Historical Spotlight: Who Really Benefits from Welfare?
The Black family has been a target for destruction from the early days of slavery, to the rise of single-parent households, and all the way to modern times of mass incarceration. For example, the War on Drugs, extreme racial profiling, and limited civil rights have all forced Black families to make hard decisions and face difficult situations just to provide for their loved ones. There’s an unfair stereotype that Black Americans unproportionately benefit from the federal welfare system more than other demographics. Join me as we shine a Historical Spotlight on the history of welfare, the negative stereotypes placed on Black Americans, and who actually benefits the most from the system.
America was initially founded without any safety nets for struggling individuals and families. Any available assistance came from private charities and local and state governments that often couldn’t keep up with the demand. On August 14, 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt created the first iteration of welfare after signing the Social Security Act into law as a federal response to the Great Depression.
The first federal welfare programs focused on subsidizing white families and widows that had lost an income-producing father. People who were agricultural workers and domestic servants were excluded from the benefits, which disproportionately affected Black American families who were in desperate need of support from the government.
During the 1960s, President Lyndon B. Johnson’s “Great Society” programs broadened eligibility for assistance even more to eliminate poverty and reduce racial injustice. They were collectively known as the War on Poverty and sought to improve all aspects of life including healthcare, education, housing, and employment. The expanded programs were perceived to be wasteful, fraudulent, and easily abused and led to the idea that welfare benefits made poor people dependent and encouraged them to stay poor.
Welfare didn’t truly take on a negative connotation until eligibility was expanded to include Black Americans during the 1960s and 1970s. Slowly but surely, the media and politicians started framing welfare as a “Black issue” and introduced the caricature of the “Welfare Queen” to symbolize Black people who exploited the system.
As a result, the system was overhauled in 1996 by President Bill Clinton to add stricter work requirements, time limits, sanctions for non compliance, and more control for states to decide how funds were distributed.
Today, public welfare includes Social Security, SNAP, WIC, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, Medicare, Medicaid, Section 8 housing, Child Tax Credits, and other benefits that citizens can apply to receive. While each program is different and unique, all were created in effort to reduce burden and provide resources.
Kentucky has historically ranked highest in the country for public welfare expenditures. The spending on public aid is heavily concentrated in the deeply impoverished, rural areas of the Appalachian region. Owsley County, in particular, holds the torch as one of the poorest communities in the nation and has a demographic that is more than 98% white. More than half of the population and over 56% of children in the area live below the poverty line, leading to an extremely high rate of food stamp dependency.
That region of the country has struggled with severe economic decline that has withstood generations. In 2015, the unemployment rate was 10.4%, nearly double the national average of 5.25%. That same year, the median household income was only $19,146, a third of the national median income of $55,775. In communities like Booneville, the poverty rate is often higher than 40%, forcing residents to rely on government assistance programs just to stay afloat.
In 2022, Kentucky ranked number six in highest spending on welfare assistance. In comparison, my home state of Georgia, which has a demographic split of 51.9% white, 31% Black, 10.5% Hispanic, and 4.5% Asian, ranked number 49 in welfare spending. Moreover, only 14% of residents in Georgia live below the federal poverty line, a stark difference from the realities of those living in Owsley County.
It’s undeniable that, to a certain extent, some uniformly white communities suffer because of the perverse racism and bigotry that made the residents retreat deep into rough terrain with unfarmable land, lack of jobs, and almost no opportunities for upward mobility. Choosing to instead segregate themselves deep in the Appalachian Mountain range has proven to be a generations-long death sentence.
Many people in that area already have preconceived racist opinions about Black people that date back to the Civil War and the founding of this country. Some of them still proudly fly the Confederate Flag and many stand firm in the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms. It’s estimated that there are at least 64 sundown towns in the state that have been particularly unwelcoming to Black residents and travelers, including Corbin, Kentucky, which was the location of a violent race riot in 1919.
How are future generations expected to dig themselves and their elders out of the poverty stricken mud if all they have to rely on is government assistance? One negative argument that gets tossed out for why Black Americans don’t deserve welfare benefits is that it makes people lazy and dependent on the system. While it’s incorrect to cloak a whole demographic with that criticism, it does have a little bit of truth if we zoom out to the bigger picture.
Residents in Owsley County, Kentucky are so busy and preoccupied with making sure they can get government assistance to provide for their basic human needs that they have no time to innovate, no money to invest, no new ideas to invent, and no wiggle room to truly change their circumstances. The community is almost completely subsidized by the government and, as a result, they don’t control their own destiny. Whatever the system says they will receive on a monthly basis, that’s what they are forced to accept.
There’s a lack of work for younger people in the region and many are forced to take low-wage service jobs at diners, small restaurants, or even small convenience stores. There’s not much economic growth to drive new money in, retain affluent members of society, or even appear attractive to those moving from areas with higher costs of living.
While Black Americans frequently get ridiculed for using the safety nets created to protect vulnerable members of society, we must remember that there are many other pockets of poor, decrepit communities that are also utilizing the resources, often at a much higher rate and prevalence. Poverty isn’t just limited to Black people despite the unfair narrative that often gets told.
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Signed,
Jessica Marie
