Jessica Mena

Professor Berghof

Writing 39C

4 November 2015      

Advocacy Project

            Many African American women on welfare have been affected psychologically by the stereotype of “welfare queens” which has been continuously reinforced through media. However, the effect has not only been limited to them but has extended to other people that have been exposed to the stereotype.  The “welfare queen” stereotype has affected people’s perception about welfare spending and African American women on welfare. The concern about whether or not African American women on welfare are “welfare queens” abusing the program has grown and as a result, previous welfare policies have been adjusted or new laws have been created to lower the number of welfare recipients, to move them out of poverty and overall keep them from returning to the welfare cycle.

COMMENT: With this draft I wanted to focus on at least restating the problem and its significance. For being the introduction i think it was a bit to brief and could have been a bit more detail by adding how media, which type of media, has reinforced the stereotype and stating the psychological effect of the issue, which was the low self esteem. When I started to write my first draft for my advocacy one of the struggles that I knew I was going to have was transitioning from the HCP to the advocacy. At the beginning, when writing my draft I felt lost because I wanted to continue to write about the problem; however, I knew that I restating the problem was not going to be the prime focus of the paper so it should have not been so long but it ended up being very brief.

          During President Bill Clinton’s term he addressed the issue of welfare when he signed and when “congress passed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity reconciliation Act of 1996” (Weaver 1). A legislation that contained “new work requirements” and also lessened the time that previous legislations gave welfare recipients to obtain welfare benefits (weaver 1). Also it provided a new program called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, a “block grant program” that replaced Aid to Families with Dependent children Program (AFDC), a legislation which had existed for about sixty years. Overall, the new legislation aimed to focus on many issues regarding welfare, by “providing assistance to needy families so that children could be cared for in their own homes, ending the dependence of needy parents on government benefits by promoting job preparation, work, and marriage, preventing and reducing the incidence of out-of-wedlock pregnancies and encouraging the formation and maintenance of two parent-families” (Lopreset, Schmidt, Witte 158). Issues that raised high concerns among people and that were associated with the “welfare queen” stereotype because African American welfare recipients are portrayed to be “inner city black woman who has numerous children out of wedlock, and buys drugs and Cadillacs with welfare money” (Love 1). With the goals that PRWORA aimed to achieve, it is clear that the negative stereotype of “welfare queens” influenced many politicians when addressing the impact welfare has had on the economy because it shows that they wanted to prevent recipients from abusing welfare by preventing them from having more and more children.

COMMENT: When I was conducting research for exist laws, polices or programs that have tried to address the problem the most common legislation that I found was President Bill Clinton's PRWORA. Initially, I wanted to use this legislation as part of my essay and criticize its effect. That is why this second paragraph of my first draft for my advocacy project I focused on PRWORA by explaining what it is, introducing the law. However, one of the comments that I received from Professor Berghof encouraged me to find more recent laws since PRWORA is not as recent (1996). As a result, for my second draft my paper changed its direction by focusing on the WIN for Family Act (has a negative effect, perpetuates the stereotype) and I was actually able to use part of this paragraph to implement the idea that there should be a new law that is similar to PRWORA because even though the law has flaws of its own the main concept/goal of the law was to lead welfare recipients to work and towards independency which we should actually help welfare recipients do so.