfare policies. In this group they include former President Bill Clinton, whose efforts to "end welfare as we know it" conjured up all of the usual stereotypes of pathology, sloth and fraud that many Americans associate with welfare and blacks. Clinton had African American mothers standing next to him as he signed the welfare reform bill. "Social science has failed to deal with the fact that debates about welfare are really debates about racism," says Neubeck, who teamed up with Cazenave to write a book on the subject. Neubeck, who teaches courses on welfare and poverty, and Cazenave, who has come to public attention for his controversial but popular course on white racism, are attempting to give a name to a problem to make it easier for people to identify and talk about it in much the same way that terms like "sexual harassment" and "racial profiling" have helped combat those behaviors. It's a rare African American who has not encountered the peculiar but predictable ways in which some whites link welfare and blacks. I've received my share of mail and telephone calls from readers who want to taunt or lecture me about my or other blacks' dependency on welfare and handouts. In their book, Neubeck and Cazenave quote national polling data and other studies that indicate such attitudes are more pervasive than is commonly acknowledged. Ironically, though whites and blacks have been evenly represented on welfare caseloads, welfare may actually become more of a "black problem" due to racism. Since welfare reform in 1996, whites around the country have been more successful in making the transition from welfare to work, raising questions about the role racism may play in matters ranging from job counseling to access to jobs and other support. In Connecticut, blacks are the heads of households in 50.4 percent (122) of the cases for which benefits ended this past Monday. (Those losing major benefits will still have food stamps and housing assistance.) Whites represent 16.1 percent, or 39 cases, and Hispanics 32.6 percent, or 79 cases. The higher number of blacks losing benefits reflects the fact that more of those families had longer tenures on welfare and had exhausted the five-year limit. In their work, Neubeck and Cazenave cite a post-welfare-reform study out of Virginia that showed that, despite higher education levels, sometimes including college, the 105 black women studied were less likely to have found full-time jobs than their 118 white counterparts. The researcher found that the black women reported more negative problems with their employers, underwent more pre-employment screening for drugs and other problems, and got less counseling and support from caseworkers. Neubeck and Cazenave say such studies indicate a need to pay more attention to the ways that racism within the social service system and in the broader labor market make it more difficult for blacks and others of color to leave welfare. Such obstacles may explain why the number of whites on welfare caseloads in Connecticut and elsewhere is inching downward while the number of blacks and Hispanics is inching upward. Yet even as he argues that welfare policies need to better address the ways race might make it more difficult for some people to get off welfare, Cazenave is probably bristling right now. A few weeks ago, he lectured me for suggesting that his work could help tweak welfare reform policies. He says that way of viewing the issue focuses on ending welfare rather than ending poverty. As much as I believe that work is good for the soul, self-esteem and killing time, he has a point. Social critic Barbara Ehrenreich's recent book about the struggles of those in minimum-wage jobs revealed all too painfully that they can't get by on the kind of jobs that people on welfare are being pushed toward. Yet if Cazenave and Neubeck's research suggests anything, it's that attitudes about welfare are so distorted by race that positive change in welfare or poverty programs will only come baby step by baby step. Although "welfare racism" doesn't grab me as the kind of term that is going to be slipping off of many American tongues any time soon, getting more people to recognize welfare racism and its ill effects is a good start. Copyright (c) 2001 MyWay Corp. All Rights Reserved. [IMPORTANT NOTE: The views and opinions expressed on this list are solely those of the authors and/or publications, and do not necessarily represent or reflect the official political positions of the Black Radical Congress (BRC). Official BRC statements, position papers, press releases, action alerts, and announcements are distributed exclusively via the BRC-PRESS list. As a subscriber to this list, you have been added to the BRC-PRESS list automatically.] [Articles on BRC-NEWS may be forwarded and posted on other mailing lists, as long as the wording/attribution is not altered in any way. In particular, if there is a reference to a web site where an article was originally located, do *not* remove that. Unless stated otherwise, do *not* publish or post the entire text of any articles on web sites or in print, without getting *explicit* permission from the article author or copyright holder. Check the fair use provisions of the copyright law in your country for details on what you can and can't do. As a courtesy, we'd appreciate it if you let folks know how to subscribe to BRC-NEWS, by leaving in the first seven lines of the signature below.] -------------------------------------------------------------------------- BRC-NEWS: Black Radical Congress - General News Articles/Reports -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe: <mailto:majordomo@tao.ca?body=unsubscribe%20brc-news> -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe: <mailto:majordomo@tao.ca?body=subscribe%20brc-news> -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Digest: <mailto:majordomo@tao.ca?body=subscribe%20brc-news-digest> -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Help: <mailto:worker-brc-news@lists.tao.ca?subject=brc-news> -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive: <brc-news@lists.tao.ca">http://www.mail-archive.com/brc-news@lists.tao.ca> -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive: <http://groups.yahoo.com/messages/brc-news> -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive: <http://www.escribe.com/politics/brc-news> -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Post: <mailto:brc-news@lists.tao.ca> -------------------------------------------------------------------------- <www.blackradicalcongress.org> | BRC | <blackradicalcongress@visto.com> -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------- End Forwarded Message ----------------- Mev Miller WE LEARN Women Expanding € Literacy Education Action Resource Network 1483 Laurel Ave. St. Paul, MN 55104 651-646-0097 651-646-1153 (fax) welearn@litwomen.org www.litwomen.org/WLindex.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Fri Jan 18 2002 - 11:32:23 EST