When Welfare Queens Were White

I will never forget doing a group project in high school and being the only woman of color. The team consisted mostly of middle class white guys who were cool for the most part. But on occasion they weren’t. They jokingly (or not) tried to relate to me using words like “girrrrrl”, and rolling their necks and finger-snapping, usually in response to something intelligent I’d just said. The ‘ghetto black girl’ epithet — intended not as a descriptor, but as a slur — always seemed to find me, even when it didn’t match my actions and demeanor.

All these stereotypes and labels really do one thing; keep black women in a small, tight box. And even though they originate outside of us, they often seep in and start to influence the way we see ourselves. 

One “box” that came to be used in the 70s, first uttered by former President Ronald Reagan, is “welfare queen”. It became a symbol of black womanhood and was used to describe someone who takes extreme advantage of government handouts (apparently the bane and ruin of our economy… but I won’t talk about the government’s billion dollar welfare policies for big corporations though ::sips tea::)

History has shown that the “welfare queen” is purely a figment of a racist imagination. Despite this, it is still used — in culture and public policy — as a baseline perception of poor black women.

Government assistance in the United States began during Franklin Roosevelt’s presidency. Called the “New Deal”, it was put in place to assist our anorexic economy during the Great Depression. It was the dawn of services like social security, unemployment insurance and welfare. It really was a tremendous help to the American people at large, but did little for the vast majority of black people. Why? Because the New Deal was open to all Americans except domestic workers and farmhands, who were specifically excluded because the vast majority were African American.

“Across the nation, fully 65 percent of African American fell outside the reach of the new program.” (Katznelson, 43)

In 1930, the majority of black women were either domestics (maids, houseworkers, etc) or farm hands. Black women represented 41 percent of household servants. Only 5 percent of working black women (compared to 40 percent of working white women) were clerical or sales workers even into the 1950s (Craig, 33).

The Second World War was the most economically stimulating era for African Americans. Blacks and whites saw unemployment rates plummet to nearly zero percent. Urbanization and industrialization made way for a burgeoning middle class and the Depression seemed like a distant memory. Despite the economic growth across all racial groups, blacks, especially black women lagged behind significantly.

Even when other programs were put into place, like the GI Bill which was created to help veterans get back on their feet by buying homes and paying for education, black veterans were systematically denied the right to receive government funds.

Southern Democrats routinely politicked to add certain clauses to these social welfare policies that would keep “the southern way of life” and not disturb the status quo. And black women were the ones to suffer from it most, historically receiving little to no welfare funds. In fact, the largest recipients of government welfare have been white.