Natalie Burris

Were the suburbs built by racism?

The next part of Chapter 4 of Stephanie Coontz's The Way We Never Were shows the policies behind the creation of suburbia.

The suburbs were a product of government policy and federal spending, especially in two areas: 1) constructing  the roads that would ease suburbanites' commutes to and from cities and 2) housing.

Here on the blog, I've discussed the way that automobile manufacturers took advantage of federal funds in promoting a "car culture," and even going so far as to intentionally put public transportation out of business. Coontz details the federal government's role in building interstate highways, the prime beneficiaries of which were suburbanites. Ninety-percent of the interstate highway construction was funded by the federal government.

Every taxpayer may have financed the project, but not everyone benefited. "Despite arguments that road building served 'national interests,' urban interstates were primarily 'turned into commuter roads serving suburbia'" (p. 78). Coontz continues:

Such federal patronage might be unobjectionable, even laudable-though hardly a demonstration of self-reliance-if it had been available to all Americans equally. But the other aspect of federal subsidization of suburbia is that it worsened the plight of public transportation, the inner cities, poor families in general, and minority ones in particular.

(p. 78).

Housing policy, which was itself closely tied to the policies behind highway construction, was also inherently inequitable:

Federal loan policies systematized and nationalized the pervasive but informal racism that had previously characterized the housing market. FHA redlining practices, for example, took entire urban areas and declared them ineligible for loans. Government policy also shifted resources from urban areas into suburban construction and expansion. At the same time, postwar "urban renewal" and highway construction reduced the housing stock for urban workers.

(p. 78). The way in which transportation was set up automatically disadvantaged urban areas. Coontz argues that "government transportation policy systematically fostered improvements in private rather than public conveyances, favoring suburban development over the revitalization of urban life" (p. 79). 

I appreciated Coontz's discussion of the policies behind the creation of suburbia. I often hear white suburbanites claim that they personally are not racist or that racism simply doesn't exist anymore. These beliefs are an oversimplification of the structural, systematic nature of racism. Two or three generations of white suburban families have benefited from particular government policies, policies that systematically advantaged white, middle- and upper-class populations and disadvantaged poorer communities of color. These seemingly invisible advantages don't come into play when a white middle-class person considers racism. 

Pioneer and suburban families enjoy(ed) massive government assistance

The next section in Chapter 4 of The Way We Never Were shows how U.S. Americans tend to overestimate what we have accomplished on our own. From the very beginnings as a nation, we've bought into the myth that the colonists built a society out of nothing. This myth ignores the fact that Native Americans were already living here and had established their use of the land. Coontz notes that early white families in the U.S. depended on a "large network of neighbors, church institutions, courts, government officials, and legislative bodies for their sustenance" (p. 70). Colonial life was more corporate than individualistic.

The transition to a wage-earning economy in the nineteenth century simply changed the way we depended on others: "a gift of money to a fellow worker who was ill or simply down on his luck was 'accepted... very simply, almost as a matter of course'" (p. 71). "Some workers' cultures revolved around religious institutions, some around cooperative societies or militant unionism-but all extended beyond the family" (p. 71). It seems the "rugged individualism" often romanticized in our current age didn't exist, even when the nation moved toward a market-based society.

Coontz next examines two kinds of U.S. families that are now held up as archetypes of the traditional, independent family. Coontz posits that these two family types are "the most heavily subsidized in American history, as well as for the privilege of having had more of their advantages paid for by minorities and the lower classes" (p. 73).

The first type, the frontier family,  is defined by self-reliance in its settlement of the West. However,

prairie farmers and other pioneer families owed their existence to massive federal land grants, government-funded military mobilizations that dispossessed hundreds of Native American societies and confiscated half of Mexico, and state-sponsored economic investment in the new lands. Even "volunteers" expected federal pay: Much of the West's historic "antigovernment" sentiment originated in discontent when settlers did not get such pay or were refused government aid for unauthorized raids on Native American territory. It would be hard to find a Western family today or at any time in the past whose land rights, transportation options, economic existence, and even access to water were not dependent on federal funds. "Territorial experience got Westerners in the habit of federal subsidies," remarks Western historian Patricia Nelson Limerick, "and the habit persisted long after other elements of the Old West had vanished."

(p. 73-4). 

Even after such generous government funding, frontier families still did not become self-sufficient. Their success depended on mutuality and community involvement, sharing pasture, tools, and labor. 

The availability of "cheap" land (i.e. heavily government-subsidized territories from which native populations were forcibly removed) was not the only benefit that pioneers received. White families also greatly benefited from the federally-funded development of this land. Were it not for public assistance for dams and other forms of irrigation, Westerners may not have been able to live where they wished. 

The next type, the suburban family, is also traditionally viewed as self-reliant. The common belief is that homeownership rates shot up because families saved down payments, timely made their mortgage payments, and otherwise pulled themselves up by their bootstraps, thus moving themselves into the middle class. But, similar to their pioneering forbears, (white) suburban families relied heavily on government assistance. Federal GI benefits were available to 40% of the male population between the ages of 20 and 24 (p. 76). "More than $50 billion of government-funded wartime inventions and production processes were turned over to private companies after the war, creating whole new fields of employment" (p. 76).

Homeownership itself depended on an increase in federal regulation and funding, beginning in the Great Depression. The government started underwriting the real estate industry by insuring private  lenders, loaning directly to long-term buyers, and subsidizing electricity to new residential areas. The greatest transformation to single-family, suburban living came from  Federal Housing Authority and Veterans' Administration loans. These programs decreased the amount of the requisite down payment, increased the life of loans, and lowered interest rates. Even the research behind the construction materials for suburban homes was government funded, along with the construction of highways in order to travel from suburb to city.

Coontz highlights the ugly, racist side of this subsidized expansion into the suburbs, which I plan to share in my next installment... 

The American myth of self-reliance hurts families in poverty

Chapter 4 of The Way We Never Were explores the myth of self-reliance in the U.S. and the fact that the family is seen as the perfect self-reliant unit. In a conversation between Coontz and her grandfather, her grandfather demonstrates the historical amnesia many U.S. Americans have when it comes to self-reliance and non-dependence on the government:

It's not like all these people nowadays, sitting around waiting for the government to take care of them. The government never gave us anything, and we never counted on help from anybody else, either.

(pp. 68-69). Coontz notes that her grandparents are not the only U.S. Americans to believe this myth of self-reliance. Politicians are susceptible to the "convenient amnesia that permits so much self-righteous posturing about how the 'dependent poor' ought to develop the self-reliance and independence that 'the rest of us' have shown" (p. 69).

Self-reliance is one of the most celebrated U.S. American value today, and "most Americans agree that prior to federal 'interference' in the 1930s, the self-reliant family was the standard social unit of our society. Dependencies used to be cared for within the 'natural family economy,' and even today the healthiest families 'stand on their own two feet'" (p. 69).

This belief fits well with my research on, and own experience working within, federal marriage promotion programs. Beginning with 1996's welfare reform, federal marriage initiatives promoted by conservative politicians pledged to assist single-parent poor families in poverty. The statistics supported this effort: non-marital families tend to be worse off economically than families that include married couples. Children in single-parent families fare poorer in several areas than do children raised by married couples. 

In 2003, Congress authorized $750 million, in conjunction with welfare programs, for “healthy marriage promotion” and fatherhood initiatives. The George W. Bush administration heavily supported these programs. I personally recruited for one such program. While on its face, this program appeared to benefit couples who struggle financially, I eventually began to question whether millions of federal dollars should be directed toward personal relationship skills. Later research shows that marriage promotion programs have turned out to be ineffective, and the results  are dismal. The divorce rate did not change, and marriage rates did not increase.¹ 

The New York Times Magazine recently featured an article by Annie Lowrey that proclaimed that, "[w]ith Democrats and Republicans pitted against one another in a vicious election-year battle over how to alleviate poverty, marriage is the policy solution du jour." Lowrey quotes Senator Marco Rubio, who deemed marriage "the greatest tool to lift children and families from poverty." Do politicians never learn?

Lowrey specifically mentions the program for which I recruited, which saw success. Unfortunately, this success was the exception rather than the rule:

Couples who participated in an Oklahoma initiative called Family Expectations were about 20 percent more likely to stay together for three years than couples in a control group, for instance. But over all, Uncle Sam tends to make a poor Cupid. The preponderance of evidence is that Washington instead has, over the years, wasted hundreds of millions of dollars on relationship counseling — laugh with your partner! Talk it out! — to no real effect on marriage rates or child poverty or anything else.

Lowrey points out a similar conclusion that I made after conducting my own research: "Some researchers think that marriage — or a lack thereof — is not the real problem facing poor parents; being poor is." Once we end poverty, the marriage woes faced by our country would likely end. Children would end up in more stable homes, and married couples would face fewer economic issues that often strain relationships.

In the face of this research, then, it is incredibly frustrating to see political and religious conservatives consistenly oppose the very measures that would lift many families out of poverty. This opposition is a result of the long-held U.S. American value of self-reliance. Coontz shows that this cherished belief is actually a myth:

The fact is, however, that depending on support beyond the family has been the rule rather than the exception in American history, despite recurring myths about individual achievement and family enterprise. It is true that public aid has become less local and more impersonal over the past two centuries, a process described in chapter 6, but Americans have been dependent on collective institutions beyond the family, including government, from the very beginning.

(p. 69-70).

In the next installment, I will take a look at the rest of Chapter 4, and Coontz's exploration of the tradition of dependence on others.

_______

Aly Parker, Can’t Buy Me Love: Funding Marriage Promotion Versus Listening to Real Needs in Breaking the Cycle of Poverty, 18 S. Cal. Rev. L. & Soc. Just. 493, 495 (Spring 2009).

The "traditional" 1950's family was exclusively a white family

The next section of Chapter 2 of The Way We Never Were is titled, "A Complex Reality: 1950's Poverty, Diversity, and Social Change." Coontz's point during this section is that only white, middle-class U.S. Americans had the privilege of participating in the "traditional" family for which many are nostalgic today.

Coontz cautions against the 1950's as the "good old days": "The reality of these families was far more painful and complex than the situation-comedy reruns or the expurgated memories of the nostalgic would suggest" (p. 29). The increase in the quality of life during this time was directly related to consumer expansion, which itself was only possible for those with economic means to purchase appliances, vacuum cleaners, and ranch homes. Coontz notes that "[a] full 25 percent of Americans, forty to fifty million people, were poor in the mid-1950's, and in the absence of food stamps and housing programs, this poverty was searing" (p. 29). FDR began the "Aid to Dependent Children" program in 1935, so I don't agree with Coontz's statement that there was no social safety net at this time.

Not only is searing poverty overlooked today, but also the overwhelming whiteness of the notion of the 1950's "traditional" family:

[C]ontrary to the all-white lineup on the television networks and the streets of suburbia, the 1950s saw a major transformation in the ethnic composition of America. More Mexican immigrants entered the United States in the two decades after the Second World War than in the entire previous one hundred years. Prior to the war, most blacks and Mexican-Americans lived in rural areas, and three-fourths of blacks lived in the South. By 1960, a majority of blacks resided in the North, and 80 percent of both blacks and Mexican-Americans lived in cities. Postwar Puerto Rican immigration was so massive that by 1960 more Puerto Ricans lived in New York than in San Juan. These minorities were almost entirely excluded from the gains and privileges accorded white middle-class families. 

(p. 29).

Racism kept black families from making the same moves as white families, namely the quintessential move from the city to the suburbs:

When Harvey Clark tried to move into Cicero, Illinois, in 1951, a mob of 4,000 whites spent four days tearing his apartment apart while police stood by and joked with them. In 1953, the first black family moved into Chicago's Trumbull Park public housing project; neighbors "hurled stones and tomatoes" and trashed stores that sold groceries to the new residents. In Detroit, Life magazine reported in 1957, "10,000 Negroes work at the Ford plant in nearby Dearborn, [but] not one Negro can live in Dearborn itself."

(p. 30).

Coontz makes it clear that the romanticized version of the family was based on exclusion. This chapter, especially as it pertains to race, strengthens my thesis in my Critical Race Theory class in law school that the notion of "family values" is a raced idea, from which people of color have been prohibited since slavery.

The raced image of family values prevails today: an ideal "traditional" family consists of a white stay-at-home mother and white working father with 2.5 children, who resides in the suburbs. This family has the economic means to do so, and has never been systematically prevented from moving into the tidy ranch home of their choice. It's troubling when what is viewed as a morally superior way of life has been systematically held from people of color and from all people who lack the economic means.

9 years ago: Wrecking Ball

No, not the Miley Cyrus song. :) From January 30, 2005:

 

Had the privilege of visiting LaSalle Street Church today...came home with some great thoughts:

The Beatitudes. Do we ever see an inscription like “blessed are the poor, the meek, the peacemakers” on any of our buildings? Think if those words were written at powerful places like Washington D.C. It seems there aren’t too many people in Washington who are genuinely concerned with the poor, the meek, or those who seek peace. Isn’t it funny how some campaign for the Ten Commandments to be displayed in public places, like courtrooms? Sure, it can be easy not to murder or steal, but what about caring for the poor? What about peacemaking? It seems that things would get a little uncomfortable—a little too close for comfort—if we decided to so publicly display the Beatitudes. They are a wrecking ball for our lives. If we consider the idea that Jesus may have really meant what he said, what kind of destruction does that mean in terms of how we live our lives?

Matthew 5:3-12
3 Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
4 Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
5 Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
7 Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.
8 Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
9 Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
10 Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
11 Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. 12 Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

Mutiny! Or, what can pirates teach us?

London-based teacher and writer Kester Brewin recently released a quirky little gem of a book, called Mutiny! Why We Love Pirates, and How They Can Save Us. In only 165 pages, Brewin fits in medieval fiefdom, the colonization of the so-called "New World," Marxism, modern-day Somali pirates, copyright law, punk music, Jungian psychology, and Greek mythology. I didn't always agree with Brewin's take on the world, but his creativity and ability to translate sweeping topics into more easily understandable prose was impressive. 

Today, pirates have turned into a kitschy birthday party theme, but Brewin notes that an actual 18th-century pirate would be "shocked at the way in which his rebellion and revolt against and oppressive and wealth-hungry Empire had been castrated into spineless, meaningless nursery pap." 

The first mid-Atlantic pirates emerged in the 18th century in response to European monarchies' monopoly that blocked access to the "riches of the New World to any but the most privileged," and Brewin argues that pirates, in any shape or form, emerge at any time when economies become "blocked." Sailors who were forced to work for a pittance, then cast aside when they became disabled by the very work the monarchs charged them to do, joined forces to wreak havoc on the monarchies' work, threatening the imperial order. As a result, sailors-turned-pirates created egalitarian communities that offered fair wages and didn't simply cast aside the disabled or "other".

Piracy arises when a structure becomes unjust, "because it has taken something that should be the 'common property' of all people and locked it behind a pay-wall," and "refuses to share the spoils of wealth with those who have laboured so hard to create it." Pirates offer an alternative that speaks to our desire, our "human ache," for justice. Pirates threaten those in power, petrifying them, "because the laws that they have so carefully constructed to keep everyone in their right place fall utterly flat." And those who don't choose mutiny? Perhaps they believe the "narrative of their oppressors: that remaining law-abiding and dutiful would see them rewarded in heaven."   

What can pirates teach us about following Jesus? Brewin argues that we must play pirate to religion. Pirates are heroes who break the law, because "the law needs breaking if it is to be remade more justly." Jesus was, according to the law of his day,

a revolutionary heretic who was quite rightly prosecuted by religious authorities. The law had been broken, and law-breakers needed to face punishment if society was to hold together. But, quite explicitly, Jesus broke Jewish law in order to expose the fact that Jewish law was, in the hands of the Pharisees, broken.

The early church can be viewed as a community who declared mutiny against the religious powers, departing from Jewish orthodoxy. Early Christians entered the heretical waters of a faith that shared all things in common. But, Christianity transformed into the "religion of empire, and quickly settled in the easy throne of fattened calves, of comfortable robes and jewelry."

Brewin challenges us to ask: "what would it mean now to play pirate with the life that I have in the culture I am a part of, among the community I live in and within the power structures and working practices that I am embedded in?"

I don't agree with Brewin's characterization of the "New World," as it ignores and erases the existence of native peoples. Along those same lines, Brewin occasionally praised the U.S. "Founding Fathers," who in reality only played pirate on behalf of white, male landowners against the English. Overall, however, Mutiny! is a creative, dense little book that may spur you to mutiny, to "unblock" power structures, and to seek a more equitable way. 

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the author and/or publisher through the Speakeasy blogging book review network. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.

Should the government promote family values? Whose family values?

In response to Republican presidential candidates' rhetoric, I'm sharing portions of a paper I wrote last semester.  Here are part 1, part 2, and part 3.

We've seen that slaveowners promoted slave marriage when convenient for whites, and post-bellum freed slaves were encouraged to marry so as to not burden white taxpayers. 

Current government marriage programs tied to welfare benefits, along with politicians who use family-values rhetoric, are no different from this early, hypocritical marriage promotion.  These programs and rhetoric have undertones of so-called “civilization” of certain “unruly” populations, and in reality, fail to benefit families of color.

Beginning with 1996's welfare reform, marriage initiatives promoted by conservative politicians at the national level pledged to assist single-parent poor families, ideally lifting them out of poverty.¹ The statistics were on their side: non-marital families tend to be worse off economically than families headed by married couples.²  Children in single-parent families fare poorer in several areas than do children raised by married couples.³ 

In 2003, Congress authorized $750 million, in conjunction with welfare programs, for “healthy marriage promotion” and fatherhood initiatives.⁴  The Bush administration heavily supported these programs.

One program, for which I personally recruited in 2006 and 2007, offered workshops for married and unmarried low-income couples expecting a child.  The workshops provided relationship skills, conflict resolution, and budgeting advice.  Each couple was also assigned a case manager. 

The couples received incentives for attending the workshops, receiving “bucks” which they could “spend” on diapers, clothing, and other items for their baby.  A fatherhood specialist worked with fathers-to-be on specific areas, such as employment, which, hearkening back to the post-bellum era, supports the notion that a gainfully-employed husband and father will keep his family off welfare.

While on its face, this program appeared to benefit couples who struggle financially, I eventually began to question whether millions of federal dollars should be directed toward personal relationship skills.  One description of an unmarried couple on public aid stated:

Anthony and Pam don't need love; they have it. They need health care, a supportive environment for treatment, food, and shelter. At some point, the government decided to start teaching people to find love and marriage instead of providing them with things they need.⁵

Marriage promotion programs have turned out to be ineffective in improving relationships.  The results of such well-meaning programs are dismal.  The divorce rate did not change and marriage rates did not increase.⁶  Meanwhile, poverty persists.  Efforts by a majority white government to impose a certain moral code are detrimental to society and to individuals.  Taxpayer funds are used to support efforts that patronize adults, working under the assumption that marriage is a cure-all for our social ills. 

Because of disproportionate incarceration rates, domestic violence, substance abuse, and other effects of living in a system that often impedes upward mobility, marriage simply cannot serve as a cure-all.

As we've also seen with welfare's history, marriage promotion programs are merely a more explicit form of imposing a white normative view of the "traditional" family: a married heterosexual couple with biological children, without any regard to economic and racial factors.  One marriage program went so far as to refuse benefits if the wife's children were not biologically the husband's.⁷

On the surface, policymakers of all stripes should be in favor of supporting healthy relationships, but such support does not necessarily have to exclude families who do not fit the norm.  A couple can be involved in a healthy relationship even without marriage or when some children are not biologically both spouse’s.  Government programs that funnel large sums of money toward marriage-only solutions erase alternative, equally viable forms of family, depleting resources that could be used elsewhere.

I see a contradiction with family-values rhetoric.  Many Republicans and Christians claim the church, rather than government, should be the one to help the poor.  These folks argue that government should stay out of providing social services, and don't want to see their tax dollars used for such purposes.  But when it comes to "values," many conservatives do not have a problem with government promoting a certain family model using millions of dollars in federal funds.  

Which one is it?  If you want government to stay out of the church's role in caring for the poor, wouldn't you also want government to step aside so the church can foster healthy relationships, including marriage and fatherhood?

---

¹ Julia M. Fisher, Marriage Promotion Policies and the Working Poor: A Match Made in Heaven?, 25 B.C. Third World L.J. 475, 477 (2005).

² Vivian Hamilton, Will Marriage Promotion Work? 11 J. Gender Race & Just. 1, 1 (Fall 2007).

³ Id.

⁴ Id. at 2.

⁵ Aly Parker, Can’t Buy Me Love: Funding Marriage Promotion Versus Listening to Real Needs in Breaking the Cycle of Poverty, 18 S. Cal. Rev. L. & Soc. Just. 493, 494 (Spring 2009).

⁶ Id. at 495.

⁷ Id. at 497. 

Graphic source

"That's a lot of code": conservative rhetoric on welfare

 

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Newt Gingrich's Poverty Code
www.thedailyshow.com
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In response to Republican presidential hopefuls' rhetoric, I'm posting portions of a paper I wrote last semester.  Here are parts one and two.

Like slavery, welfare's history informs "family values" rhetoric.  While conservatives promote family values, their policies ultimately help few low-income families of color and employ racialized rhetoric.  One initial goal of federal housing programs, for instance, was to encourage morality in families.  

Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (“TANF”) favors heterosexual married couples.  Marriage promotion as welfare policy is a modern reincarnation of the “civilization” of “unruly” slaves.¹  Just as slave marriage was promoted at masters’ convenience, marriage was used post-bellum to privatize freed blacks’ economic mobility, minimizing government responsibility. 

Post-emancipation, states used marriage as a so-called “civilization” tool, which forced African-Americans to conform to white family constructs and which regulated black behaviors.  Some slaveowners had disregarded slave families, but now whites suddenly wanted black couples to marry—only within their race.  With black husbands working, there would ostensibly be no need for black women and children to seek government assistance.  This assumption persists today: if black women and children were part of a traditional family, welfare demand would decrease.  

Modern aid for women with children began in the 1920’s, but only for women deemed "deserving."  Participants were 96% white and 3% black.²  Under the 1935 New Deal “Aid to Dependent Children,” the first formal welfare program, white widows were considered most entitled to support, while immigrants, unmarried women, and women of color were reluctantly included.  In 1937, 85% of recipients were white women, while 13% were black women.³  

Women of color now comprise the majority of those on welfare.  Thus, a stereotype of the typical welfare recipient emerged: “a lazy, promiscuous black woman who lives in luxury at taxpayers’ expense.”⁴

Melissa Harris Perry, on the Colbert Report, recently discussed stereotypes of black women, one of which is a "Jezebel."  This stereotype, around since the antebellum area, is similar to the welfare queen and pigeonholes black women as sexually promiscuous, having children with several different fathers.  Meanwhile, a thrice-married white man runs for president nearly with impunity.

With the majority of welfare recipients no longer white, whites' sympathy level has dropped.  States with larger minority populations on welfare impose harsher restrictions.⁵  And using law to promote an ideal of family, similar to post-bellum attempts, has produced a racialized discourse hostile to unmarried black parents.  Debates especially portray women of color as bad mothers, just as in the antebellum period. 

Although 33.3% of TANF recipients are black, 31% white, and 28.8% Hispanic, the image of a “welfare queen” is a black single mother.  No longer focused on “worthy" white widows, TANF discourse casts judgment onto unmarried black women who allegedly won't work and “won’t use birth control.⁶

Candidates rail against those supposedly unwilling to work with a wink, knowing whites are in on the shared understanding of whom is really being referenced.  (see Gingrich's "really poor children, in really poor neighborhoods have nobody around them who works" in the above video).

Rather than prophetically critique it, many U.S. white evangelicals buy into this code-speak hook, line, and sinker.  Evangelicals view lack of personal responsibility as the reason black single mothers use TANF.  Grace, in an excellent series on race and gender, discussed some telling data from Michael Emerson and Christian Smith's Divided by Faith.  White evangelicals blame racial disparity on poor choices, such as "having too many children."  Emerson writes:

In their use of these cultural reasons [for racial inequality], white conservative Protestants do not mean patterns of behavior rooted in values (e.g., blacks have many children because they highly value large families), but rather that blacks are making poor choices (e.g., black individuals do not exercise responsibility in child-bearing, faith, or speech).

---

¹ Angela Onwuachi-Willig, The Return of the Ring: Welfare Reform's Marriage Cure as the Revival of Post-Bellum Control, 93 Cal. L. Rev. 1647, 1653 (2005).

² Id.

³ Id.

⁴ Madeline Howard, Subsidized Housing Policy: Defining the Family, 22 Berkeley J. Gender L. & Just. 97, 124-5 (2007).

⁵ Elena Christine Acevedo, The Latina Paradox: Cultural Barriers to the Equitable Receipt of Welfare Services under Modern Welfare Reform, 20 Berkeley J. Gender L. & Just. 199, 208 (2005).

⁶ Martha L. Fineman, Images of Mothers in Poverty Discourses, 1991 Duke L.J. 274, 282 (1991).

Photo credit

White evangelicals, welfare, and racially-coded rhetoric

With Newt Gingrich's recent win in the South Carolina Republican primary, many are discussing the role family-focused evangelicals played in the victory of a candidate who has been married three times and has reportedly committed adultery.  Evangelicals comprised two-thirds of primary voters, and Gingrich won 44% of their votes.  At least 98% of these voters were white.  

Gingrich ran an ad in South Carolina, the first Southern state to hold a primary this season, featuring his exchange with debate moderator Juan Williams.  Williams had asked about Gingrich's repeated references to President Obama as the "food stamp president."  Gingrich has also made disparaging statements about poor children, remarking they have no work ethic.

Critics call this type of rhetoric racially coded:

Eduardo Bonilla-Silva argues that the new racism entails individuals saying and doing things that perpetuate racial stereotypes and inequalities, but they do so in such a way that the offender is able to deny being explicitly racist.  One of the many types of new racist strategies Bonilla-Silva highlights is the use of racially charged code speak, or using indirect racial rhetoric and semantic moves to express an ideology that serves to reinforce white dominance over minorities.

I wrote a paper last semester that explored racially-coded language in "family values" and welfare-reform discourse, much of which is perpetuated by another Republican presidential hopeful, Rick Santorum.  

Santorum built his political career on promoting "family values" as the answer to social ills.  To move people off welfare, government must encourage the formation of families headed by heterosexual married couples.  Santorum authored the 1996 welfare reform act, which created Temporary Assistance for Needy Families ("TANF"), limited how long participants could rely on TANF, and capped funding.  The act also restricted food stamp eligibility.

Many conservative politicians and talking heads use coded "family values" rhetoric to rail against black low-income families (especially mothers, i.e. Reagan's infamous "welfare queens") and rally the white voting troops.  

Gingrich may owe his newfound success to dubbing Obama the food stamp president, as many white conservatives see the rise in welfare recipients as a moral failure and a threat to society.  If we would "get back" to the work ethic and family values on which our country was founded, we would see less poor, inner-city (read: black) families rely on government aid.

In light of GOP presidential candidates' disturbing racist rhetoric, and especially given many evangelicals' response to this rhetoric, I will share parts of my paper over the next few weeks.  

Much ink has been spilled recently over the African-American family (see Ralph Richard Banks' controversial book Is Marriage for White People?).  But I do not dare speak to or at black U.S. Americans who earn lower incomes or who are not in a "traditional" two-parent family.  

Rather, I'm interested in how the political discourse on family values and welfare has ugly undertones, often supported by white evangelicals.  Fred Clark at Slacktivist pointed out that Richard Land, "ethics czar" of the Southern Baptist Convention, defended Gingrich, accusing the NAACP of being too sensitive. Land even uttered the phrase “off the liberal plantation and out of the liberal barrio.” 

But aside from racially-coded language, the statistics, among all races, are intriguing.  Over the last 50 years, the number of married adults in the U.S. decreased by 20%.¹  Thirty-two percent of black adults are married, compared to 56% of whites.  Birth statistics tell the same story: the number of births to unmarried women in the U.S. rose from 5% in 1960 to 41% in 2008.  Among white mothers, 29% were unmarried in 2008, while 72% of black mothers and 53% of Hispanic-American mothers were single.  

Conservatives are not exaggerating numbers to incite panic about crumbling "family values."  But, using racially-coded language and blaming only people of color are too often hallmarks of some political and religious leaders' discourse.  This is why I'm interested in pulling back the curtain on such rhetoric.

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¹All statistics are from the Pew Research Center, Pew Social & Demographic Trends, The Decline of Marriage and Rise of New Families, November 18, 2010.  

Graphic source

"What is most important for democracy is...that great fortunes should not remain in the same hands"

I started classes this week, one of which is Wills and Trusts.  My textbook has some interesting statistics and quotes about the passage of wealth from generation to generation.  Note this edition was published in 2009, well before any catchphrases about the 1% were coined.  

The baby boom generation inherited, between 1987 and 2011, $6.8 trillion:

Much of this wealth was built by their parents between the late 1940's and the late 1960's when real wages and savings rates were higher and housing costs were considerably lower.  [...]  Of course not all will benefit equally, or at all.  The richest one percent will divide one-third of the worth of estates, each inheritance per estate receiving an average of $6 million; the next richest nine percent will divide another third for an average inheritance of about $396,000.  Much of this wealth will be property.¹

Four of the top 10 spots in Forbes' list of 400 richest U.S. Americans belong to relatives of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton, while 3 of the top 20 slots are held by Forrest Mars' family.  Mars invented M&M's candy.  

The concentration of wealth in the U.S. decreased sharply from 1929 to the 1940's, leveling off until the 1970's. However, the 1980's saw a sharp rise in the share of wealth held by the richest U.S. Americans.  By 2004, the richest 1% owned 34.3% of family wealth, and the top 10% owned an astonishing 71.2% of family wealth.  Many wealthy people are wealthy simply by virtue of being born.

The textbook offers a quote by philosopher Robert Nozick, who said this "sticks out as a special kind of unearned benefit that produces unequal opportunities."  And Alexis de Tocqueville wrote:

What is the most important for democracy is not that great fortunes should not exist, but that great fortunes should not remain in the same hands.  In that way there are rich men, but they do not form a class.

We now enjoy less economic mobility in the U.S., and a recent study has suggested that conflict between rich and poor has surpassed even racism and nativism as a source of tension.  While many become rich simply by being born, 45 million others rely on food stamps to keep their family fed.

This is why I will be so intrigued with the 2012 presidential election.  Mitt Romney has warned against "a bitter politics of envy" in discussions about wealth inequality.  Romney even prefers to discuss questions about the distribution of wealth "in quiet rooms." 

My textbook authors imply that our system, with its entrenchment of wealth passed from generation to generation within privileged families, is a danger to democracy and equal opportunity.  An alternative to the U.S. system of passing wealth strictly within families is to require part or all of one's wealth upon death to be returned to society.  I use the word "returned" because no one becomes wealthy without help from society - take Wal-Mart for example.  It drives down wages by billions of dollars, so its employees have to rely on public aid.  Perhaps 4 of those top 10 richest U.S. Americans should thank the U.S. taxpayer for subsidizing the wages of their company's employees, thus helping the Walton's accumulate massive wealth.  Or am I simply being envious of their wealth?

I wonder if we've reached the breaking point, and discussions about wealth and inequality will bust out of those quiet rooms... 

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¹Dukeminier, Sitkoff, and Lindren, Wills, Trusts, and Estates, 18 (2009, 8th Edition).