The Welfare Queen

During a 1976 speech that President Ronald Reagan gave to America, he used the pejorative phrase, the "Welfare Queen," as a way to slander African American welfare recipients.

America has always consistently oppressed the African race. Even so, after years have passed since the age of slavery, the Civil War and Emancipation Proclamation, the Civil Rights, the races are still segregated. There is still a huge racial inequality present in this country.



This still holds true for millions of welfare recipients, who, as most taxpaying, conservative Americans seem to think are all black mothers with too many babies. It is a horrible narrow-mindedness that persists and just will not go away. People will always marginalize those who are "different."

And people even have the gull to ask, "Why do these mothers keep making babies? I know if I was that poor, or strung out on drugs, I would never have children."  But who are YOU to judge them? Do you even know these people at all? Would you even try to understand the years of oppression these people have gone through?

Here is a quote I stole from Sociological Cinema, which inspired me to write this post:

“DuBois pointed out that in order to fully abolish the oppressive conditions produced by slavery, new democratic institutions would have to be created. Because this did not occur; black people encountered new forms of slavery—from debt peonage and the convict lease system to segregated and second-class education. The prison system continues to carry out this terrible legacy. It has become a receptacle for all of those human beings who bear the inheritance of the failure to create abolition democracy in the aftermath of slavery. And this inheritance is not only born by black prisoners, but by poor Latino, Native American, Asians, and white prisoners. Moreover, its use as such a receptacle for people who are deemed the detritus of society is on the rise throughout the world.”

~ Eduardo Mendieta, Abolition Democracy

Many of societies errs are because of the ever present segregation and class diversions, economically and racially. I urge anyone who automatically wants to assume that the "black people living in the ghettos got there because of their own personal circumstances." It isn't always true. They are there because society wouldn't offer no other way out. The job market has its inequities, the school system has its inequities... Read this quote and think about it seriously. Read historic events that have taken place since slavery was abolished. The race riots, civil right marches, etc. White people have always and will always continue to believe they are the inferior race. 


-TAS