Welfare: A White Secret

Come on, my fellow white folks, we have something to confess. No, nothing to do with age spots or those indoor-tanning creams we use to get us through the | winter without looking like the final stages of TB. Nor am I talking about the fact that we all go home and practice funky dance moves behind drawn shades. Out with it, friends, the biggest secret known to whites since the invention of powdered rouge: welfare is a white program. Yep. At least it's no more black than Vanilla Ice is a fair rendition of classic urban rap.

The numbers go like this: 61% of the population receiving welfare, listed as "means-tested cash assistance" by the Census Bureau, is identified as white, while only 33% is identified as black. These numbers notwithstanding, the Republican version of "political correctness" has given us "welfare cheat" as a new term for African American since the early days of Ronald Reagan. Yet if the Lakers were 61% white and on a winning streak, would we be calling them a "black team"?

Wait a minute, I can hear my neighbors say, we're not as slow at math as the Asian Americans like to think. There's still a glaring disproportion there. African Americans are only 12% of the population as a whole, at least according to the census count, yet they're 33% of the welfare population -- surely evidence of a shocking addiction to the dole.

But we're forgetting something. Welfare is a program for poor people, very poor people. African Americans are three times as likely as whites to fall below the poverty level and hence to have a chance of qualifying for welfare benefits. If we look at the kind of persons most likely to be eligible -- single mothers living in poverty with children under 18 to support -- we find little difference in welfare participation by race: 74.6% of African Americans in such dire straits are on welfare, compared with 64.5% of the poor white single moms.

That's still a difference, but not enough to imply some congenital appetite for a free lunch on the part of the African-derived. In fact, two explanations readily suggest themselves: First, just as blacks are disproportionately likely to be poor, they are disproportionately likely to find themselves among the poorest of the poor, where welfare eligibility arises. Second, the black poor are more likely than their white counterparts to live in cities, and hence to have a chance of making their way to the welfare office. Correct for those two differences, and you won't find an excess of African Americans fitting the stereotype of the sluttish welfare queen who breeds for profit.

So why are they so poor? I can see my neighbor asking as visions of feckless idlers dance before his narrowed eyes. Ah, that is a question white folks would do well to ponder. Consider, for a start, that African Americans are more likely to be disabled (illness being a famous consequence of poverty) or unemployed (in the sense of actively seeking work) and far less likely to earn wages that would lift them out of the welfare-eligibility range.