Please respond to the discussion questions below. Each response should be 100 word count for a total of 200 word minimum.
dream86
week3discussionresponsepost.docxPLEASE REPLY TO EACH DISCUSSION WITH SIGNIFICANT CONTENT. THERE ARE TWO DISCUSSIONS. DO NOT JUST AGREE WITH THE STUDENT BUT PROVIDE SUPPORTING CONTENT IF YOU AGREE OR DISAGREE. THERE ARE THREE DISCUSSION RESPONSE. PLEASE RESPOND WITH A MINUMUM OF 100 words FOR EACH DISCUSSION.
Jodie Astrop
welfare stigma
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The stigma around welfare is that everyone or a majority of people accepting welfare are mooching off the government rather than being hard-working citizens actually earning the American dream. This stigma grows into a discriminatory belief when people assume the most or only people accepting this government assistance is of African American descent. This Stigma was solidified by 1970’s presidential propaganda presented by Ronald Reagan. After reading the article The Fiction of the Welfare Queen introduced in the Slate Magazine it is easy to get persuaded as a hard-working American and look down at welfare collectors. According to Reagan at the time, “it has now been revealed that this woman (he still didn’t identify her by name) had operated in 14 states using 127 names, claimed to be the mother of 14 children, was using 50 addresses “in Chicago alone,” and had posed as an open heart surgeon. She also had “three new cars, a full-length mink coat, and her take is estimated at a million dollars.” This is extremely frustrating for any hard working middle to low-class American that cannot afford mink coats or the luxury of having millions of dollars.
According to week two’s Wealth Inequality in America video and information, only 39.8% of welfare collectors are African American the rest of the majority or of different descent. The second highest race to collect welfare are actually white people, 38.8% collected. The stigma that only moochy African Americans collect welfare begins to trickle under statistics.
Now that the stigma we have all been guilty of believing, myself included, it makes you wonder what else can we be so wrong about. Week two’s Wealthy Inequality in America video is a massive eye opener of what we fail to truly understand our economy and the inequality in it. This video proves how a majority of Americans live their daily lives believing that the wealth division in this country is actually extremely more equitable than it truly is. The top 1% of America has 40% of all the nation's wealth and these wealthy people are actually the biggest welfare moochers than we've ever known. The biggest welfare queen of all is Walmart, they pay their employees so little that the employees are forced to ask for government assistance to make ends meet. Walmart then profits billions by not trickling the money down the pyramid the way it should be. (Who Is Dependent on Welfare, Anaya Roy).
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The Stigma Around Welfare
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The stigma of welfare is that poor minorities are the ones that use it and they also take advantage of it. The video “Who is Dependent on Welfare" With Ananya Roy pointed out that the reason why there is a stigma around welfare is because our generation grew up seeing welfare as the issue and not poverty has the issue. As the video pointed out many of us grew up in the “post-welfare generation” and many of us grew up with the idea that people who use welfare are poor and use it to take advantage of the system. Some people believe that this stigma around welfare began when Ronald Regan famously created a character who as the Welfare Queen. Regan claimed that this woman (who was never named) was using 127 different names, claimed 14 children, and she was using 50 different addresses just in Chicago and according to the Slate article “Sociology is a Martial Art!: The Fiction of the Welfare Queen”, Regan also implied that she was black. This story, that was told by a soon to be president of the United States, simply characterize people who are on welfare as people who take advantage of the system and as people of the minority.
The truth is all types of people are dependent on welfare. The video “Who is Dependent on Welfare” also pointed out that the real Welfare Queen is actually Wal-Mart. The multi-billion dollar company is dependent on welfare just as much as someone who uses it. Many of Wal-Mart’s employees are paid so little that they have to use welfare to get by. So if it wasn’t for welfare basically Wal-Mart wouldn’t have a workforce and a multi-billion dollar company would not be able to operate, making them dependent on welfare.
This stigma of welfare connects with wealth inequality because they both share social class stereotyping that adds to inequality. The story of the “Welfare Queen” is an example of how politicians use social class stereotyping and how that adds to inequality. After Reagan made that comment he put a face of welfare and painted the picture that people who use welfare are people who take advantage of the system and they are not white adding to more stereotyping which added to inequality. The wealth inequality connects with this because it shares that same issue of stereotyping that adds to inequality. There is a false belief that the people at the bottom of the wealth gap are minorities (which we all know from last weeks reading is not true) and this stereotypes people into social classes which creates inequality in a society.
GlobalPOV. (2013, December 03). The #GlobalPOV Project: "Who is Dependent on Welfare" With Ananya Roy. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rtySUhuokM
Sociology is a Martial Art!: The Fiction of the Welfare Queen. (2018, November 26 ). Retrieved from:https://nu.blackboard.com/webapps/blackboard/content/listCon
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