The War Against the Poor. - book reviews

Washington Monthly, Dec, 1995 by Dante Ramos

When Phil Gramm visited Louisiana this past July, he stopped off in Metairie, a well-appointed white-flight suburb of New Orleans, to woo local Republicans and plug a tough welfare-reform bill. He drew cheers with his now-familiar soundbite: Welfare recipients should get out of the wagon and help the rest of us pull.

For most journalists and public policy analysts, speeches like Gramm's are just political boilerplate. Yet Herbert J. Gans imputes much darker motives to politicians who attack welfare dependency. In The War Against the Poor, Gans interprets such attacks as part of a centuries-long conspiracy to demonize the poor and keep them from improving their situation.

Gans, an eminent Columbia University sociologist, has chosen his title and central metaphor to tweak the War on Poverty. He also has chosen it to claim a patch of moral high ground in the current welfare-reform debate. After all, a politician who would actively plot against poor people seems much more disreputable than one who merely argues that public aid erodes work incentives. And, in truth, Gans's style of attack on welfare critics has been a standard device in social policy debates for more than three decades. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, reviled as a racist in the late 1960s for his report on the black family, was the first victim. teria is a terrible way to defend welfare programs--especially when other defenses would be more sensible and more effective. Take Gramm's stump speech, for example. He depends implicitly on at least two specious propositions: All poor families are able to help pull the wagon, and welfare is a bigger drain on the budget than corporate subsidies, the mortgage-interest tax deduction, freeloading cattle ranchers and so on. Unless these issues are engaged, defenders of anti-poverty programs will be powerless in the face of treacly anecdotes about Gramm's once-destitute momma, who always told young Phil that welfare checks never got anyone out of poverty. You can hear the voters now: "Gramm's not evil. He's just folksy!"

Gans does make some strong points. Most employers are not clamoring for new workers. Welfare recipients are less morally suspect than defense contractors who grossly overbill the government. And some critics of welfare--Gramm comes to mind--who insist they want to help the poor are very clearly disingenuous.

It's also quite obvious that the biggest difference between poor people and rich people is money--not some weird disdain for social norms. As Gans writes, "Tbere are no middle class muggers." Welfare critics are often right for emphasizing the role values play in perpetuating poverty. But they too seldom acknowledge the simple truth that it's easier to devote attention to education and child rearing if you have some financial security.

Unfortunately, Gans is much less convincing on the central thesis of his book--that conservative critics of welfare are waging a "war." If people are plotting a campaign against the poor, Gans needs to document the battles, body counts and strategy meetings. Instead, he talks only about name-calling. Labels such as "welfare dependent," "substance abusers," and "the homeless," he says, characterize the poor as indifferent to the values of society at large. But would Gans prefer "crack fiend" or "bum"? Often the terms he vilifies are efforts to describe certain behaviors in a way that's value-neutral, or even kind.

The label that galls Gans the most is "the underclass," term that exploded in popularity during the late eighties. Gans calls the term vague, and he's right. For some, it means all low-income individuals. Others use the term for poor people who show certain characteristics and behavior: long-term welfare receipt and poor work history, for example. But to Gans, this is all just criticism of behavior, society's way of calling the poor undeserving--and therefore a weapon of war.

Gans portrays anything and everything predicated upon "the underclass" as dangerous--"even a thoughtful underclass policy." This will come as a shock to Henry Cisneros, Robert Reich, Donna Shalala, and other Clinton Administration officials who have tried to give poor people housing, education, health assistance, and substance-abuse counseling in one package. The idea behind this "coordinated approach to poverty" is that certain people suffer from a complex of related problems that result from factors such as poverty, neglectful parents, and lack of education.

"Because `underclass' is a code word that places some of the poor under society and implies that they are not or should not be in society, users of the term can therefore favor excluding them from the rest of society without saying so," Gans writes. Read that last sentence again. Gans says that recognizing that there are poor people is the same as wanting to keep them poor and excluded. He elides the difference between a preacher who implores congregants to help the disadvantaged and, say, a hopelessly callous businessman.

"Above all," Gans writes, "everyone has to realize that insisting on the harmfulness of divergent behavior is a way of asserting the cultural and political power of one's own values." This is true, and unwed high school dropouts should have every legal right to father or mother as many children as they want. But The War Against the Poor is not about legal rights. It is about social welfare policy, which involves the use of scarce tax dollars. In this context it is unfair--and politically obtuse--to scold taxpayers for decrying pregnancy rates among teenagers who can't afford to feed their own children.