3 page autobiographical sketch

· The Stigma of Charity at the Intersection of Race, Class and Gender

Beyond microaggressions in one-on-one interaction, being connected to a stigmatized identity on the basis of race, ethnicity, class, gender and so forth can jeopardize one's standing in their local community, even when that connection comes from circumstances beyond our control.  One partciularly interesting study was conducted by Sociologist Aliece Fothergill (2003).  

Fothergill examined the experiences of individuals affected by the Grand Forks flood in North Dakota in 1997.  These individuals were predominantly middle class, white and women.  When the flood hit, it destroyed the community and many of its members were forced to rely upon government aid as their personal wealth dwindled.  The women reported feeling stigmatized, even though the disaster was an act of nature.  Fothergill's research tells us how the political and economic context of the nation, and the social construction of the poor and charity recipients impacted these women's experiences.  Fothergill says:  

"According to Georg Simmel (1965), the poor are not united by the interaction of its members but by the collective attitude that society as a whole adopts toward them. The collective attitude, research has shown, is overwhelmingly negative, particularly if the poor receive any public assistance. Politicians and social pundits often maintain that welfare recipients are lazy and unwilling to work and that women on welfare are promiscuous and have more children in order to receive more benefits."

'Welfare recipient' is seen as as a spoiled identity, largely because of its racial and gendered connotations, and being associated with it can put people in the crosshairs for rejection, microagressions, and so forth.  As Fothergill claims:

"As a result of these stereotypes and rhetoric, individuals who receive public assistance experience shame, embarrassment,and humiliation (Wyers 1977; Rank 1994). Overall, the stigma of welfare prevents many individuals who need help the most from receiving it (Loewenberg 1981) and ultimately serves to punish poor people for being poor (Sidel 1986).  Most social scientists posit that the majority of individuals receiving some form of public assistance do so not because of a flaw in their character or behavior."

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Sociology is a Martial Art!: The Fiction of the Welfare Queen

An article from Slate magazine helps shed light on how the stigma associated with welfare became part of American culture.  The article begins:  

"In October 1976, Reagan—who had lost that year’s GOP nomination to Gerald Ford—devoted one of his regular radio commentaries to updating the story of the “welfare queen, as she’s now called.” (While I haven’t found any examples of him saying “welfare queen” on the stump in 1976, he did use the term in this radio address.) According to Reagan, it had 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.”"

The audio from that speech can be found here:

https://soundcloud.com/slate-articles/ronald-reagan-radio-commentary  

The Slate article continues:"Ronald Reagan regularly dusted off the welfare queen’s lurid misadventures, arguing that rampant fraud demanded decisive government action. In pushing for welfare reform as president in 1981, he told members of Congress that “in addition to collecting welfare under 123 different names, she also had 55 Social Security cards,” and that “there’s much more of [this type of fraud] than anyone realizes.”

The story in Slate details the crimes of a woman (of mixed race) named Linda Taylor, who was a criminal accused of many fraud-based crimes, as well as violent criminal acts.  Though she was mixed race, Reagan often related this story in a way that implied she was black, and much of the subsequent anti-welfare discourse characterizes welfare as being mostly about the state of black Americans.

Does the rhetoric of the welfare queen impact peoples' perception or race, class and gender?  The answer seems to be yes,  at least according to Social Psychologist Franklin Gilliam, who developed an experiment to test this question.  Gilliam developed a several iterations of a false news story, which he and his colleagues filmed, in which the story of a woman on welfare (named Rhonda) was shown.  Following the story was a survey on attitudes towards welfare.  In different iterations of the false news story, the welfare recipient was shown as a white or black woman, or not shown at all as a control.  All other elements including the woman's style of clothing were kept identical, as you can see in the pictures below: