Post: #1
Title: Black Citizenship And Welfare BAYAN ABUBAKR
Author: bayan abubakr
Date: 09-14-2017, 00:12 AM
11:12 PM September, 14 2017 Sudanese Online bayan abubakr-USA My Library Short URL
Barack Obama has been accused of sympathizing with terrorists, forging a birth certificate, being born in Kenya, being a Muslim, and being a citizen of Indonesia. There is an entire Wikipedia pageâcurrently at 11,421 wordsâdedicated to âBarack Obama citizenship conspiracy theories.â Although Obama released his birth certificate in 2008, 23% of the United States continued to believe that he was born in another country. Skepticism about his citizenship existed beyond those who disliked him: nearly 29% of people who said Obama was not born in the United States approved of the job he was doing as President, of whom 23% said they wanted to see him reelected in 2012. 1 The question of Barack Obamaâs citizenship wasnât a matter of politics, policy, or partisanship. It was a question of the legitimacy of a black man in the highest office of the United States. Being American, for a black man, is conditional on behaving like a âgrateful guest.â2 You can stay here, sure, but in the guest room. You can stay here, sure, but you canât be President. You canât be the American, at least not while being black. Black Americans are treated as subjects rather than citizens. A subject âis under the power of another; but a citizen is a unit of a mass of free people who collectively possess sovereignty.â3 This has manifested itself through state and federal welfare systems: âcitizens receive welfare as an entitlement the government has an obligation [to fund] as compensation for their social contribution or as a prerequisite to their participation in sociopolitical and economic life.â4 Subjects, on the other hand, receive âinferior, inefficient, and stigmatizing assistance at the governmentâs discretion,â and their benefits depend on their conformity to âbehavioral rules and submission to government scrutiny and assessment.â5 Ultimately, welfare for subjects allows the government to rule them, as they are vulnerable to âofficial or quasi-official state sanctioned inquiry and surveillance.â6 This is accompanied by the governmentâs authority to investigate and control these personsâ behavior. For instance, some states have conditioned payments on mothersâ compliance with varying standards of sexual morality and have tested her deviance through means and morals testing. In the last thirty years, at least thirty states attempted to modify their welfare programs to include some form of behavior modification.7 This system of welfare derives from a racist, divisive, and tyrannical history. Modern welfare systems deny black Americans their right to privacy. This is maintained by the fact that they are not considered natural citizens of the United States. As an American, 1 âSection 6: Obama, 2012, and the Tea Party,â PEW Research Center (May 4, 2011) 2 Wesley Morris, âColin Kaepernick and the Question of Who Gets to Be Called a âPatriotââ (September 12, 2016) 3 David Ramsay, âA Dissertation on the Manner of Acquiring the Character and Privileges of a Citizen of the United States,â (1789). 4 Dorothy Roberts, âWelfare and the Problem of Black Citizenship,â (1996) 5 Ibid. 6 Joel Handler and Margaret Rosenheim, âPrivacy in Welfare: Public Assistance and Juvenile Justice,â (1966). 7 Dorothy Roberts, âThe Welfare Debate: Who Pays for ProcreationŘâ in Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty, 226-230. 6 blackness is the ultimate marker of illegitimacy, and this has reinforced itself through various state sanctioned welfare systems. The development of welfare systems as a means of controlling poor individuals, families, and communities of color can be traced through four Supreme Court cases: Dandridge v. Williams (1970), Wyman v. James (1971), Lyng v. Castillo (1986), and Bowen v. Gilliard (1987). To be black and a citizen of the United States is to live in a paradoxical world. Blackness and citizenship, in the ways in which they were constructed, exist in constant tension with one another. Citizenship was built off the backs of people of color by and for whiteness. Whiteness is the defining marker of citizenship without which one cannot be considered a natural citizen of the United States. Citizenship is itself an abstract term, but it signifies an emergence of liberties specific to the United States and the modernity of the Western world. Citizenship was constituted and reinforced by social relations established by colonial governance in the Americas, Asia, and Africa. These differences made it possible for Western liberalism to theorize and practice the universality of human freedom, âdespite the fact that freedom for slaves, colonized, and indigenous people were exempted by this ideology.â8 To individuals deemed worthy, citizenship granted them civility, and a right to privacy and intimacy. Citizenship grants Americans political emancipation, social equality, and the promise of economic freedom. Political emancipation, in particular, is a critical part of citizenship. For European and North American citizens in the 19th century, ideas of privacy were constituted within an individualâs right to political protection. This understanding of citizenship can be traced in the political philosophical traditions of Locke, Rousseau, Kant, and Hegel. They consider and analyze the modern individual, or the Western man, who possesses âinteriority of personâ as well as the private household. 9 Hegel, for example, traced the development of citizenship through various forms of privacy: property, family, and domestic life.10 This notion of privacy became critical to defining the modern liberal individual and how citizenship itself became a function of privacy. During the Progressive era, white women advocated for the universality of welfare systems, but made sure that black people were excluded from these systems. This was justified through beliefs such as: âblacks needed less to live on than whites,â and that, as one Southern public assistance field supervisor claimed, âthe number of Negro cases is few due to the unanimous feeling on the part of the staff and the board that there are more work opportunities for Negro women.â11 The Civil Rights movement, however, began opening the welfare system to black Americans. It forced states to relax welfare eligibility requirements, raise benefit levels, and increase the availability of benefits to single-parent households. The federal government, under the scrutiny of the international community and civil rights activists, proceeded to set up several programs designed to integrate more black Americans into federal and state assistance programs. But this victory came with consequences. Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), a system of welfare administered by states with federal funding, became âincreasingly associated with black mothers already stereotyped as lazy, irresponsible, and overly fertile. It became burdened with behavior modification rules, work requirements, and reduced effective 8 Lisa Lowe, âThe Intimacies of Four Continents,â in The Intimacies of Four Continents, 16-20. 9 Ibid, 28. 10 Ibid, 27-29. 11 Dorothy Roberts, âThe Welfare Debate: Who Pays for ProcreationŘ,â in Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty, 202-246. 7 benefit levels.â12 Furthermore, the inclusion of black Americans in welfare programs became stigmatized as proof of black peopleâs lack of work ethic, perpetual depravity, and dependency.13 The black woman, as a result, became the stateâs enemy. This black woman depleted the stateâs resources, was a site of poverty and destitution, and tarnished the purity of âAmericanness.â In response, welfare became a tool of social control and an entry point for the state into the lives of poor, black families. Under AFDC, the state of Maryland computed a âstandard of needâ for each family. In Maryland, this standard increased with every additional member of the family, but at the same time, it incrementally decreased. Rather than paying the full amount of determined need to each family, the state, to conserve funds, established a âceiling of about $250 per month, regardless of the size of the family and its actual need.â14 This resulted in smaller families receiving â100 percent of their state-determined minimum subsistence while larger families were receiving a lesser percentage, the exact percentage reduction depending upon the size of the family.â15 Larger families were discriminated against and were more likely to starve than smaller families. This is invidious and explicitly prejudiced. Maryland could not direct its efforts to cap the state budget at larger families, as there is no compelling reason for them to do so. Larger families are no less justified to welfare benefits than smaller families. In its totality, this policy was designed to make life âmore difficult for low-income families, thrust them deeper into poverty, and ultimately, discourage additional births.â16 This family cap, and others like it, was intended to prevent mothers on welfare from having additional children, as this would ultimately ease public burden. This sort of policy is based on the myth of the sexually irresponsible welfare queen: a woman of color who has multiple children to cash in on her welfare benefits. This was built off the premise that women should not have children if they cannot provide for them without welfare; considering this, children by welfare mothers were another means by which the welfare queen could rob the state. Family caps are an extension of a âmisogynoirâ stereotype.17 Capping welfare curbs the incentive to produce more children, supposedly putting an end to the moral decline and pathology in poor communities of color. Dandridge v. Williams (1970) punished unconventional families through the state of Marylandâs âstandard of need.â The plaintiffs were Linda Williams, a single mother, and Junius and Jeanette Gary, a married couple. They were parents of eight children each. They filed a case against Edmund P. Dandridge, chairman of the Maryland State Board of Public Welfare, because Marylandâs method of calculating a âstandard of needâ discriminated against larger families and was a violation of the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The plaintiffs also claimed that the âstandard of needâ calculation conflicted with the stated purpose of AFDC, as per the Social Security Act of 1935 (â[aid] shall be furnished with reasonable promptness to all eligible individualsâ). The District Court found that the regulation was unconventional and in violation of the Social Security Act. The Supreme Court, in a 5-3 decision, found that the Maryland provision was not unconstitutional and was not in violation of stated AFDC policies. The Court looked to a precedent set by King v. Smith (1968), which described AFDC as âa 12 Ibid, 240-246. 13 Ibid. 14 Dandridge v. Williams, 397 U.S. 471 (1970). 15 Mevlyn Durchslag, âWelfare Litigation, the Eleventh Amendment and State Sovereignty: Some Reflections on Dandridge v. Williams,â (1975). 16 Jamelle Bouie, âThe Most Discriminatory Law in the Land,â (June 17, 2014). 17 Eliza Anyangwe, âMisogynoir: where racism and sexism meet,â (October 5, 2015). 8 scheme of cooperative federalism,â and granted the states âconsiderable latitude in allocating their AFDC resources, since each state is free to set its own standard of need and to determine the level of benefits by the number of funds it devotes to the program.â18 The Court also reasoned that the state, by capping welfare benefits, could encourage employment in the marketplace. In his dissent, Justice William Douglas warned of âthe danger that the state could use welfare programs to âwield its economic whipâ over disfranchised groups, forcing them to dance in response to the dominant groupsâ fantasies and phobias about its own Soul.â19 Welfare caps policed welfare recipients. These caps weren't the only barriers to welfare, however. Caseworkers prove to be yet another means of restricting access to welfare, and they negatively affect the experiences of welfare recipients of color. Caseworker visits are an essential part of the welfare systemâs oppressive and invasive methods. They are a form of checks and balances that ensure that the stateâs money is being used as directed. These visits come with intrusive questions with prodding, and suspicious undertones. They are also laced with a systemic racial bias; âwhite welfare recipients benefit considerably from the discretionary actions of their caseworkersâŚblack and white welfare clients may be incorrectly attributed to differences in work ethic, personal motivation, or attitude.â20 Caseworkers are the intermediaries between welfare systems, relevant government agencies, and welfare recipients. They can help define and set the parameters of a recipientâs under welfare, and they have free reign in doing so. Unequal treatment at the hands of caseworkers is unfair, discriminatory, and reinforces the stereotype of the malicious black welfare recipient. The same stereotypes that drove welfare agencies to enforce means and morals testing to validate eligibility for welfare created the need and desire to use caseworkers as the designated gatekeepers of welfare. Caseworkers are another agent of surveillance that can ensure where, why, and most importantly, to whom welfare is being distributed. Caseworkers are a point of entry into the lives of poor families. When these poor families are also families of color, caseworkers become a point of entry, monitoring, and behavior modification. The biases that muddle a caseworkerâs judgment can play into the benefits a recipient is eligible for. It is for this reason that welfare should not have to depend on caseworker visits to âverifyâ the legitimacy of a recipientâs claims. Wyman v. James (1971) was a direct and insidious violation of Barbara Jamesâ right to privacy. James was a welfare recipient and single mother. After having a son, James applied for assistance under New Yorkâs AFDC program. She was deemed eligible and began receiving her benefits after a caseworker visited her apartment. Two years later, James was scheduled to be visited again by another caseworkerâthis was required under New York state law and could affect Jamesâ benefits under AFDC. James refused the caseworkerâs visit because âquestions concerning personal relationships, beliefs, and behavior are raised and pressed, which is unnecessary for a determination of continuing eligibility.â21 James continued to refuse the visit, and AFDC assistance was terminated, even though James âexpressed willingness to cooperate and to permit the visit elsewhere.â22 James filed a claim under Section 1983 of the Civil Rights Act of 1971 in the District Court for the Southern State of New York. She claimed âthat the 18 King v. Smith, 392 U.S. 309 (1968). 19 Dandridge v. Williams, 397 U.S. 471 (1970). 20 Susan Gooden, âAll Things Not Being Equal: Differences in Caseworker Support Toward Black and White Welfare Clients,â (1997). 21 Wyman v. James, 400 U.S. 309 (1971). 22 Ibid. 9 caseworker visit was a search,â23 and as such, would violate her Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights. The District Court ruled in her favor, the state of New York appealed, and the case was sent to the Supreme Court. In a 6-3 opinion, the Court found that the caseworker visit was not an âunreasonable search or seizure,â and therefore, was not in violation of Jamesâ Fourth Amendment rights. Justice Harry Blackmun, writing for the majority of the Court, reasoned that the visit was not forced or compelled, meaning that âthere is no entry of the home and there is no search.â24 Furthermore, Blackmun argued the visit would allow the state to ensure that its welfare funds were being spent appropriately. In his dissent, Justice William Douglas argued that welfare was a form of surveillance: In this manner, welfare acted as an agent of violence; Welfare has long been considered the equivalent of charity and its recipients have been subjected to all kinds of dehumanizing experiences in the governmentâs efforts to police its welfare payments. In fact, over half a billion dollars are expended annually for administration and policing in connection with the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program. Why such large sums are necessary for administration and policing has never been adequately explained. No such sums are spent policing the government subsidies granted to farmers, airlines, steamship companies, and junk mail dealers⌠The bureaucracy of modern government is not only slow, lumbering, and oppressive; it is omnipresent. It pries more and more into private affairsâŚ25 Wyman v. James legitimized yet another tool of government and state-sanctioned surveillance. It legalized an odious and discriminatory invasion of privacy that sustained the notion that black Americans should be treated as subjects, always to be surveilled, rather than as citizens of the United States. In 1982, the Food Stamp Program was amended and eligibility and benefit levels in the program began to be determined on a âhouseholdâ basis. This definition of âhouseholdâ did not include more distant relatives or groups of unrelated persons living together. Rather, a âhouseholdâ consisted of two parents, their children, and the parentsâ siblings. Before this revision, the federal food stamp program evaluated eligibility on an individual basis. A group of individuals would be eligible for more food stamps if they consisted of several households, rather than just one. These amendments target a particular kind of welfare recipient, the recipient that does not fit into the traditional, normalized definition of a âhouseholdâ: âin Lyng v. Castillo several families lost all or part of their food stamp benefits when adult children or siblings were forced to reside togetherâŚ[T]he Food Stamp Program penalizes families that turn to their relatives for shelter.â26 Children whose income is available to a household applying for assistance were forced to consider moving out of their homes, refusing to help support their family, or surrendering their income to support their householdâs chance at receiving adequate benefits. These amendments fall in line with other revisions to welfare programs during the late 1980âs and early 1990âs that represented an ideological shift in response to the War on Poverty. This shift called for federal deregulation, criticized the welfare state, and aimed to reduce federal 23 Ibid. 24 Ibid. 25 Ibid. 26 Lyng v. Castillo, 477 U.S. 635 (1986). 10 aid to impoverished communities. Communities and individuals of color were scapegoated, as they were, by mainstream definition, the quintessence of the welfare state and how damning it was to American society. This is the sort of ideology that created the foundation for the statutory revision in question. It redefined what a âhouseholdâ could legally look like for families in need of welfare. Through its intrusive approach to regulating funds, it treated welfare recipients like subjects, rather than citizens. Lyng v. Castillo (1986) restructured and redefined the statutory definition of a household. The Castillo familyâthe plaintiffsâconsisted of a mother, a father, and their children who lived with the motherâs adult daughter. Although they were separate living units, the Castillos were denied eligibility as a separate household because they lived with an adult who already received food stamps. The Castillos claimed that âthe statutory distinction between parents and children, and all other groups of individuals violates the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment.â27 The District Court of the Southern District of Texas invalidated this distinction because it âdirectly and substantiallyâ interfered with family living arrangements. The decision was sent to the Supreme Court, where the lower courtâs decision was reversed; a stateâs ability to define a âhouseholdâ was found constitutional. The Court found that âCongress could reasonably determine that close relatives sharing a homeâalmost by definitionâtend to purchase and prepare meals together while distant relatives and unrelated individuals might not be so inclined.â The Court also reasoned that Congress had an âundeniably legitimate desire to prevent fraud and waste in the food stamp program.â Justice Thurgood Marshall, in his dissent, argued that âthe government has chosen to intrude into the family dining roomâŚ[and] what possible interest can the government have in preventing members of a family from dining as they chooseŘâ He claimed that there were no grounds for Congressâs assumption that related persons living together were a significant source of fraud. Rather, Marshall claimed that Congress determined that the government could save money by âtightening the definition of an eligible food stamp householdâ and scapegoating larger, more unconventional families.28 Lyng is discriminatory in that it doesnât provide reasonable rationale for it targeting blended or unusual âhouseholds,â and in doing so, appears to directly attack the poor, âunconventionalâ welfare recipient. The Deficit Reduction Act of 1984 (DERFA) was an attempt by the AFDC, backed by Congress, to use family size as a marker for eligibility. Before 1984, families with dependent children applying for AFDC could exclude children with outside financial support from their filing. This changed with the passage of DERFA. DERFA amended the AFDC program to require families to include all children living in the same house in the filing, even if they had outside support. This meant that the total sum of AFDC benefits could be reduced by an amount corresponding to the sum of any child support received. DERFA served as an intrusion into private households and family networks. It punished families that did not operate as typical twoparent households: families that are blended, families with multiple parents, and families that donât fit the âtwo-point-five-kidsâ mold. In America, these are families with grandmothers raising their grandchildren, with aunts raising their nieces and nephews, and families where kinship exists beyond bloodlines and biological parenthood. Although âkinship careâ is common among all races, cultures, and ethnicities, black children are âmore likely than other racial or 27 Ibid. 28 Ibid. 11 ethnic groups to live in a household without either parent and not be raised by kin.â29 DERFA was in reckless disregard for the privacy to which these households are entitled. This, however, fails to have any substantive meaning because poor people of color are considered subjects, rather than citizens of the state. Their homes warrant surveillance and intrusion because their homes are where poor people of color breed their illegitimate and toxic cultures, the very cultures that push them in the direction of welfare. These are families that are considered illegitimate because fathers donât live with their children, and the mothers in these households are not always the mothers of said children. These families are looked upon negatively because they use the stateâs money to fund their âunorthodoxâ lifestyles, and this is unacceptable. Therefore, welfare recipientsââespecially recipients of color who lead âunconventionalâ lifestylesââneed to be monitored by the state. In Bowen v. Gilliard (1987), the Supreme Court found that the state may force families to âshrink rearrange, or break up to qualify for benefitsâ through DERFA.30 In 1970, Betty Mae Gilliard, a welfare recipient, gave birth to her second child. Since she was receiving child support from the childâs father, the state deducted the child support from the benefits she was eligible for as the parent of an eight-person household. Gilliard sued and the District Court ruled in her favor. The court claimed that she could exclude the child receiving child support from her filing unit because the seven-person family benefits were greater than what she would receive from the eight-person family benefits minus the child support. When North Carolina adopted the DERFA, Gilliard and other members of the class action filed a motion to reopen the case. They argued that the DERFA was a violation of the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and the takings clause of the Fifth Amendment. The District Court ruled in Gilliardâs favor, North Carolina appealed the decision, and the case was sent to the Supreme Court. The Court found that the DERFA amendment did not violate the due process clause and its equal protection component because it âdoes not interfere with a familyâs fundamental right to live in the type of family unit it chooses.â 31 Furthermore, the Court found that Congressâs rationale for passing DERFAââreducing the national deficit and distributing aid to needy families in the fairest way possibleââwas constitutional. The majority decision failed to consider how DERFA would affect family structures and networks once it was put into place. These ramifications were explored in Justice William Brennanâs dissent, where he argued that DERFA was an intrusion that was unprecedented, intolerable, and muddled the line between âpublic citizen and private person.â In this case, the federal government âdirectly and substantially interfered with family living arrangements.â32 The Supreme Court played a substantial role in legitimizing stereotypes and commonly held beliefs of welfare recipients. These beliefs, given welfareâs racialized history, were projected onto the lives of people of color, and these projections fed into policy and rhetoric. They further reinforced the idea that welfare recipients of color were subjects of the state that needed to be policed, rather than citizens. These Supreme Court rulings are important because they shed light onto the perception of welfare during what some might argue to be its demise. The fall of welfare was marked by the rise of the War on Drugs and the heightened 29 Tyreasa Washington, James P. Gleeson, and Kelly L. Rulison âCompetence and African-American Children in Informal Kinship Care: The Role of Family,â (2013). 30 Bowen v. Gilliard, 483 U.S. 587 (1987). 31 A.W. Phinney III, âFeminism, Epistemology, and the Rhetoric of Law: Reading Bowen v. Gilliard,â (1989). 32 Bowen v. Gilliard, 483 U.S. 587 (1987). 12 criminalization of the black body, the black family, and black communities. It is unsurprising, to say the least, that welfare became another means by which the government could target people of color. People of color have and will continue to be subjected to the tyranny of the United States. They are not natural citizens of the United States. They created citizenship, but citizenship was not created for them. Welfare is based on this notion, and it has, and will continue to, operate on the body of the black subject. BIBLIOGRAPHY Anyangwe, Eliza. âMisogynoir: where racism and sexism meet.â The Guardian, October 5, 2015. https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/oct/05/what-is-misogynoir Bouie, Jamelle. âThe Most Discriminatory Law in the Land.â Slate, June 17, 2014. http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/201...ximum_family_grant_a nd_family_caps_a_racist_law_that_punishes_the.html Durchslag, Melvyn R. âWelfare Litigation, the Eleventh Amendment and State Sovereignty: Some Reflections on Dandridge v. Williams.â Case Western Reserve Law Review 26, no. 1 (1975): 60-100. Gleeson, James P., Kelly L. Rulison, and Tyreasa Washington. âCompetence and AfricanAmerican Children in Informal Kinship Care: The Role of Family.â Children and Youth Services Review 35, no. 9 (2013): 1305-12. Gooden, Susan. âAll Things Not Being Equal: Differences in Caseworker Support Toward Black and White Welfare Clients.â Harvard Journal of African-American Public Policy 4 (1997): 23- 33. Handler, Joel, and Margaret Rosenheim. âPrivacy in Welfare: Public Assistance and Juvenile Justice.â Law and Contemporary Problem 31 (1966): 377-412. Lowe, Lisa. The Intimacies of Four Continents. Durham: Duke University Press, 2015. Morris, Wesley. âColin Kaepernick and the Question of Who Gets to Be Called a âPatriotââ The New York Times Magazine, September 12, 2016. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/18/magazine/who-gets-to-be-called-a-patriot.html Phinney III, A.W. âFeminism, Epistemology, and the Rhetoric of Law: Reading Bowen v. Gilliard.â Harvard Womenâs Law Journal 12 (1989): 151-80. Ramsay, David. âA Dissertation on the Manner of Acquiring the Character and Privileges of a Citizen of the United States.â Evans Early American Imprint Collection, 1789. http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idxŘc=evans;idno=N17114.0001.001http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idxŘc=evans;idno=N17114.0001.001 Roberts, Dorothy E. âWelfare and the Problem of Black Citizenshipâ (1996). Faculty 13 Scholarship. Paper 1283. http://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/faculty_scholarship/1283/http://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/faculty_scholarship/1283/ â. Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty. New York: Penguin Random House, 1998. âSection 6: Obama, 2012, and the Tea Party,â Pew Research Center, May 4, 2011. http://www.people-press.org/2011/05/04/section-6-obama-2012-and-the-tea-party/ Dandridge v. Williams, 397 U.S. 471 (1970). Bowen v. Gilliard, 483 U.S. 587 (1987). Lyng v. Castillo, 477 U.S. 635 (1986). Wyman v. James, 400 U.S. 309 (1971). King v. Smith, 392 U.S. 309 (1968).
|
Post: #2
Title: Re: Black Citizenship And Welfare BAYAN ABUBAKR
Author: bayan abubakr
Date: 09-14-2017, 00:54 AM
Parent: #1
http://as.nyu.edu/content/dam/nyu-as/history/documents/historians/Historian2017.pdfhttp://as.nyu.edu/content/dam/nyu-as/history/documents/histo...ns/Historian2017.pdf
|
|