The systematic exclusion of black people from the welfare system (Progressive Era, New Deal, etc.)

[YoungDemCA]

Although much of the American public now views welfare dependency as a Black cultural trait, the welfare system systematically excluded Black people for most of its history. Besides its misguided faith in the family wage, the Progressive welfare movement was flawed by the elitism of the privileged, white activist network that led it. As a result, a defining aspect of its welfare vision was the social control of poor immigrant families and the neglect of Black women.

Immigrant women, who reformers incorrectly believed made up a disproportionate share of deserted wives and illegitimate mothers, became the primary objects of reformers' moral concern. Worried about urban immigrants' threat to the social order, the reformers treated welfare as a means of supervising and disciplining recipients as much as a means of providing charity. According to this social work perspective, the cure for single mothers' poverty lay in socializing foreign relief recipients to conform to "American" family standards. Thus, aid generally was conditioned on compliance with "suitable home" provisions and often administered by juvenile court judges who specialized in punitive and rehabilitative judgments.

Black single mothers, on the other hand, were simply excluded. The first maternalist welfare legislation was intended for white mothers only: Administrators either failed to establish programs in locations with large Black populations or distributed benefits according to standards that disqualified Black mothers. As a result, in 1931 the first national survey of mothers' pensions broken down by race found that only three percent of recipients were Black. The exclusivity of mothers' aid programs coincided with the entrenchment of formal racial segregation -- another Progressive reform intended to strengthen social order.

snip:

The New Deal solidified welfare's stratification along racial as well as gender lines. Northern New Dealers struck a bargain with Southern Democrats that systematically denied Blacks' eligibility for social insurance benefits: Core programs allowed states to define eligibility standards and excluded agricultural workers and domestic servants in a deliberate effort to maintain a Black menial labor caste in the South. Whites feared that Social Security would make both recipients and those freed from the burden of supporting dependents less willing to accept low wages. In addition, New Deal public works programs blatantly discriminated against Blacks, offering them the most menial jobs and paying them sometimes half of what white workers earned. Even Aid to Dependent Children was created primarily for white mothers, who were not expected to work; the relatively few Black recipients received smaller stipends on the ground that "blacks needed less to live on than whites."

Quadagno connects racial politics both to the enactment and to the dismantling of the 1960s welfare programs that followed. She interprets the War on Poverty as an effort to eliminate the racial barriers of the New Deal programs and to integrate Blacks into the national political economy. For example, the Office of Economic Opportunity used federal funds to empower community action groups run by local Black activists; federal affirmative action and job-training programs broke longstanding racial barriers to union jobs; the Department of Housing and Urban Development gave housing subsidies to the poor.

At the same time, the National Welfare Rights Organization, a grassroots movement composed of welfare mothers, joined forces with neighborhood welfare rights centers and legal services lawyers to agitate for major changes in the welfare system's eligibility and procedural rules. This welfare rights movement secured entitlements to benefits, raised benefit levels, and increased availability of benefits to families headed by women. As a result, "by 1967, a welfare caseload that had once been eighty-six percent white had become forty-six percent nonwhite."

But Black welfare activists won a Pyrrhic victory. As Gordon notes, they got themselves included "not in social insurance but mainly in public assistance programs, which by then had become even stingier and more dishonorable than they had been originally." As AFDC became increasingly associated with Black mothers already stereotyped as lazy, irresponsible, and overly fertile, it became increasingly burdened with behavior modification, work requirements, and reduced effective benefit levels. Social Security, on the other hand, effectively transferred income from Blacks to whites because Blacks have a lower life expectancy and pay a disproportionate share of taxes on earnings. Meanwhile, a white backlash had decimated the War on Poverty programs within a decade.

http://academic.udayton.edu/race/04needs/welfare01b.htm

[freshwest]

1. K&R for visibility. n/t

[bravenak]

2. Kick

[jwirr]

3. As I remember it that is why welfare was taken out of the states hands and became AFDC and

Medicaid. Before the late 50s those two programs were state programs under other names. And each state made their own regulations. When the feds like George McGovern looked into the problems what they found that some states had two sets of programs - one for black people and one for white people and this included different payouts as well. In order to correct this the feds created AFDC and Medicaid. They also included a new program - food stamps.

But even after that as the article says there were still problems. And that is not over today.

Edited to add that regarding the New Deal - those programs never reached either the inner cities or the reservations throughout the country. I am not sure why.

[Hoyt]

4. Heck, the original Social Security legislation left lots of Blacks out.

They've been treated unfairly in just about every way imaginable.

[sheshe2]

5. KnR

[1StrongBlackMan]

6. Posted to for later. n/t

[YoungDemCA]

8. Thanks. nt

[JustAnotherGen]

7. A big kick and a rec

Blacks have a lower life expectancy and pay a disproportionate share of taxes on earnings


Let's all just chomp at that bit.


Hence why I need to see precisely how any changes to this country's financial structure will personally impact me.

We aren't going to a 'tax everyone down to $15 an hour' until I'm absolutely certain the white couple across the street is going to lose their house too in this insane commie/socialist utopia some people (not at DU - lets nip that shit in the bud) want.

[ismnotwasm]

9. K&R

[YoungDemCA]

10. I'm tempted to repost this in GD - if for no other reason than visibility

But I'm hesitant to do so, needless to say, for a variety of unfortunate reasons that I know the members and regulars of this group empathize with.

Who thinks I should?

[qwlauren35]

12. YES!

And watch it sink like a stone in the water.

[qwlauren35]

11. Good post.

excluded agricultural workers and domestic servants in a deliberate effort to maintain a Black menial labor caste in the South.

I remember when I first learned about this. I was disgusted, and not-surprised. The extent of hatred toward black people runs so deep, it's just sick.

[YoungDemCA]

13. Thanks!

nt