Welfare reform passed on irrational racist sentiment rather than budget evidence

Evidence

Clinton officially declared himself a supporter of the racist idea of personal responsibility when he signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) into law on August 22, 1996, with the next presidential election on the horizon. The bill was a compromise between Newt Gingrich’s New Republicans and Clinton’s New Democrats. It limited federal control of welfare programs, required work for benefits, and inserted welfare time limits. Even though programs for the poor represented only 23 percent of the non-defense budget, and had suffered 50 percent of the spending cuts over the past two years, welfare reform remained the leading domestic issue for the majority of White Americans. From Barry Goldwater’s “animal creature” to Reagan’s “welfare queen,” producers of racist ideas had done their job on non-Black Americans. Republican congressman John L. Mica of Florida held up a sign that said it all during the congressional debate on the bill: “Don’t Feed the Alligators / We post these warnings because unnatural feedings and artificial care creates dependency.” — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 1153

Categorization

• XREF: Directly instances Kendi’s inversion: racist policy (PRWORA) built on racist ideas produced over decades, from Goldwater to Reagan. Ties to earlier chapters tracing the welfare queen trope.