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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsRacist Whites Do Not Accept Universal Care If Blacks, Hispanics Or Brown Skinned Get It.
If universal health care were for whites only it would probably pass. I do believe that this reality is where we are.
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Orrex
(63,203 posts)White people who receive those benefits are good people who ran into a stretch of bad luck.
Black/brown/Hispanic people who receive those benefits are freeloading leeches who are destroying the economy.
k/r
dalton99a
(81,451 posts)States With Large Black Populations Are Stingier With Government Benefits
Research suggests that states with homogenous populations are more willing to spend on the safety net than those with higher shares of minorities.
Alana Semuels | Jun 6, 2017
When he launched his War on Poverty in 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson visited Tom Fletcher, an unemployed white Appalachian coal miner who lived in Kentucky. The White House had chosen Fletcher, who had eight children, to become the face of American poverty, and an iconic Time magazine photo captured the president squatting next to Fletcher and three of his boys on the porch.
Poverty, in the 1960s, did not just affect white Appalachians like Fletcher. As Johnson himself wrote in his memoirs, the poor “were black and they were white, of every religion and background and national origin. And they were 35 million strong.” But Johnson chose a white family to represent poverty to the American public. His legislative agenda would be contentious, and he needed as much support from Republicans and Democrats as he could get. It seems he made a calculation: Convincing elected officials, the majority of whom were white, to help poor people would be a lot easier if they thought of the poor as white people like them.
The example highlights a fact of life about welfare in America: People are more likely to support anti-poverty programs if they conceive of the poor as “like them,” especially when it comes to race. On a state-by-state basis, places with the most homogeneous populations tend to be the most generous. Oregon, for example, one of the whitest states in the union, has an extensive safety net, as I’ve written about before. Today, Oregon, where 84 percent of the population is white and 1.8 percent of the population is black, gives a single-parent family of three $506 a month through Temporary Aid to Needy Families (TANF), the modern-day welfare program. Mississippi, which is 60 percent white and 38 percent black, gives a single-parent family of three just $170 a month. Oregon also helps people get off welfare by linking them to employment and pays their wages for up to six months. Mississippi has a work requirement for people receiving welfare, but does little to help them get a job. “I think what you see in other states is you see this kind of partisan, ‘we are going to take it out on poor people,’ philosophy. You just haven't seen that here,” Tina Kotek, a Democratic legislator in Oregon, told me last year.
That states have so much leeway in how they administer benefits is one of the legacies of a massive overhaul of welfare programs in 1996. In those reforms, spearheaded by then-president Bill Clinton, the government changed cash assistance to a program called TANF, which was administered through what are known as “block grants” to states. States could decide what they did with TANF funds, and could set their own limits for how much cash families could receive and who could receive it. A new Urban Institute analysis finds that allowing states to decide how to spend TANF dollars has led to even more racial discrepancies in who receives benefits. The Urban Institute analyzed a federal database that tracks state policy decisions about TANF and found that the states whose populations are more heavily African American are now less generous, more restrictive, and provide TANF for a shorter period of time than whiter states.
greymattermom
(5,754 posts)I remember the folks who would be affected by low lying water somehow all lived in Bangladesh, not Houston or Miami, right?
hfojvt
(37,573 posts)because the vast majority of poor people in 1964 were white.
Even in 2011, the wealth census shows 16.86 million white non-Hispanic households with less than $5,000 in net worth and only 7.24 million black households with in that same boat and only 6.34 million Hispanic households.
That was even more true in the past (and if I could find my copy of "The Other America" I would quote it about the racial make-up of poverty). In 1993 there were at least 17.55 white households with less than $5,000 in net worth (I subtracted all of the Hispanics from the white total since the census did not distinguish between whites and white non-Hispanic.) and only 5.25 million black households in that same boat and only 3.01 million Hispanic households. Even in 1993 at least 68% of the poor were white.
WinstonSmith00
(228 posts)burnbaby
(685 posts)
oasis
(49,376 posts)
Progressive dog
(6,900 posts)other than skin color that could account for the lack of universal health care in the USA.
Actually, if it were for whites only, it would not stand a chance of passing.
Amishman
(5,555 posts)But the line also mirrors racial trends. A disproportionate number of minorities are stuck on the lower end of the income spectrum.
Middle class households, particularly those composed of individuals who also grew up in middle class households, seem resent public assistance which they do not receive. They have pride in not needing help (I work for a living dangit herp derp), but money is tight enough they acutely resent income lost to taxes. This leads to resentment towards those they see who do receive public assistance that they themselves cannot get. It's more about jealousy / money than color.
In informal conversations, I find people more open to UBI or other assistance programs if anyone can get it (no means testing or income limits). This lines up well with the support among mainstream Republicans for social security and Medicare. If they can get it too, then it's fine.
Doreen
(11,686 posts)because it is but I am just sick of these people and if they will not accept it then maybe they will get sick and die and then less of them.
Just venting.
shanny
(6,709 posts)because his southern Democratic members wouldn't vote for it: they didn't want to share hospitals etc with black people.
not much has changed
