Jessica Mena

Professor Berghof

Writing 39C

9 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.

            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 were address by the new legislation showed an implicit bias towards African American women that were welfare recipients because the issues were associated with the “welfare queen” stereotype that is 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 using welfare funds in other things rather than child care and preventing welfare recipients from having more and more children.

               As a result, there have been more bills that have been passed such as the bill “Welfare Integrity Now for Children and Families Act of 2011” or also known as the “WIN for Children and Families Act” that has prohibited welfare recipients to use welfare funds in certain areas. The bill “amends title IV of the Social Security Act to require States to implement policies to prevent assistance under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program from being used in strip clubs, casinos, and liquor stores or at any retail establishment” (Congressional Record). If welfare recipients fail to meet these requirements the “secretary shall reduce, by an amount equal to 5 percent of the State family assistance grant” (Congressional Record). The bill tries to diminish the issue of abusing welfare which the stereotype of “welfare queens” gaming the system has created a negative connotation. A stereotype which throughout history has not only portrayed women of color as ones who overbear children in order to increase the government assistance they received but have been also seen as “abusers, [who] enjoy lives of leisure, whereas [other Americans] work hard” by President Ronald Reagan and later Mitt Romney (Mann & Zatz 129)[1]. The bill shows an implicit bias towards African American women because by prohibiting African American recipients from using welfare funds in these specific areas, which are stereotypical qualities of a “welfare queen” image, it proves “how the media [has] highlights issues can lead readers and viewers to make judgments about politicians and policies” and associate the abusing of welfare with the generalization that most welfare recipients are ones who are abusing welfare (Gilman 1).

COMMENT: For this second draft I decided to add another program that focused on a the WIN For Family Act of 2011. When I was doing my research and encountered this Act I felt that it was going to a better fit in my essay since it is fairly recent and it shows that even though it tries to limit the welfare queen stereotype it actually perpetuate it, making the law fail. The paragraph above about the Act describes it and states basic information regarding the law. In this draft, adding this paragraph was a stepping stone to addressing the way that the issue of this law can be fix followed by my propose solutions. However, for this draft I failed to do so. As part of the Advocacy project we had to criticize the law that attempts to solve the problem we are addressing but instead I just focused on explaining and showing how this act is an example of the effect of the stereotype being reinforced has altered people's perception even police makers and famous political figures.

          Yet, the Welfare Integrity Now for Children and Families Act of 2011 which tries to diminish the abusing of welfare funding and ultimately move many welfare families off of welfare and to employment has not work just like the PWORA because it fails to take into account African American women’s social environment such as the lack of jobs and the continuous reinforcement of the stereotype in medias which has caused the act to be implicitly biased. In the video “Rep. Gwen Moore Opposes the Welfare Integrity Now for Children and Families Act of 2011,” Rep Gwen focus on the idea that the Welfare Integrity Now for Children and Families Act of 2011 tries to “impose more barriers on families that” are in poverty who are “trying to access benefits” (0:20-0:40).

She firmly states that the WIN for Children and Families Act does not help welfare recipients obtain “self-sufficiency” like PWORA aimed families to achieve but rather the bill is just “more mean spirited berating of low income people who are eligible for these benefits” just like the “mythical welfare queen” (0:45-1:05). The “Welfare Integrity Now for Children and Families Act of 2011” raises a new “issue of universal access” because it limits the welfare recipients where they spend the funds not taking into consideration that as a person, one might have reasons to go to a prohibited place like the liquor store if it’s the closest store to purchase other needy items like Representative Gwen mentioned as an example (1:20- 1:25). Overall, the Welfare Integrity Now for Children and Families Act of 2011 succeeds in “hindering” low income people but does not provide a successful solution in moving welfare recipients out of welfare to employment. In addition, Representative Gwen proposes that new legislations should focus on creating more jobs and opportunities and therefore it can be the solution to the welfare issue. However, even before creating new jobs for welfare recipients there should be a focus on how the stereotype of “welfare queen” used in the WIN for Children and Families Act has continued to affect African American women psychologically because it has created a negative double consciousness about themselves and also increase the focus how to make their social capital grow therefore it will enable them to new opportunities such as in jobs and marriage.            

COMMENT: Writing this paragraph and watching the video above were ones that helped me think about the overall solution I wanted to advocate in my paper. When I came across the video of Rep Gwen I decide to add a separate paragraph describing certain parts of the video where she herself criticizes the law. I thought that by adding this paragraph it was going to add more support to the claim that the Act has failed to address the problem but in reality it has done more harm. I wanted the end part of this paragraph to help me transition to my next paragraph which was going to focus on my propose solutions; however, I did not do that . Instead I added a paragraph of evidence of how WIN for children and families act of 2011 was biased because I believed that I needed to add more support on how in fact it was biased instead of just adding my own opinion without reasoning behind it. In addition, when I first watched the video of Rep Gwen I realized what solution I wanted to advocate which was leading welfare recipients to jobs. Yet, as you can see this draft needed a lot of work since I had a clear economic solution but not a clear psychological solution which  was one of the main causes of my HCP.

          According to the article, “Contextualizing Racial Disparities in American Welfare Reform: Toward a New Poverty Research” Schram hypothesizes that welfare reforms are constructed in a racial biased way since “welfare recipients are perceived as predominantly of a different racial or ethnic group than the majority of the taxpaying/voting citizens of a state, [and as a result], lawmakers may be more ready to impose stringent conditions on welfare receipt” like it is seen in Welfare Integrity Now for Children and Families Act of 2011 because of the African American women stereotype of the welfare queen (Schram 269). In figure 1 it can be seen that as the amount of African American recipients rises “the probability of adopting full-family sanctions increases from 54 to 97 percent, the probability of adopting a family cap rises from 5 percent to 96 percent” which denies the aid of a child to welfare families that already are receiving aid, “and the probability of adopting a time-limit shorter than five years increases from 10 to 88 percent” (Schram 269).

According to national studies “blacks are more likely to be sanctioned because they live in states with tougher policies” but still continue to be haunted by the negative stereotype of the welfare queen that is associated with their racial group in affecting the amount of aid they receive but more importantly are affected psychologically by how they view themselves (Schram 269).

          In the study conducted by Goodban in the article “Stereotypes and Stigma: What’s changed for welfare mothers” the negative stigma associated with welfare has caused an internal conflict with African American mothers which makes them feel “ashamed of being on welfare and believed that their reasons for going on welfare initially were of a temporary nature and beyond their own control” (Davis, Hagen 322). They also start to believe the stereotype and that their economic status of being “poor” was [caused] because “they are lazy and irresponsible about work” (Davis, Hagen 322). The welfare queen stereotype makes African American women feel “trap, unable to break out of the system, guilty and ashamed because they cannot seem to succeed no matter how hard they tried, and stigmatized by a society that devalues the poor, and especially those on welfare (Davis, Hagen 322). As a result, the negative stereotype of the welfare queen “has led to sense of helplessness and low self-esteem. (Davis, Hagen 323). Low self-esteem that keeps growing among African American women and was not addressed as one of the problems in the Welfare Integrity Now for Children and Families Act of 2011 that has prohibited them to move out of welfare and towards employment. The more African American women “fear being stereotype [and the stereotype is reinforced] the [more they] are apt to suffer dramatic decrements in self-esteem” which decreases their motivation to obtain “marriage, income, education, and employment;” hence, not being able to move towards independence (Cohen, Steele 307) (Kunz, Kalil 220) since it is serves as a prime motivator.[1] As a result there have been attempts in developing a solution against stereotypes. Psychologist Galen Bodenhausen and C. Neil Macrae have created a “theory of stereotyping and behavior that emphasizes potential inhibitory as well as activating process” which requires people to think “of a person, [African American women], as a member of one category inhibits the activation of stereotypes associated with another category” such as being welfare queens (Blasi 1253). However, this possible solution is not beneficial because it creates a “rebound effect, in which the active suppression of stereotypes leads to increased stereotyping at the next opportunity” (Blasi 1253) hurting African American women on welfare even more. Diminishing the usage and reinforcement of the welfare queen stereotype in media will decrease the exposure of African American women to the negative generalization about themselves and will also diminish the stereotype threat they encounter. However, researchers argue that other factors are needed to take into consideration when developing an effective solution to move welfare recipients to employment such as their social capital.

COMMENT: I believe that the paragraph above does a good job in addressing the effects of the WIN for children an families act. In how the law continues to bring their self-esteem down instead of fixing it which it should have been its prime focus. Instead it increases the negative stigma associated with welfare. However, one of the weakness of this paragraph was the part that mentioned the proposed psychological solution. When I read the last part of the paragraph which was about the psychological solution I can see that it was very vague and did not really explain what I meant by "theory of stereotyping and behavior that emphasized potential inhibitory as well as activating process." Also, I wanted to focus on a psychological solution that would result more effect and this solution did not prove to be effective because it tried to solve the problem of stereotyping by basically using another stereotype in order to prohibit the first stereotype which just increases the likeness of stereotyping. Also, this psychological solution did not focus on African American women and trying to help increase their self esteem. So this psychological solution was not very beneficial for them.

          In the article “Impact of Social Capital on Employment and Marriage among Low Income Single Mothers,” a conducted a study “using longitudinal data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing” in which low income mothers who received welfare assistance or any other government aid were interviewed about their employment stability and marriage at three separate times in their children’s life time which were “beginning after the birth of the child,” to when they were one year old and lastly when they were 3 years old (Johnson and Honnold 17). Findings indicated that the two main goals that TANF aims welfare mothers to achieve that were moving them to work and marriage did not have success in doing so. Table 2 indicates that most women (84.5%) remained unmarried during all three interviews; while only 7.6% of the women interviewed were able to remain married in both year 1 and year 3. As for employment stability, the table indicates that most women (39.1%) did not have a stable employment during all three years; hence they were not able to fulfill the goal of moving towards independence.

However, the percentage of women that do acquire employment stability the last two years is higher (22.9%) than marital status percentage. Yet, the percentage of women that do have a stable job during both the birth and year one interviews and do not have a stable employment during the last year is highly similar to the percentage of the women who do have stable employment the last two years. Which indicates that most women were not able to move from welfare to the working system successfully and to marriage.

          Sociologist Johnson and Honnold discovered how important it is for a welfare recipient to have a diverse social capital, an aspect that should be taken into consideration when approach a potential solution. Their findings showed that “social capital is a predictor of work and marriage” (Johnson and Honnold 25). Women that were able to obtain a stable employment the last two years they were interviewed had a high level of a diverse social capital that allowed them to have more reliable connections and were exposed to different resources that helped them “in acquire employment and expand economic capital” (Johnson and Honnold 14). Therefore, they were able to successfully move out of welfare to employment. However; most welfare recipients were not able to do so because they had a less diverse social capital that limited them to “emergency support, which logically would be drawn from close contacts (Johnson and Honnold 26). In addition, the “emergency support” that they receive is the most available social capital to them that also limits the choices they have “particularly African American” when it comes to marriage because they “there are few economically stable men in their social network” (Johnson and Honnold 227); therefore having a more diverse network will expose them to more a diverse network of people and makes it more likely for them to marry. Having a more diverse social capital benefits welfare recipients were able to maintain a stable employment because they are able to form a “bonding social capital” which provides them “emotional support, rides to work, babysitting, and monetary loans” (Johnson and Honnold 12). Support in those areas help them in time of succeed to maintain their employment and also helps them find a balance between work and their family.           

COMMENT: It was in draft where I started to address the solution that I wanted to advocate. With this paragraph I was able to state how having a social capital is one of the factors that should be focused on in order to lead mothers to jobs. However, for this paragraph I was not very precise in stating specifically what I meant by social capital. Yet, with this paragraph I was able to include studies that served as evidence to show the effectiveness of the solution. Adding studies and data added more credibility to my essay. Furthermore, personally this paragraph helped direct the type of solution that I wanted to focus on since the type of jobs that I was addressing was a bit more specific (jobs that required having a better social capital) than saying we should create new jobs. However, still I wasn't able too add a clear effect psychological solution aimed to helped African American mothers.

Bibliography

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2.Cohen, Geoffrey L., and Claude M. Steele. "A barrier of mistrust: How negative stereotypes affect cross-race mentoring." Improving academic achievement: Impact of psychological factors on education (2002): 303-327.

3. Schram, Sanford F. "Contextualizing racial disparities in American welfare reform: Toward a new poverty research." Perspectives on Politics 3.02 (2005): 253-268.
4. Kunz, James, and Ariel Kalil. "Self-esteem, self-efficacy, and welfare use." Social Work Research 23.2 (1999): 119-126.
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