Hard Work, Good Timing, And Dumb Luck

At a campaign rally in 1976 Ronald Reagan talked about welfare queens and poverty. He said, “She used eighty names, thirty addresses and fifteen telephone numbers to collect food stamps, social security and veteran’s benefits for four nonexistent deceased veteran husbands as well as welfare. Her tax free cash income alone has been running 150,000 thousand dollars a year.”The welfare system is full of gender stereotyping. Stereotyping is when we make perceptions on what we make about others. In the past forty years America welfare system has been designed around Reagan’s fake welfare queen (Black, Sprague). This slur has had negative effects for the families on welfare that urgently need support and are struggling. This paper will discuss the lies of the welfare queen and how it originated and its negative effects on African American families and young girls.

Kyrsten Sinema has been leading a life unlike many others’; going from a middle-class early childhood, to homelessness, to co-valedictorian, to practicing lawyer with a PhD, and to “Prada Socialist” in Congress. Sinema was born to an upper middle-class family in 1976. She and her two siblings were raised by both their parents in a five-bedroom house in Tucson, AZ. Her father, Dan Sinema Sr., was a lawyer and her mother, Marilyn, was a stay-at-home mom. Her father lost his job during the 1980s recession since clients were complaining about him, a Real Estate claim gone badly, and IRS debts. This was when the family went from a upper-middle-class status into debts and foreclosure.

While living in a first-floor apartment on the South Side of Chicago, Bray was one of most African American children to be raised on welfare. Through much darkness in Bray’s adolescence, her mother was perceived as a symbol of light. Her mother’s nurturing nature, spiritual hymns and voice of reason was a sense of security for Bray. As a family trying to make ends meet, Bray was surrounded by fear and uncertainty. Even the difference of losing a nickel could consume her with “the feeling of terror” as “it was not just the fear of getting a beating for losing the money. It was the anticipation of my mother’s disappointment…” (pg.14). Even desperation consumed a bright girl like Bray to sneak money from carelessly left wallets around school. As a young girl, Bray’s parents wanted to fight back the poverty and ignorant lifestyle that followed them. Bray’s early passion for reading along with her parents strict rules gave her the endurance to succeed. With the acceptance of a scholarship from Yale University, Bray was in the top percent of blacks to have been given this opportunity. The expectation of a family on welfare usually prohibited this sort of positive fortune she received. Yet, Bray demonstrated her achievement of contributing to a cultural understanding to all generations on welfare, that being raised on very little served as no reason to be misheard or misrepresented as a

David Zucchino’s captivating book, Myth of the Welfare Queen, sticks to his journalistic roots and reads like an extended news article as it captures two separate yet interconnected stories of women struggling to get by in Northern Philadelphia. Philadelphia was—and is—an impoverished city in many ways, with huge percentages of the population struggling to get by at or bellow the poverty line. Zucchino spent much of 1995 with woman and families on welfare as it was a time when welfare was a particularly hot topic directly preceding the passing of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act. Zucchino strove to cut through the stereotypes and misinformation surrounding welfare and those relying on it. In his own words, “this book is the story of

Based on your reading of The American Promise and James Marten, Childhood and Child Welfare in the Progressive Era, answer the following essay prompt. Your essay should be a minimum of 1000 words and a maximum of 1500 words. Be sure to make specific reference to and cite specific examples from your reading as evidence to support your answer.

Poverty is present in today’s U.S. social system. For example, as Lesser states in the Clearinghouse Review, “Forty-six million Americans live in poverty” (1). Lesser then goes on to say how forty-six million Americans living in poverty correlates to almost one in every three single-parent families is poor (1). This is a daunting fact as it applies to today’s economic context with “rising unemployment rates and mortgage crises driving more individuals and families to seek the support of a cash-strapped social welfare structure” (Grijalva 1). With this in mind, many legislators are discussing the topic of poverty in the political realm. In order to tally the score of representatives the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law conducted its sixth annual Poverty Scorecard. “The 2012 Poverty Scorecard grades the voting record of every U.S. senator and representative on the most important poverty-related votes in 2012” (Lesser 1). The 2012 votes covered a range of topics such as budget and tax, food and nutrition, health care, housing, and many more (1). The results of the 2012 Poverty

During the nation’s time of grief, Johnson’s civil rights bill passed—a bill quite similar to that of Kennedy, but more powerful; this act outlawed all public racial discrimination, such as within jobs, schools, and the general community. Also passed in 1964 was Johnson’s Economic Opportunity Act. Johnson intended to “give almost half a million underprivileged young Americans the opportunity to develop skills, continue education, and find useful work” in addition to the opportunity to “carry out their plans” and “break through particular barriers which bar their escape from poverty” (Document B). Johnson clearly paid substantial attention to the needs of US citizens, as seen through his consideration for poverty. He focused on providing for and protecting vulnerable and impoverished groups of people and was wary of the country’s health care and its “mounting costs” (Document

Reynolds uses her own personal experience to help support her argument by using multiple examples of when she is at work and sees the misuse of welfare at first hand. This helps her make a connection with the audience and shows her honesty. She further argues with using a metaphor to help support her argument “if you build it, they will come” to suggest a resemblance between welfare and people, meaning if an individual were to receive welfare they will feel financially stable and therefore, never feel motivated to search the job field. These ideals not only help make a connection, but help show her authority as an educated woman who supports finding a new way to make the welfare system more manageable, free from bias, and free from injustice. Reynolds wants the reader to think about when people abuse the welfare system, in particular the food stamps, and wants them to think is it fair for a working class citizens to be required support multiple people who abuse the system that get food or items they themselves cannot possess because it is too expensive and to think about if it was fair to that child or baby that was not thought about

Toward the end of the 1920s, in a little town in South Texas named Cotulla, a junior high teacher saw the injustice and poverty among his Mexican-American students (Del Bosque, 2013). After decades passed, that same man became the U.S. President; Lyndon B. Johnson signed the bill that constructed Medicaid in 1965, which is a program that is funded by the state and the federal government to provide health insurance to low-income Americans (2013). Johnson had an idea to create a “Great Society” which he defined as “a society where no child will go unfed, and no youngster will go unschooled” (2013) . Now even in 2015, we see that President Obama is still fighting for this dream of Johnson’s (Ura & Walters, 2014). President Obama’s Affordable Care

For the next three speeches, I am going to be educating, as well as encouraging you all to be more attentive, active, and vocal, when it comes to political and social issues. We’ve all been told that WE are the future, well there is some truth to that—Our generation is responsible for the future development of our country and that is something we need to take more seriously. I began looking into this topic before this class ever started; I looked up things so I, myself, knew what was going on. So, through more extensive research, I have gained a better understanding, and that is what I am sharing with

Sykes (2015) had found that families felt a relief from financial stress when it came to receiving their yearly lump sum from the government. They were able to pay back many of their debts, just as a responsible family should. This allowed them to enhance the amount of consumption they were given leeway for. Such as toys or brand name foods. For families in Welfare who were given limited room to grow, EITC left enough money to lift dreams off the ground and making it possible for families to invest in their futures. All of these factors made it easier for the families to feel a sense of citizenship. Social inclusion plays a larger factor than once thought. Using government programs like SNAP (food stamps) ostracized people in public areas; making it difficult to feel proud or in a sense “normal”. I strongly believe that this article found what they set out to look for. The results clearly show that EITC gave low wage families a sense of dignity, but since the population interviewed and tracked was so small it’s difficult to believe that all families in the same program live entirely the same.

By presenting the reader with a degree of empathy and humility with the subject matter at hand, it establishes his credibility as a speaker worth listening too. This tactic appeals not only to the reader’s question of credibility to the speaker but also addresses the emotional aspect of pathos. He understands the complexices that simply living near poverty entitles and the sacrifices that needed to be made. As he resonates and shares his own experiences living a life of minimum wage the reader begins to feel not attacked but rather compassion for the speaker. Walsh focuses heavily on emphazing his credibility to speak on this matter multiple times throughout the article by citing “investigations and studies” but never provides any substantial proof to reinforce these claims. Walsh states a multitude of claims as basic economics and uses cause and effect to further his agenda. The way

The examination of the 30-year crusade to change and at last to end welfare, the book Gwendolyn Mink wrote is a burning arraignment of against welfare government officials' ambush on poor moms. Mink charges that the fundamental components of the welfare approach subordinate poor single parents in a different arrangement of law. Mink focuses to the racial, class, and sexual orientation inclinations of both liberals and preservationists to clarify the odd yet strong agreement supporting welfare changes that constrain the poor single parent to surrender fundamental rights and propel her to discover financial security in work outside the home. The reconsidered and upgraded version, the creator has supplanted the past conclusive part with a completely

The short clips were less that 5 minutes, but it did not take long to catch on to the message and mentality about welfare. The imagine was a clear picture of the different low socioeconomic groups who used welfare, such as the individuals mentally disabled or mentally ill, the elderly, unemployed, black single- women, white who are considered unworthy, and the uneducated. It was highlighted that the imagines about welfare was strictly for poor people; those who did not make enough money or those who completely did not have a job. There were many perceptions that I picked up about the welfare mentality. The perceptions observed were that recipients on welfare were not proud and/or ashamed to be receiving public assistance, they were unsatisfied with the policies, the recipients lacked of ability to live a comfortable and stress free life, displease with the privacy, and the sense that the recipient’s personal life was being controlled. More emphasized, perceptions I noticed were that welfare only covered a certain amount, men were not allowed to be in the home, the

Spreading positive tones out of the inhuman decision on DACA made by the United States government today. Thank you very much brandeis for standing with those who are being affected or who being punished for doing something that they do not necessarily do. As children how do America expect those individuals to know the rules of laws or such call regulations over