Kendall Qualls on Black Families 2024

Author and former Republican candidate for Minnesota Congressional District 3 (CD3) and the U.S. gubernatorial candidate in 2020 and 2022, respectively, Kendall Qualls, has shared his input on how Donald J. Trump can sway Black voters in the upcoming presidential election. When recalling the words of Mr. Qualls from an article he wrote a couple of years ago, sharing his feelings on why the U.S. should not pay reparations should not be paid out to Black Americans. In the 2023 opinion piece entitled, ‘Black families need fathers — not reparations for slavery,’ Qualls detailed his reasoning behind not supporting government compensation for slavery.

According to Qualls (2023), despite their very real consequences, the biggest cause of Black inequality is not slavery or, redlining or Jim Crow — it is our community’s dependency on social welfare programs and the fatherless families they continue to subsidize. The sentiment shared in the article concerning the welfare state and its alleged planned ambush against Black families. However, including the war on poverty as a reason to deny compensation is a new angle against the growing reparations movement.

With his latest contribution to The Federalist, the failed political candidate wastes no time pointing the finger at former president Lyndon B. Johnson (LBJ), Democrats, and welfare for destroying Black families. The Democrats have presided over the catastrophic decline of Black families, Qualls writes, from around 80 percent of two-parent families to nearly 80 percent of fatherless homes. To be clear, the term fatherless is more of a social construct than a creation of safety net programs. Fatherless is how researchers and policymakers characterize the disproportionated number of Black children residing in female-headed households (Jennifer F. Hamer). Similar to The Child Support Hustle, the government created the fatherless epidemic to generate revenue for guess who-the government.

The author joins a long line of opponents of progressive policies and government assistance for low-income single mothers by blaming women for having children with different fathers. Condemning mothers because of giving birth to children with more than one father is not a significant shift from claiming the welfare state single-handedly ruined Black families. However, Qualls includes welfare dependency as a contributing factor based on the government’s failure to support marriage. According to the article, Democrats failed to launch a single nationwide initiative to reverse the decline in two-parent families.

The assertion that the Democrats have not implemented any programs for low-income parents promoting and supporting marriage is wildly inaccurate. During the reformation from Aid for Dependent Children (ADC)  to Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) in 1961, the emphasis shifted from benefits for children only to benefits covering the entire family. People like Qualls frequently ignore the transition implemented during the Civil Rights Era. According to Qualls, a pro-family agenda would force Democrats to defend and explain policies that destroyed the black family and the generations of damaging social ills that resulted from them. The Democrats do not need to defend actions that did not take place.

During the early years of reform, President John F. Kennedy signed Public Law 87-543, which amended several rules to welfare policies. Under the Kennedy Administration, Aid to Families with Dependent Children Unemployed Parents or AFDC-UP was enacted temporarily but became permanent on July 25, 1962. This program was a significant addition to the welfare program, aiming to support marriage in poverty-stricken families. Anne E Winkler wrote an article published in the Journal of Policy and Analysis and Management (1995)  describing the AFDC-UP as a “two-parent” family program established as a state option program to provide benefits to poor two-parent families in which the principal earner is unemployed, providing a clear understanding of its purpose and impact.

One concern with the AFDC-UP program was the optional status that left legislators in control of implementing or refusing the program. Because of the failure of lawmakers to make the program a nationwide mandate, it would take two more years to become a mandatory addition to public assistance in America. The temporary status would remain in effect until late 1988. Despite the right-wing talking point denouncing the left for their anti-family politics and policies, the UP program was available to married and unmarried couples. The only requirement was that a dependent ch child (under 18) lived in the household, specifically if the child was:

• in the presence of two natural or adoptive parents in the household,
• if parenthood was determined by the presence of two natural or adoptive parents and not the legal Bond of marriage among the adults or
• unmarried-couple families (cohabitants) established paternity or have signed an acknowledgment of paternity (AOP). 

Conservatives claim Lyndon Johnson and the Democrats discouraged marriage by refusing to propose and pass any welfare-related legislation encouraging two-parent families. Mr. Qualls is correct in his assertion that p progressives have failed to pass a national welfare reform amendment specifically supporting marriage. However, researchers and legislators worked together, attempting to design a welfare reform package on a national platform that benefitted married families. Legislators routinely convened to analyze methods to improve programmatic functions Statewide.

While conservative pundits ensure these subjects of debate remain in circulation, descriptions of welfare recipients and the functions of AFDC umbrellas branch off. The information is incorrect—for instance, there is a lack of definitive links between increased illegitimacy and welfare enrollment. “Yet, illegitimacy” became the catchword for evidence of the black population’s degeneracy (Premilla Nadasen, 2007, p.58).

Although believers who subscribe to welfare destroying the Black family mantra provide little evidence to support their words, there are always accusations of a correlation between divorce and receiving AFDC. Deciding not to mandate nationwide incorporation of the UP program when AFDC became law was not a one-party decision. When the federal lawmakers agreed to mandate assistance for unemployed low-income couples, nearly two decades had passed. In 1988, over 20 states refused to incorporate the UP program for low-income two-parent families.

Representative Harold F. Ford (D-TN-9) introduced the Family Support Act on March 19, 1987, and it became Public Law No: 100-485 on October 12, 1988. The amendment to Title IV of the Social Security Act required all states to provide AFDC benefits to every family that meets AFDC need standards and whose children are deprived of parental support due to the unemployment of its principal earner (Congress.gov, 1988). Qualls’ accusation that Democrats failed to pass any family-focused legislation for struggling parents is blatantly false, easily proven by historical legislative evidence.

Since the early 1960s, with the reformation from ADC to AFDC, lawmakers have planned to loosen rules that disqualify parents from assistance, such as suitable homes and substitute parent restrictions. Nonetheless, lawmakers ensured that if a dependent child lives in a household that does not contain both natural parents, the family unit comprised of the “single” parent and dependent children is demographically eligible for cash benefits through AFDC-Basic (Winkler). Although the legislation did not include time limits to the basic safety net program, several states, despite offering security to unemployed parents and their families through the UP program, applied time limits for receiving benefits.

Winkler informed her readers in’ Does AFDC-UP Encourage Two-Parent Families?’ that thirteen states without the UP program before October 1988 could limit cash benefits to six months every 12 months. Not only do proponents of linking welfare to breaking families apart fail to acknowledge that UP existed, but there is no information about the states that either refused to enact the program or applied time limits. Perhaps it is easier to condemn progressives for not acting on behalf of married low-income families than to admit the truth. https://bit.ly/3VLU14C

During the nearly six decades that have passed, the weight of all social ills in the Black community has pointed directly at LBJ, the Democratic Party, and the Black community, specifically at Black women. All states that did not offer AFDC-UP or add d time limits to receiving help were ‘red.’ Interestingly, revered Republican president Ronald Reagan signed the Family Support Act or FSA into law with bipartisan support. President Reagan gave remarks after signing the bill on October 13, 1988.

According to the National Archives (1986), Reagan raved about how fitting the word “family” figured prominently in the title support act. The main focus of the speech was to condemn laziness and dependence on welfare. President Reagan said legislators implement the law to tell welfare parents that:

 

We expect of you what we expect of ourselves and our loved ones: that you will do your share in taking responsibility for your life and for the lives of the children you bring into this world” (National Archives).

 

Addressing welfare parents and passing a bill supporting entire families contradicts aggressive messaging that welfare destroyed Black families. Additionally, researchers have debunked the man-in-the-house rule as well. The Family Support Act did not break apart families by prohibiting parents from living together and raising children, married or otherwise. The new policy required work for at least one of the two parents in two-parent households. Under this bill, parents in a two-parent welfare family needed to work in the public or private sector for at least 16 hours a week as a condition of receiving benefits.

When people like Mr. Qualls make accusations that LBJ and the Democratic party somehow destroyed the Black family, the information receiver must research the material. One reason investigation is necessary is to understand why a claim of such magnitude would manifest over the decades when Black families exist everywhere. The plot to somehow discredit the Democratic party and progressive policies that assist people experiencing poverty is afoot. Nonetheless, there are certainly deeper underlying issues at hand. Black families needed welfare, but Republicans are guilty of hindering Black familial growth based on racist policies.

As the United States gears up for a new president, citizens must address the legacy of Black families in America. Since the Civil Rights Era, powerful politicians have created and taught a narrative tying welfare to Black families in the most negative sense possible. Welfare may have caused discourse in a few familial structures over the years. However, Black families have faced more extraordinary and more devastating challenges than mailbox money.

Brief summary of major provisions of public welfare amendments of 1962. (n.d.). The United States Senate Committee on Finance. https://www.finance.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/87Prtpl87543.pdf

Congress.gov. (1988, October 13). H.R.1720 – Family Support Act of 1988. https://www.congress.gov/bill/100th-congress/house-bill/1720/text. https://www.congress.gov/bill/100th-congress/house-bill/1720/text

Hamer, J. F. (1997). The fathers of “Fatherless” Black children. Families in Society: The Journal of Contemporary Social Services, 78(6), 564-578. https://doi.org/10.1606/1044-3894.3387

Nadasen, P. (2006). From widow to “welfare queen”: Welfare and the politics of race. Black Women, Gender + Families, 1(2), 52-77. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/blacwomegendfami.1.2.0052

Qualls, K. (2023, January 7). Black families need fathers — not reparations for slavery. New York Post. https://nypost.com/2023/01/07/black-families-need-fathers-not-reparations-for-slavery/

Qualls, K. (2024, July 24). How Trump Can Win Over Black Families Whose Communities Democrats Decimated. https://kendallqualls.com/how-trump-can-win-over-black-families-whose-communities-democrats-decimated/

Reagan, R. (1986, February 15). Radio address to the nation on welfare reform. Ronald Reagan Presidential Library & Museum. https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/archives/speech/radio-address-nation-welfare-reform

Winkler, A. E. (1995). Does AFDC-UP encourage two-parent families? Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 14(1), 4. https://doi.org/10.2307/3325430

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