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tazzygirl -> RE: Of Racism and the Media (8/29/2012 3:35:25 PM)
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As for Juan Willams: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xs0xrIbrvjM
The word "white" was never spoken.
Care to try again, expecially in light of Lucy's post, which is word for word what your clip says?
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Consider the Romney campaign’s ads falsely attacking President Obama for gutting welfare reform. “Under Obama’s plan, you wouldn’t have to work and wouldn’t have to train for a job,” proclaims one such commercial. “They just send you a welfare check.” Obama’s plan, as several media fact-checking monitors have noted, does nothing of the sort. The spot clearly seeks to resurrect the kind of resentment of African Americans that the GOP exploited back in the days when welfare was a major program. The Romney campaign has evidently concluded, since virtually its entire pool of potential voters is white, that it must rouse the sometime voters among them with such expedients — which explains why it is running more of these ads than any others.
Do you deny that many see welfare as having a black face? Wasnt that what the bolded part refers too? You do recall those days, yes?
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"Welfare queen"
This stereotype has longevity. Studies show that the welfare queen idea has roots in both race and gender. Franklin Gilliam, the author of a public perception experiment on welfare, concludes that:
While poor women of all races get blamed for their impoverished condition, African-American women are seen to commit the most egregious violations of American values. This story line taps into stereotypes about both women (uncontrolled sexuality) and African-Americans (laziness).
Studies show that the public dramatically overestimates the number of African-Americans in poverty, with the cause of this attributed to media trends and its portrayal of poverty.[15]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereotypes_of_African_Americans_in_the_United_States#.22Welfare_queen.22
From the 2000 book, which is the source for above...
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Tackling one of the most volatile issues in contemporary politics, Martin Gilens's work punctures myths and misconceptions about welfare policy, public opinion, and the role of the media in both. Why Americans Hate Welfare shows that the public's views on welfare are a complex mixture of cynicism and compassion; misinformed and racially charged, they nevertheless reflect both a distrust of welfare recipients and a desire to do more to help the "deserving" poor.
http://www.amazon.com/Why-Americans-Hate-Welfare-Communication/dp/0226293653
A review of that book...
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Based on his empirical analysis, Gilens concludes, as the title suggests, that negative feelings about welfare are related to the perception of welfare as a program for African Americans and the misrepresentation in
the media of most welfare recipients as black and the undeserving poor. This book informs researchers in a variety of fields including public policy, political science, mass communications, social welfare and race relations.
http://www.asu.edu/mpa/Bartels.pdf
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There is a photograph that has become inextricably linked to the narrative concerning the Great Depression; a woman (white woman) sits staring into the distance with two (of her seven) children huddled around her; her face looks weathered, yet proud. This became the face of poverty during the Depression and it persists to this day.
It created a narrative regarding the (white) poor that gave them a sense of dignity and nobility in the midst of their economic deprivation; overwhelmed by circumstances beyond their control. Contrast that image with that of the poor of color.
Reagan used the stereotype of the black “welfare queen” to great advantage. Over a period of about five years, Reagan told the story of the “Chicago welfare queen” who had 80 names, 30 addresses, 12 Social Security cards and collected benefits from “four nonexistent husbands,” bilking the government out of “over $150,000.”
Even after certain members of the press pointed out that no such individual existed, he persisted in telling the story. Ronald Reagan, considered the “great communicator,” was able to make the racist stereotype stick and thereby cementing the already-hardcore prejudices regarding the urban poor.
Let’s face it, when one is asked to picture a welfare recipient they usually see a black woman with too many children using her EBT card in the grocery store line (even though statistically there is no difference between the birth rates of families who need welfare and those who do not). Maybe they envision a black person lacking the desire to work hard enough to get out of poverty.
Now, can you really say his assumption isnt based on reality?
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