bramptonbryan
Tue, 2013-02-12 15:50
Permalink
---- "One could argue that the welfare state in itself is racist. In terms of the African-American community, it has done more to slow black progress than the white sheets ever could imagine. It has had a major hand in the destruction of the two parent household, particularly in blue state inner cities." ----
Here we have an example of black Americans being used as a surrogate for the unmentionable group, the long-term poor.
The transgenerational white poor, a larger group than the black poor, are not much considered. It is the way that black Americans are used as the group believed to be sucking up such benefits as Medicaid -- actually it's the disabled and the elderly impoverished by living in nursing homes --
The partial welfare state in the US has always been racist. It has always discriminated against black Americans.
We could go back to the creation of Social Security, which excluded farm workers and domestic servants, mainly the province of black Americans before and after the abolition of slavery.
We could go back to the GI Bill, undoubtedly one of the great pieces of welfare provision, which was administered by branches of the American Legion in deeply racist ways. White Americans were helped with mortgages, out of the inner city and onto the ladder of capital accumulation. Black Americans were not helped but rather prevented from this, with no mortgages offered, with redlining by banks, by restrictive covenants in new housing develoments such as Levittowns, and even by city statutes that created racial zoning in places such as Baltimore.
White Americans were helped to go to good universities to train as lawyers, doctors, accountants and engineers, all growth areas in the post-war economy. Black Americans were not admitted to universities, even in the North, and had to go South to black colleges, initially equipped only to train them as teachers and ministers, to work in the schools and churches of the South, impoverished and segregated as so many remain to this day.
The returning black GIs who had not finished high school, often having left school to help the family income, were set to learning the kinds of semi-skilled work that would never provide a way out of the ranks of the working poor. Their white equivalents, by contrast, were set to learning skilled trades, which black Americans were assumed incapable of learning. Moreover, their upward mobility was not considered desirable by American Legion branches. After all, it was falsely believed that they had not fought bravely and they returned, even while still in uniform, to exactly the Jim Crow world that they had left, in the North as in the South.
This is hardly surprising. After all, Jewish students could only get into medical colleges, law schools and Ivy League universities in very small numbers. Brandeis University was created to address this problem. Jews were also covered by zoning in Baltimore and restrictive covenants in Levittowns. Jews were still refused admittance to the better hotels in such resorts as Palm Beach. They had to set up their own country clubs in cities such as Chicago, where they were refused admission to the North Shore Club.
This affirmative action for whites stifled the emerging black middle class and created inner city ghettoes of unhealthy housing and poor services. To this day, poor education restricts most black school leavers to insecure manual work, with little or no health benefits, and the attitudes of teachers lead to even middle class black school students underperforming. A survey which demonstrated this latter phenomenon recently shocked the liberal teachers of California.
It is argued that black single mothers create welfare dependence. It is the other way round. Access to public housing and food stamps is almost only available to single mothers and the disabled. The children receive Medicaid or SCHIPs, the coverage of which is severely limited by the availablity of doctors who will take such patients and by the limits on care imposed by the states. The children get visibly 2nd-rate school lunches. How anything else can be paid for is a mystery. Unemployment benefits have a time limit, unlike equivalents in other wealthy countries.
Even to receive the benefits to which they are entitled requires negotiating a nightmare world of bureaucracy and formfilling, and there are little or no provisions to help black families manage. Moreover, there is no attempt by the state to locate the vast numbers known not to be in receipt of their benefits. And on, and on.
Those who believe that the welfare state is destroying the African-American communities have a point, but not the point that they think they have. It is the wretched inadequacy of the system that is destroying them.
The reason it is so inadequate, even in what is currently supposed to be available, is simply prejudice. There is a lack of social solidarity in this country, as an aftermath of the overt discrimination and aggressively negative attitudes of the past. This destroys poor white families too, even though their members are more often offered escape routes.
Tue, 2013-02-12 15:50
Permalink
---- "One could argue that the welfare state in itself is racist. In terms of the African-American community, it has done more to slow black progress than the white sheets ever could imagine. It has had a major hand in the destruction of the two parent household, particularly in blue state inner cities." ----
Here we have an example of black Americans being used as a surrogate for the unmentionable group, the long-term poor.
The transgenerational white poor, a larger group than the black poor, are not much considered. It is the way that black Americans are used as the group believed to be sucking up such benefits as Medicaid -- actually it's the disabled and the elderly impoverished by living in nursing homes --
The partial welfare state in the US has always been racist. It has always discriminated against black Americans.
We could go back to the creation of Social Security, which excluded farm workers and domestic servants, mainly the province of black Americans before and after the abolition of slavery.
We could go back to the GI Bill, undoubtedly one of the great pieces of welfare provision, which was administered by branches of the American Legion in deeply racist ways. White Americans were helped with mortgages, out of the inner city and onto the ladder of capital accumulation. Black Americans were not helped but rather prevented from this, with no mortgages offered, with redlining by banks, by restrictive covenants in new housing develoments such as Levittowns, and even by city statutes that created racial zoning in places such as Baltimore.
White Americans were helped to go to good universities to train as lawyers, doctors, accountants and engineers, all growth areas in the post-war economy. Black Americans were not admitted to universities, even in the North, and had to go South to black colleges, initially equipped only to train them as teachers and ministers, to work in the schools and churches of the South, impoverished and segregated as so many remain to this day.
The returning black GIs who had not finished high school, often having left school to help the family income, were set to learning the kinds of semi-skilled work that would never provide a way out of the ranks of the working poor. Their white equivalents, by contrast, were set to learning skilled trades, which black Americans were assumed incapable of learning. Moreover, their upward mobility was not considered desirable by American Legion branches. After all, it was falsely believed that they had not fought bravely and they returned, even while still in uniform, to exactly the Jim Crow world that they had left, in the North as in the South.
This is hardly surprising. After all, Jewish students could only get into medical colleges, law schools and Ivy League universities in very small numbers. Brandeis University was created to address this problem. Jews were also covered by zoning in Baltimore and restrictive covenants in Levittowns. Jews were still refused admittance to the better hotels in such resorts as Palm Beach. They had to set up their own country clubs in cities such as Chicago, where they were refused admission to the North Shore Club.
This affirmative action for whites stifled the emerging black middle class and created inner city ghettoes of unhealthy housing and poor services. To this day, poor education restricts most black school leavers to insecure manual work, with little or no health benefits, and the attitudes of teachers lead to even middle class black school students underperforming. A survey which demonstrated this latter phenomenon recently shocked the liberal teachers of California.
It is argued that black single mothers create welfare dependence. It is the other way round. Access to public housing and food stamps is almost only available to single mothers and the disabled. The children receive Medicaid or SCHIPs, the coverage of which is severely limited by the availablity of doctors who will take such patients and by the limits on care imposed by the states. The children get visibly 2nd-rate school lunches. How anything else can be paid for is a mystery. Unemployment benefits have a time limit, unlike equivalents in other wealthy countries.
Even to receive the benefits to which they are entitled requires negotiating a nightmare world of bureaucracy and formfilling, and there are little or no provisions to help black families manage. Moreover, there is no attempt by the state to locate the vast numbers known not to be in receipt of their benefits. And on, and on.
Those who believe that the welfare state is destroying the African-American communities have a point, but not the point that they think they have. It is the wretched inadequacy of the system that is destroying them.
The reason it is so inadequate, even in what is currently supposed to be available, is simply prejudice. There is a lack of social solidarity in this country, as an aftermath of the overt discrimination and aggressively negative attitudes of the past. This destroys poor white families too, even though their members are more often offered escape routes.
