The 1996 welfare reform law grew from stereotypes of black women abusing the system.
Evidence
The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliatory Act of 1996 (PRWORA) greatly reformed welfare by requiring recipients to find employment in exchange for limited assistance from the state. This policy reflected the prominent racial attitude that black women were abusing the welfare system and having multiple children out of wedlock, ignoring the structural issues that low income black women encountered that prevented them from gaining access to decent health care and employment that pays a livable wage. — Saher Selod, Forever Suspect_ Racialized…, 75
Categorization
Category: Causal Relationships
- XREF: Policies materializing racialized stereotypes — structural analogue to how surveillance policy encodes suspect-images of Muslims.