How She Became a Welfare Queen
There she is in front of you—a husky, black woman wearing a bandana, a cutoff t-shirt, and stained sweatpants. Four rowdy kids run circles around her at the Safeway checkout. She wreaks of marijuana. You see her name on the greasy food stamp card that she hands to the clerk. Her name is Shannon. No, actually, upon second glance you read that her name is Shanaynay. Shanaynay Jackson smirks with a sense of satisfaction while the clerk bags her cigarettes and t-bone steak—all while you clutch your package of hamburger. A small white item falls out of her pocket.
Oh my, is it crack?
No, just a piece of chiclet gum.
Whew! Good.
But still, she’s just another free-loading, lazy bum using the system to get by. One of the 47% Romney referenced in his infamous video [1].
Shanaynay is the type of stereotypical caricature used by Ronald Reagan in his campaign for presidency. One of Reagan’s most successful and repeated anecdotes was the story of a Chicago “welfare queen” with “80 names, 30 addresses, 12 Social Security cards,” whose “tax-free income alone is over $150,000” [2]. Reagan’s campaign successfully planted fear into the minds of Democrats and Republicans alike—fear of an urban stew boiling over with crime, welfare and crack-cocaine. His campaign helped sear into our collective consciousness the image of lazy, black, crackhead whores and male predators rummaging inner-cities on their way to a suburb near you. Crime and drug usage in inner-cities should never be minimized, but studies have shown that Reagan’s War on Drugs in 1982 was declared before drugs were a major problem in urban communities [3]. Thus some argue that caricatures such as the one above were political tools used to snatch votes from poor, white, Democrats, and to create a new racial under-caste in America. Regardless of how much of the caricature is truth, imagination, or a combination of both, Conservatives and Liberals have opposite opinions on how people like Shanaynay end up so poor, which inevitably affects their response to the epidemic [4]. I only emphasize Shanaynay because black women are unfairly singled out as "welfare queens," but statistics show that poverty comes in all shades of color.
Conservatives argue that the poor end up poor because of their own decisions. They should have worked harder and made wiser choices. However, to blame poverty solely on individual character ignores a host of broader factors. Chances are that Shanaynay attended failing schools, was exposed to drugs at an early age, was raped, was unfairly targeted by police, was fatherless, grew up in a gang-ridden neighborhood, and faced a variety of other socioeconomic factors beyond her control. These factors crippled her life-chances.
On the contrary, Liberals argue that the poor are poor because of structural issues. Liberalism tends to idealize the poor by denying any moral responsibility. What Liberals often miss is that although the odds were stacked against Shanaynay, she also made some bad choices along the way. She ditched classes often, used sex to medicate her pain, and stole from her family to support her drug habit. She made mistakes along the way, but it should be noted that her mistakes were more costly than those of privileged people.
Any extended time among the poor reveals that both Conservatives and Liberals are partially right. There’s a dynamic tension in play among the poor; horrendous social structures influence poor decisions, which further entrench the structures [5]. We must replace our simplified answers and one-dimensional solutions with a holistic approach to the poverty epidemic.
So, why did Shanaynay become that poor “welfare queen” standing in front of you?
The Conservative answer: “It’s her own damn fault.”
The Liberal answer: “Blame society.”
My answer: “Stand in the middle. Slide to the left. Now stop. Right there.”
[1] Much of these 47% were not welfare queens at all, but war veterans, and medicare and medicaid recipients.
[2] Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in an Age of Colorblindness (New York: The New Press, 2010), 49.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Clinton’s Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Act combined with other stricter stipulations on welfare make it very hard for people to truly milk government assistance.
[5] For an excellent balance between the two extremes see, Ronald J. Sider, Just Generosity: A New Vision for Overcoming Poverty in America (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1999).
I have lived and worshiped with the poor far too long to side either with the liberal who quickly dismisses the way personal choices contribute to poverty or with the conservative who ignores the way complicated structural barriers make it difficult for many hardworking people to escape poverty.