Who gets welfare? Despite prevailing stereotype, whites, not blacks, collect greatest share of public aid dollars

Ebony, Dec, 1992

Despite prevailing stereotype, Whites, not Blacks, collect greatest share of public aid dollars

SAY the word "welfare" and immediately the image of the lazy Black wellare queen who breeds for profit surfaces in the minds of those who have come to believe the hideous stereotype. It is a myth that persists despite government figures and authoritative studies showing that Whites overwhelmingly reap the lion's share of the dole.

The image of the Black "welfare cheat," public aid advocates say, is based on misconceptions about poor minorities. The notion, they say, comes from society's resentment of seemingly ablebodied people getting paid for doing nothing.

"For some people, there is a need to believe that there are professional welfare recipients who are deliberately trying to get not only what they need to survive, but more," says Anne D. Hill, director of programs for the National Urban League. "People say to themselves: 'I work. How come this person who appears to be healthy isn't working?' We tend to equate our condition with others without fully knowing their circumstances."

Hill and other welfare supporters argue that numbers, and not erroneous stereotypes, tell the real story about public assistance clients: Some 61 percent of welfare recipients are White, while 33 percent are Black, according to 1990 Census Bureau statistics, the latest figures available.

The federal government defines welfare as all entitlement programs funded through taxes. These programs, listed as "direct benefit payments for individuals" by the Office of Management and Budget, make up $730 billion or 43 percent of the $1.47 trillion the government will spend this fiscal year.

Social Security is the nation's largest welfare program, although many Whites prefer to call it a retirement plan. The government writes retirement and disability benefit checks to 35.4 million recipients of whom 88.7 percent are White and 9.6 percent are Black. The reason behind this shocking disparity is perhaps the most lamentable of all: The life expectancy rate for Blacks is six years shorter than that of Whites, meaning Black workers spend years paying into a retirement system only to have White retirees reap the benefits for a longer time.

Welfare critics rarely search the Social Security rolls for "welfare cheats," but train their sights on people getting Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), Medicaid and food stamps, the relief programs with the most Black clients. Yet government figures show that Whites not Blacks make up the bulk of clients on these public aid programs; a fact that dispels the notion that Blacks are scheming for a free lunch courtesy of the American taxpayer.

Among the poorest of the poor--single mothers, living below the poverty line with minor children to support 39.7 percent of AFDC clients are Black single mothers and 38.1 percent are White women with children. Food stamp recipients are 37.2 percent Black and 46.2 percent White. Medicaid benefits are paid to 27.5 percent Black recipients compared to 48.5 percent White clients.

Although the numbers show that Whites get the biggest chunk of public aid dollars, welfare critics still charge that Blacks shouldn't collect 33 percent of welfare benefits when they only make up 12 percent of the general population. They say the imbalance proves their case that Blacks are too busy complaining and blaming racism for their plight to look for a job.

But racism is at the heart of the standard-of-living gap between Blacks and Whites, welfare advocates argue. Unlawful race-based hiring practices, they contend, keep Blacks from getting jobs that pay enough to lift them out of poverty. Until more blue-collar jobs open up to Black workers, Blacks will continue to battle poverty and the freeloader misconception.

"Public and congressional deliberations over... welfare reform in the last few years have been fueled by distortions and outright falsehoods about poverty," the National Urban League asserted in its 1988 report, Black Americans and Public Policy. "Welfare reform is not solely a Black issue, but one in need of immediate attention."

Turning welfare reform into a "Black issue" makes racial scapegoating easy and allows stereotypes, like the Reaganera "welfare queen," to go unchallenged, public aid supporters say. Rightwing reformers cast Whites as "deserving" clients who are legitimately unable to pay their own way through no fault of their own. Blacks are labeled "undeserving" recipients who are looking for the feds to subsidize their slothfulness.

Attaching a moral value to work is not a new convention; it is a philosophy deeply rooted in the religious beliefs and social welfare laws that Anglo-Saxon settlers brought to the New World. These values were imposed upon poor immigrants from other European countries who later perpetuated them after moving into mainstream society.

The Puritanical work ethic faced its greatest challenge following the stock market crash of 1929 and the Great Depression of the 1930s. The nation was forced to re-think its social welfare conventions when it realized that economic forces--not misplaced values--could lead to financial disaster. President Franklin D. Roosevelts New Deal programs and the adoption of the Social Security Act of 1935 symbolized the country's commitment to protecting family and personal incomes. President Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society anti-poverty programs of the 1960s ushered in some of the programs of today's welfare system.