Welfare Queen Stereotyping Essay

However, US citizen begun to be uncomfortable with the old welfare system by the 1990’s because it did not offer incentive for the beneficiaries to seek for employment. The welfare became both rewarding and perpetuating even though it did not reduce the level of poverty in the United States.

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

Changes within the welfare system as a result of policy shifts and by new thinking, more generally in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), have had many methods, but the one that seemed most important, was that welfare recipients were required to do much more to justify their income support payments than before. The foundation of this new idea is that income support programs should allow individuals to maximise their participation in work. Due to the general shift in welfare administration, the number of activity test requirements an individual in Australia must meet in order to receive unemployment benefits, has expanded significantly since the early 1990s. This complex, overly bureaucratic process means that disadvantaged individuals cannot access the income support payments they require.

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

The book I chose to write my paper on is Flat Broke with Children: Women in the Age of Welfare Reform by Sharon Hays. In the book, the author looks at the welfare reform act enacted in 1996, known as the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996. . She examines both the positive and negative effects that the Act has had on the poor as well as the effects it has had on society overall.

From “The Other America,” in Major Problems by Michael Harrington is a document that tells of the poverty present in America that is often skillfully and unintentionally concealed and also speaks of Lyndon Johnson’s war on poverty and briefly of how poverty rose during the Reagan administration. After Johnson’s declaration of war on poverty, there was significant change regarding the climate of the social, economic, and political in the America of those times. And while Johnson’s countless social programs helped decrease poverty immensely, it also left a huge number drowning in it still. Later Reagan’s administration would cite George Gilder on the fact that welfare did not reduce poverty but increase it to explain why the levels of poverty rose during the first few months of Reagan’s administration. Democrats and liberals would argue against this and say that poverty

People developed over time with the help of the media, the label of the black mother who lives on welfare, yet is able to afford a Cadillac. Her name was Linda Taylor, a Chicagoan who was infamously known to changing her name numerous times, participating in welfare fraud, and ultimately living a well-off life based on her scams. The Chicago Tribune was the first to refer to Taylor as being a “welfare queen.” Media and politics stereotyped the “welfare queen” as a black woman who takes advantages of taxpayers and the system. This negative stereotype is socially constructed term that wrongly describes people, specifically women, who are blamed for collecting an unfair amount of welfare payments through fraud or scamming.

In the year 1976 welfare queen was introduced by Ronald Reagan within the public discussion about poverty. This person was known for using a bunch of alias to receive government assistance. For as long as forty years, U.S. welfare approach has been composed around Reagan's mythical welfare queen—with genuine outcomes for the real families critically requiring support. In spite of the fact that it was Reagan who gave her the most noticeable identity, the welfare queen rose up out of a long and profoundly racialized history of doubt of and bitterness toward families accepting welfare in the United States. Accordingly, welfare reform made a system that expects the most exceedingly terrible from families looking for help, and in this manner additionally

One of America's biggest misconceptions about public assistance is that of people on welfare. Rita Jensen, an investigative journalist in New York city and a former welfare recipient states that, "[W]hen one says 'Welfare mother' the listener hears 'black welfare mother.' This is a skewed perception that leads to an ongoing underlying racial motive against the welfare program. In general, when speaking about welfare most

The title of this article is called the myth of the modern welfare queen. My opinion of this article is that this article is very good for people who are on welfare and for people who have questions about welfare or welfare programs. Does this article reflect what I have been told about welfare? Somewhat, this article reflects what I have been told about welfare. Somethings I knew about but some facts that I did not know about such as the article stated that most states also only allow adults to collect TANF for a maximum of five years over the course of their lifetime, or less.” The other information that I did not know about welfare was the welfare statistics. After reading the article, I was completely shocked about the welfare statistics.

The third image is that of the welfare mother… the new version that sees the welfare mother as breeding animals who have no desire to work, but are content to live off the state (Woodard Mastin, 273). This character is typically not a major or supporting character within the story. This stereotypical black woman is part of a protagonist’s hardship that they must overcome in some way. One example of this character in popular culture is from the film Precious, which was released in 2009. In this film, the protagonist, Precious has been impregnated by her father twice and if forced to live with her abusive mother. Both women in these film represent this stereotype of the welfare mother but her mother is the one who depends on the government’s help to support herself. In one scene, the mother tells Precious that she needs to quit school and go to welfare to get the help she needs to support her family. In reality her mother only wants the food stamps and other government help for herself. She still receives some welfare from Precious but wants more now that precious has two children. In another scene, she explains through a voice over that her mother collects the welfare for her children as well as herself. A social worker then enters the scene to ask about the child and the mother’s work finding status, she tells her that she has tried finding work but has not been successful (Precious). But in other scenes during the film she is just sitting in the house

This stereotype pervades society still today; in a study conducted by Nieman Reports’ Franklin D. Gilliam, Jr. in 1999, “exposure to a welfare queen in the news significantly increased support for negative characterizations of African-Americans by an average of 10 percent.”

Welfare was accepted as a success and continued for almost sixty years. In the 1990’s Americans began to question the effectiveness of the government welfare system. In 1992, President Bill Clinton took office. One of his main problems to address while in office was the corrupted welfare system. After four years of brainstorming and planning, the United States Government decided upon how to eliminate the corrupted members of society from collecting government welfare.

Providing welfare benefits has been controversial throughout U. S. history. Many Americans in the past have expressed dissatisfaction with the welfare system claiming abuse by the recipients by not seeking employment, having babies in order to receive more aid, and remaining unmarried to gain more benefits. Before Congress passed a 1996 reform law signed by President Clinton that gave states control of the welfare system, it was common to see political ads focusing on welfare during a campaign. The success of an advertisement largely depends on having a target audience, engaging the interest of the viewers, and leaving a lasting impression.

“Welfare queen” was coined by President Regan, who encouraged the public to see welfare reforms through the lens of a “pull yourself up by your bootstraps (impossible)” mentality and “trickle-down” economy as a positive externality. As of now the current US Administration has released a draft executive order to review and gut the funding of anti-poverty programs. The 45th President’s “2018 budget call[s] for huge cuts to safety net programs,