Jessica Mena

Professor Berghof

Writing 39 C

30 October 2015

HCP Reflection

            The history of the view of African American as “welfare queens” changed the way how I viewed the causes of the abuse of welfare. At first I thought there was only one underlying cause that formulated this stereotype but once I started researching even further I figured out that there are other causes that caused the cause, such as poverty which is one of the main cause for using welfare. Also, now I know that if one wanted to find a solution that will actually work to stop the generalizing African American women they would need to eliminate completely the stereotype of “welfare queen” because it is hurting African American women psychologically which also affects their performance on other things, such as trying to get job but also raise awareness of poverty that they face. History in my HCP helped me study my topic differently because I was able to connect how the stereotype has influenced/affected many people not only African American, in thinking that welfare has damaged the economy while others think differently. In addition, recent history helped show how some of the causes that were stated in previous history still affect African American women the same way today and it can be seen that that African American women are still the majority group on welfare. I think causality will relate to the next project because since it is a chain of causes in order to find a solution for one I will need to research a solution that will help solve all the causes in order for the bigger problem usage of stereotype to decrease.

            I feel that the progress of my research is going okay. I have been researching more about the history of my project so I don’t have a clear idea about a solution for the problem. However, I do have a few solutions in mind that can be a start to diminish the problem. For the next project I really want to go even deeper in my research and not only find one solution to my topic because I feel that multiple small solutions will be better since there are multiple causes. Finding that discrimination extends to various problems dealing with African Americans in general is not new to me but it just amazes me that before when White American widows received welfare there was no welfare problem but once African American women started to be recipients the concern on welfare grew.  I feel like my future research for the advocacy project will just add on to the research that I have conducted for the HCP but will offer more information on multiple solutions and maybe other factors that need to be taken into consideration when trying to come up with a solution

COMMENT 1: The HCP reflection helped me acknowledge what I learned throughout writing my HCP drafts. For example, the importance of history of the problem that I was researching and its relation to the present because by finding multi-modals and scholarly sources I was able to see whether or not the problem has changed or remain the same. With the HCP reflection I was able to think back and reflect on my research processes and what were my weakness when researching, (search terms) and what I aimed to do for my Advocacy (have more precise and focused research on the solutions that I am advocating). In addition, writing my reflection started to make me think about what I wanted to address in my Advocacy, which was multiple solutions instead of only focusing on one. Even though I was still not sure of what specific solutions, I had sort of an idea which helped me when I was researching because I tried to be more carefully in finding solutions that could have worked together in order to create an more effective/promising solution.