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Yet, the National Urban League (currently celebrating their
100th anniversary), the NAACP, Children’s Defense
Fund, SCLC and many other civil rights organizations have
for nearly 80 years, unwaveringly forewarned of the
disastrous consequences of proceding with reckless,
negligent and inconsiderate political decisions and policies
which punish, stigmatize or rob citizens of their dignity.
Stereotypical representations and rhetorical insults
continue to bombard African-Americans and other minorities
such as those by South Carolina’s Republican Lt. Governor
Andre Bauer who recently publicly and unashamedly stated:
“Poor
people are like stray dogs and cats. If you feed them,
they’ll just come back for more – and worse still, they’ll
multiply. That’s why it’s a bad idea to give them free food
or other forms of public assistance. My grandmother was not
a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to
quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they
breed. You are facilitating the problem if you give an
animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce,
especially ones that don’t think too much farther than that.
And so what you’ve got to do is you’ve got to curtail that
type of behavior. They don’t know any better.”
These and other flagrant or more subtle statements and
racial representations, while totally lacking in hard data,
are a gross attempt to misrepresent 21st Century
racial and economic reality. Yet they serve as powerful
rhetorical weapons used to justify racial inequality, shape
everyday behavior and perpetuate public policy.
Temporary Aid to Needy Families (TANF), has been described
as a policy that “abandons children and pushes women into
lives of working poverty” because it “requires” recipients
to work and places a time limit on receiving cash
assistance. The policy was proposed and enacted during the
Clinton presidency in response to the “Welfare Queen” myth
where those on public assistance were depicted as lazy,
shiftless, promiscuous single mothers driving Cadillacs and
pimping the system.
TANF reduced the number of families on assistance from 4.8
million in 1996 to 1.7 million families by 2008 as “help
disappeared fast but poverty didn’t go away,” writes Seth
Wessler, in RaceWire.
Several scholars indicate that the subtle racism of
post-civil rights America is maintained by “myths,” “story
lines” or “testimonies” that take a smidgeon of assumed
truth to make it seem plausible and then is repeated often
and loud enough to “bolster the apparent reasonableness of
their argument.” The myth is therefore used to affirm the
status quo social system of class, race and gender
subordination and also helps to shape public policy by
suggesting that minorities lack inappropriate values or are
undeserving of public support because “it is their own fault
that they are in their lower-caste.”
It is critical therefore, for society to discern reality
from myth as “those who are shut out of an economic system’s
rewards truly have no stake in that system” and when our
children are abandoned, “the gangs will adopt them, drug
dealers will hire and arm them, prisons will house them and
criminals will educate them.”
So what is the truth? And what public policies can move
people towards self-sufficiency?
The truth is:
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Welfare has always functioned to legitimize minorities
at the bottom of the economy. Although approximately 39
percent of those on public assistance are white and 37
percent black, the public face of welfare is an
African-American woman.
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Targeting minorities as lazy public enemies undeserving
of a social safety net incentivizes those same “lazy”
workers to work two to three simultaneous jobs at
poverty wages in a global economy that produces a
disproportionate number of low-paying, part-time, and
contingent positions – a boon for corporate elites.
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Contrary to what is typically labled as irresponsible
teens having multiple babies to increase welfare
payments, the percentage of total births to teen mothers
has steadily declined since the 1970’s. Additional
research shows that over two-thirds of teen mothers
become pregnant by men over age 21 and the younger the
mother, the wider the age gap. This indicates that many
of the teen mothers are, rather, victims of sexual
abuse.
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It cannot be denied that targeted investment in job
training, quality education and programming designed to
change antisocial behavior and attitudes is needed to
adequately prepare people for a labor market that is
rapidly changing.
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Most astounding, is that politicians and economists have
understood for a long time but not acknowledged that
there are not enough jobs available at adequate wage
levels to employ all those willing and able to work. And
because there is “no intention in the market economy for
this to be otherwise” therefore many workers are simply
not wanted and not needed in the regular labor market.
It is injust to be “required” to work when there are no
jobs and to then become disqualified from receiving
assistance for not working.
Therefore, if we are to become a civil society that will
eventually stop fighting each another or hurting ourselves,
only policies that deal with realities rather than myth will
allow families to live in dignity. The policies must address
the structural causes of poverty and include genuine welfare
reform and not workfare. Also a serious job creation plan of
sufficient size and scale with health and child care
benefits is critical. It must
target those most in need while adding new jobs to the total
employment.
For nearly eight decades “jobs in the regular market” has
been the mantra of our civil rights organizations. They also
predicted that “failure to deal adequately with these
problems would only lead to greater problems.” Their
warnings have long gone unheeded. We are just as likely to
remain unmindful.
Contact
Rev. Dr. Donald Perryman at
drdlperryman@centerofhopebaptist.org
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