Welfare: A White Secret

(2 of 2)

As for the high proportion of black families headed by single women (44%, compared with 13% for whites): many deep sociohistoric reasons could be adduced, but none of them is welfare. A number of respected studies refute the Reagan-era myth that a few hundred a month in welfare payments is a sufficient incentive to chuck one's husband or get pregnant while in high school. If it were, states with relatively high welfare payments -- say, about $500 a month per family -- would have higher rates of out-of-wedlock births than states like Louisiana and Mississippi, which expect a welfare family to get by on $200 a month or less. But this is not the case.

So our confession stands: white folks have been gobbling up the welfare budget while blaming someone else. But it's worse than that. If we look at Social Security, which is another form of welfare, although it is often mistaken for an individual insurance program, then whites are the ones who are crowding the trough. We receive almost twice as much per capita, for an aggregate advantage to our race of $10 billion a year -- much more than the $3.9 billion advantage African Americans gain from their disproportionate share of welfare. One sad reason: whites live an average of six years longer than African Americans, meaning that young black workers help subsidize a huge and growing "overclass" of white retirees. I do not see our confession bringing much relief. There's a reason for resentment, though it has more to do with class than with race. White people are poor too, and in numbers far exceeding any of our more generously pigmented social groups. And poverty as defined by the government is a vast underestimation of the economic terror that persists at incomes -- such as $20,000 or even $40,000 and above -- that we like to think of as middle class.

The problem is not that welfare is too generous to blacks but that social welfare in general is too stingy to all concerned. Naturally, whites in the swelling "near poor" category resent the notion of whole races supposedly frolicking at their expense. Whites, near poor and middle class, need help too -- as do the many African Americans, Hispanics and "others" who do not qualify for aid but need it nonetheless.

So we white folks have a choice. We can keep pretending that welfare is a black program and a scheme for transferring our earnings to the pockets of shiftless, dark-skinned people. Or we can clear our throats, blush prettily and admit that we are hurting too -- for cash assistance when we're down and out, for health insurance, for college aid and all the rest.

Racial scapegoating has its charms, I will admit: the surge of righteous anger, even the fun -- for those inclined -- of wearing sheets and burning crosses. But there are better, nobler sources of white pride, it seems to me. Remember, whatever they say about our music or our taste in clothes, only we can truly, deeply blush.