Criminalizing Black Motherhood

Abstract

This article argues that the rhetoric of welfare reform shifts during three specific phases of the Cold War that culminate in the War on Welfare (1980–96), a war that is defined by the emergence of neoliberalism and its roots in the emergence of consumer freedom. I first trace how a war on poverty featured in the U.S. popular imaginary as it was shaped by the media and formulated in public policy. I then turn to how this popular imaginary was crystallized and contested in fictive representations of motherhood and welfare. Claudine (1974) is an early example of the regulatory practices of the welfare state and marks the discursive emergence of the War on Welfare while Sapphire's novel Push (1996) marks the year that massive welfare reform legislation was enacted by the Clinton administration, a signature of neoliberals triumph. Lee Daniel's subsequent film, Precious, an adaptation of “Push” is a reminder that in a so-called post-racial American the welfare queen stereotype is still very present.

Keywords:

• AFDC
• freedom
• motherhood
• neoliberalism
• Push
• Reganism
• state of emergency
• War on poverty
• War on welfare

Notes

Eric Foner, The Story of American Freedom (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1998).

Richard M. Nixon, “What Freedom Means to Us,” Vital Speeches of the Day 25, no. 22 (September 1, 1959): 677–678.

Foner, The Story, 271.

Ibid., 264.

Ibid., 267.

Jill Quadagno, The Color of Welfare: How Racism Undermined the War on Poverty (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 23.

Premilla Nadasen, Welfare Warriors: The Welfare Rights Movement in the United States (New York: Routledge, 2005), 24.

Ibid., 25.

James T. Patterson. America's Struggle against Poverty in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000), 97.

I am arguing that there are three distinct phases of the Cold War. In part, this argument turns on the decreased attention and prosecution of communist party members in the first phase. The Smith Act, used to prosecute Communist Party members, was limited in 1957. By many accounts the Red Scare was over by 1957. Certainly by 1964, the court was protecting rights of Communist Party members in Aptheker v. Secretary of State. Mary L. Dudziak, War Time: An Idea, Its History, Its Consequences (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 79. As the Red Scare ended, a new invisible enemy emerged: the poverty within and the War on Poverty began. The third and final phase of the Cold War was the War on Welfare.

For a detailed analysis of the grassroots welfare rights movement see Nadasen, Welfare Warriors.

Joe Soss, Richard C. Fording, and Sanford F. Schram, Disciplining the Poor: Neoliberal Paternalism and the Persistent Power of Race (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2011), 29.

Quadagno, The Color of Welfare, 91.

Alice O'Connor, Poverty Knowledge: Social Science, Social Policy, and the Poor in Twentieth-Century U.S. History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), 222.

Marisa Chappell, The War on Welfare: Family, Poverty, and Politics in Modern America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010), 11.

Ange-Marie Hancock, The Politics of Disgust: The Public Identity of the Welfare Queen (New York: New York University Press, 2004).

For an extended study of the political debates surrounding FAP and Guaranteed Annual Incomes see, Brian Steensland, The Failed Welfare Revolution: America's Struggle over Guaranteed Income Policy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008).

Peter Passell and Leonard Ross, “Moynihan Applauds Nixon on Welfare,” New York Times (August 11, 1969), 24.

Nadasen, Welfare Warriors, 145; Gladys Knight and The Pips, “Mr. Welfare Man.” Claudine: The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (BMG Direct, 1974).

David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 2.

Soss et al., Disciplining the Poor, 20.

Hancock, The Politics of Disgust.

“'Welfare Queen’ Becomes Issue in Reagan Campaign,” New York Times, (February 15, 1976).

Martin Gilens, Why Americans Hate Welfare (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999.); Soss et al., Disciplining the Poor..

Joseph White and Aaron Wildavsky, The Deficit and Public Interest: The Search for Responsible Budgeting in the 1980's (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 137–138.

Fred Englander and John Kane, “Reagan's Welfare Reforms: Were the Program Savings Realized?” Policy Studies Review 11, no. 2 (Summer 1992): 7.

Ibid.

Public Law 100-485, October 13, 1988, 102 STAT. 2343.

Quadagno, The Color of Welfare, 124.

Preston Garrison before the US Congress, Senate Finance Committee in Lynne Haney and Miranda March, “Married Fathers and Caring Daddies: Welfare Reform and the Discursive Politics of Paternity,” Social Problems 50, no. 4 (November 2003): 461–481.

There is a rich archive of feminist analysis of the role of the family in relation to capital. See Leopoldina Fortunati, The Arcane of Reproduction: Housework, Prostitution, Labor and Capital (New York: Autonomedia, 1995); see also the wages for housework debates led by Mariarosa Dalla Costa and Selma James, The Power of Women and the Subversion of the Community (London: Falling Wall Press, 1975).

Foner, The Story, 325.

O'Connor, Poverty, 287.

Harvey, History of Neoliberalism, 5.

Douglas, The Mommy Myth, 151. See also, Hancock, The Politics of Disgust, 27.

Hancock, The Politics of Disgust, 26.

Sapphire, Push (New York: Vintage Contemporaries, 1997), 20–21.

Ibid., 55.

Gilens, Why Americans Hate Welfare, 76. Gilens documents how public support of welfare most closely turns on the issue of work ethic and reports of idleness and deservedness among welfare recipients.

Dorothy E. Roberts, “Prison, Foster Care and the Systemic Punishment of Black Mothers,” UCLA Law Review 59 (2012): 1492.

For an anthropological study of the link between surveillance, welfare, and domestic abuse see Dána-Ain Davis, Battered Black Women and Welfare Reform: Between a Rock and a Hard Place (Albany: SUNY Press, 2006).

Sapphire, Push, 23–24.

Ibid., 19.

Ibid., 13–14.

Ibid.

Douglas, The Mommy Myth, 158.

Lucy Williams, “Race, Rat Bites and Unfit Mothers: How Media Discourse Informs Welfare Legislation Debate,” Fordham Urban Law Journal 22, no. 4 (1994), Article 12.

Sapphire, Push, 13.

Ibid., 6–7.

The National Commission on Excellence in Education, “A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform.” A Report to the Nation and the Secretary of Education, United States Department of Education, April 1983. http://datacenter.spss.org/uploads/SOTW_A_Nation_at_Risk_1983.pdf.

Soss et al., Disciplining the Poor, 22.

Laurie Stapleton, “Toward a New Learning System: A Freirean Reading of Sapphire's Push,” Women's Studies Quarterly 32, nos. 1/2, Women and Literacy: Moving to Power and Participation (Spring–Summer, 2004): 213–223.

Ibid., 65.

Dr. Frank C. Laubach, “Each One Teach One: Illiteracy at MidCentury,” International Authority on Literacy, New York, NY. Keynote address at the First Texas Conference on Illiteracy, Baylor University, Waco, TX, April 3, 1959.

Donna M. Bishop and Charles E. Frazier, “Race Effects in Juvenile Justice Decision-Making: Findings of a Statewide Analysis,” Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology 86, no. 2 (1996), 410.

Diane Bukowski, “Ariana Godboldo-Hakim's Parents Tell of Love for Daughter During Custody Trial; NSO ‘Social Worker’ Institutionalized Child Without Their Consent,” Voice of Detroit (August 8, 2011). http://voiceofdetroit.net (accessed April 30, 2013).