Welfare, Race, and the American Imagination

This entry includes a variety of sources on American beliefs about welfare and race. There is a much larger literature on poverty and race not included here, including the important topics of residential segregation, employment inequality, mass incarceration, and housing discrimination. Welfare here is defined narrowly, mostly to include Mothers’ Pensions/Aid to Families with Dependent Children that welfare reform changed to Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. Perceptions of Blackness in particular shape welfare policy and opinion, so the focus on racism herein is on anti-Black racism, essential to making sense of the development of US social welfare policies and programs and how they function. Ideas of work, of the “proper” roles for women, and of opportunity all shape opinion and policy. Notions of the “Welfare Queen” still dominate American thinking. The first section focuses on the history of poverty and welfare and the second specifically focuses on the role of racism in welfare. The third section focuses on the use of the term ‘underclass’ and its racist undertones. In the fourth section the sources are the main texts by key authors who assert negative consequences for society of having welfare and who advocate reducing or eliminating benefits. These first four sections focus on welfare’s early days, including the earliest relevant history of the colonial period and the Revolutionary War but through the New Deal of the 1930s and the War on Poverty of the 1960s. In the fifth section the sources detail issues of public opinion and discourse regarding race, welfare, and the “American Dream.” The sixth section examines the Perspectives and Discourse among Poor People and Welfare Recipients, while the seventh section includes sources on the Experiences of Welfare Recipients before welfare reform. The eighth section is the first section in the article to engage with the topic of the 1996 welfare reform, the law which overhauled welfare and spelled its demise as an entitlement, transforming welfare for the decades that have followed. The ninth section focuses on Welfare Rights Activism, both before and after welfare reform. The tenth section’s sources examine the causes and consequences of welfare reform. Finally, the eleventh section contains sources that present information about the experiences of poor people in the years after welfare reform.