By Melody R. Webb, Esq
Executive Director, Mother’s Outreach Network
In a scene from the 1974 film Claudine, a Black family rushes to hide any signs of comfort from their modest Harlem apartment – including a toaster, a rug, and an iron – when a white social worker knocks on their door. The social worker is, in fact, a welfare inspector, there to search the home for any gifts that Claudine, the single mother of the household played by the late, great Diahann Carroll, may have received from her new beau, so those items can be deducted from the family’s welfare payments.
The film realistically portrays draconian welfare regulations and the hypersurveillance of Black mothers. Claudine has to hide the meager amount of money she earns as a housecleaner, lest the inspector find out and she lose essential welfare benefits for her six children. If her boyfriend, played by the equally great James Earl Jones, buys her kids a gift, the welfare inspector thinks it’s her business to know. The inspector’s visit is prompted by the rumor that Claudine has had a man stay over.
Included in the budget reconciliation act signed by the president in July are new work requirements for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), commonly known as food stamps, and Medicaid – two programs vital to the survival of low-income families. The work rules create an onerous barrier for families already struggling to access government assistance, requiring documentation and verification of employment. In other words, the work requirements will lead to the same kind of over interference in the family lives of welfare recipients experienced by Claudine and her family.
Trump’s attacks on federal aid programs are the latest in a decades-long campaign to undo our nation’s safety-net. More than half of all American children use food stamps by the time they turn 18. And, between the ages of 20 and 65, about two-thirds of all Americans across races will use welfare for at least 6 months.
Despite the reality that more white families depend on programs like SNAP, Medicaid, and cash assistance than any other racial group, the racist trope of the Black ‘welfare queen’ persists, along with the quest to punish Black mothers by cutting these programs.
According to a survey conducted during Trump’s first term, 59 percent of Americans incorrectly believed that more Black people received welfare than white people. Trump appears to be one of them, reportedly expressing shock when a sitting congress member informed him that many of her non-Black constituents would be harmed by cuts.
The first time Black American women attempted to access benefits they were entitled to as American citizens was shortly after the civil war when the U.S. government created a pension for the widows of Union Army soldiers. Around 200,000 Black men served in the United States Colored Troops of the Union Army, yet Black women who applied for widow benefits faced bureaucratic hurdles that questioned the validity of their marriages and their families. Under chattel slavery, Black couples couldn’t legally marry, and the legacy of sexual violence and family separation inflicted upon enslaved people made family connections harder to prove. Even those who persisted and overcame every obstacle the government threw their way had no guarantee that their widow benefits wouldn’t be stripped away at any time by pension examiners – not unlike the constant precarity and surveillance faced by Claudine.
One of the key achievements of the Civil Rights movement was creating access to federal aid for Black families who had long been locked out of social safety-net programs that white families could turn to. The Civil Rights Act made it unlawful to deny benefits based on race and gender.
But that access came with the discriminatory hypersurveillance and control over family life. And racist politicians almost immediately began their fight to cut federal aid programs once those programs became available to Black families. Ronald Reagan campaigned on the myth of the lazy Black ‘welfare queen’, but it was Democratic President Bill Clinton who enacted the first “welfare-to-work” program, imposing requirements that primary caregivers be employed outside the home in order to receive aid.
Work requirements are based on the false notion that people who depend on public safety-net programs won’t work unless they are forced to. However, studies show that work requirements often worsen poverty, don’t increase employment, and can harm children who “can end up in highly stressful, unstable situations that can negatively affect their health and their prospects for upward mobility and long-term success” if their parents can’t meet the requirements.
Work requirements for aid deny the fundamental truth that raising children is work. Raising children is a deep investment on behalf of the community and the country. Failing to invest in parents who are doing that essential work of childrearing cripples families, communities, and the future of the entire nation.
We know that welfare-to-work programs don’t work. But we know what does work – direct cash assistance to low-income families with no strings attached. How do we know? Because we have the data to prove it.
In 2021, the American Rescue Plan increased the child tax credit to $3,600 per child under age 6 and up to $3,000 per child ages 6 to 17. From July to December 2021, before filing a tax return for that year, most American families received monthly cash payments totalling half of the child tax credit for which they were eligible.
The results were remarkable: child poverty decreased by nearly half. Low-income families were able to pay for essential needs and reduce household debt. Physical, mental, and behavioral health outcomes improved for low-income children.
Remarkably, cash payments did not decrease employment as researchers had anticipated. Instead, it may have increased participation in the labor force as parents were able to pay for childcare and transportation.
The solution to child poverty isn’t punishing and surveilling Black mothers – it’s investing in parents by providing the resources they need, no-strings attached, and valuing the work of raising children.