Kenya N Rahmaan
During the 2024 Presidential election between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald J. Trump, you would be hard-pressed not to hear the words ‘Project 25.’ The nearly one-thousand-page manifesto, prepared by the Heritage Foundation, contains conservative ideas concerning the future of America. To be clear, the Heritage Foundation is a long-operating Conservative think tank located in Washington, D.C. According to its website, the company works to build an America where freedom, opportunity, prosperity, and civil society flourish.
The mission statement boldly portrays the feelings of the Board of Directors concerning the importance of less government and more personal space regarding business and family and pursuing a life of liberty and justice for all. According to Project 2025, there are five key problems within agencies overseeing the Federal government that must be addressed, one being to tackle low-income communities that are allegedly drowning in addiction and government dependence. Project 25 contains several recommendations that, if implemented, could significantly impact the future of America and land the Heritage Foundation smack dab in the Oval Office. ‘The Conservative Promise’ is the opening salvo of the 2025 Presidential Transitional Project launched in 2022.
The 34 authors prepared a list offering the sections they felt needed restructuring. The five sections are:
- Taking The Reins of Government,
- The Common Defense,
- The General Welfare,
- The Economy, and
- Independent Regulatory Agencies.
The General Welfare section begins with the writers invoking the founders of the U.S., noting that the creation of the Constitution, ‘promoting the general welfare,’ was not a green light to promote a government amassing a nationwide debt of $3 trillion in one fell swoop (Project 2025).
The deficit ballooned several hundred years after the founding fathers balanced the original budget. Project 2025 writers invoked welfare expenditures as a major contributor to the nation’s rising costs. According to conservatives and some liberals, welfare recipients have seemingly maintained the number one position as villainous and culpable in increased domestic spending for decades. The origin of the Republicans inculpating poor Americans for creating unsustainable deficits began years before President Reagan coined the phrase ‘Welfare Queen.’
The Project includes single motherhood as a key result of the alleged incentivization of welfare dependency. The authors call for repealing policies discouraging stable marriages and nuclear families. The greatest obstacle to abolishing policies that support low-income single women and their children is the lack of evidence that family formation is a definite catalyst for welfare dependency.
Incorporating single motherhood directly into a cornerstone reason why America suffers from social ills like poverty, teenage delinquency, and increased crime rates is not a new concept. However, unless researchers and politicians want to continue the cycle of discouraging nuclear families, the reformation must date back to the inception of federal welfare. To understand the current status of welfare programs and if single motherhood is a phenomenon that has caused dysfunction in Black families, one must consider a couple of facts—the matter of politicians excluding Black women and families from the program based on nothing more than discrimination. https://youtu.be/Pv2n5zFZa-E
Winifred Bell, the co-director of the Center for Studies in Income Maintenance Policy, professor at the Graduate School of Social Work, and expert on Aid for Dependent Children (ADC) and public welfare policy, wrote extensively welfare policies during her career. Bell explained in a 1965 publication that welfare workers, operating under little supervision, were tasked with differentiating between worthy and unworthy candidates. There were several studies to support Bell’s claims. According to Bell, in 1943, the Bureau of Public Assistance studied 16 state programs, which revealed that although no eligibility conditions explicitly excluded non-white and illegitimate children based on a “suitable home” philosophy, exclusion was endemic.
Caseworkers ensured the suitable home policies were fully enforced against all accused violators. Good housekeeping and remaining childless until married were violations that guaranteed disqualification for Black families. In 10 of the 16 states, each with more than 5,000 children in the population, Negro recipient rates varied from 14 per 1,000 in North Carolina to 173 per 1,000 in Illinois. These statistics prove that single motherhood caused by spousal death was acceptable for white and not for Black women receiving ADC.
On the other hand, non-white families would find themselves constantly rejected by social workers from participation in relief programs. Welfare workers scrutinized not only the homes of mothers but also how morally they behaved. Non-Black mothers were screened accordingly and had to show immoral and unhealthy behavior for caseworkers to deny the family benefits. Applicants of darker persuasions found themselves prejudged by caseworkers who were there to screen, verify, and assist all who qualified.
According to Bell, unmarried mothers were easily disadvantaged because many Southerners judged practically all Negroes were believe to be “immoral”; therefore, almost any discriminatory practice against Negroes could justify exclusion. Nearly 60 years after the first round of welfare reform, conservatives, particularly in the South, routinely deem Black people as immoral by another name. By republican policymakers declaring the culture as genetically inferior and the creator of most social problems, they are seemingly justified in associating welfare with single Black mothers. Many Americans attribute the link between welfare dependency and single motherhood to the Democratic Party.
One prominent educator and author is Kate S. Hymowitz, a Contributing Editor for City Journal and a William E. Simon Fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Both are conservative organizations, and Hymowitz stays on course in her extensive catalog discussing welfare and its effects on the Black family. In her 2005 article entitled ‘Moynihan Lied,’ Hymowitz relays to her readers that more Blacks were out of work in 1964 than in 1954, strategically suggesting the riots in Harlem and Patterson, New Jersey, in 1964 paralleled northern ghettos with the George Wallace South. In reality, the unemployment status of Black Americans was not higher in 1954 than in 1964.
Dr. Tiffany Ford, a contributor to the Brookings Institute, provided accurate information that directly contradicts America’s unemployment status before the Civil Rights Era. The unemployment rates for Black men and women were expeditiously higher by double digits when compared to their white counterparts. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) did not differentiate between Black and non-white workers. BLS reported that in 1954, the unemployment rate for non-white men and non-white women was approximately 11% and 9%, respectively.
On the other hand, white Americans have enjoyed lower unemployment rates than their counterparts since 1954. The U.S. identified non-white people. They included:
- Negroes,
- Indians,
- Japenese,
- Chinese,
- Filipino, and
- Other races (Koreans, Asiatic Indians, Indonesians, Polynesians, mixed white, Negro, and Indian ancestry).
Even if unemployment was lower for Black Americans during the decade in question, the Census Bureau does not provide additional information to specifically identify unemployment rates by race. These numbers are just a tiny part of the decades of misinformation distributed by mainstream media.
A large number of people credit the Democratic Party for creating welfare-dependent single mothers by incentivizing them with welfare benefits. On the other hand, the Dixiecrats, another name for southern Republicans, were supportive of receiving federal dollars for operating ADC. The biggest problem in the North was the discrimination and racist policies, leaving Black families in poverty even when they received mailbox money. In the southern states, Jim Crow and other George Wallace policies practically guaranteed no work AND no welfare.
Both parties have been vocal, before and after the magic year 1965, when determining the eligibility of applicants of the darker persuasion. People who were in desperate need of help, including children, were completely ignored when case workers allowed racism to prejudge feelings toward people in need. One repeated stereotype that would undoubtedly grow the nose of any puppet, living or full of wood, is that Black families were financially thriving until welfare was thrust upon them. Relating the crumbling of America to rising single parenthood without further context has resulted in Black single mothers receiving and retaining nearly all guilt on the shoulders of single mothers disproportionately blamed unfairly.
Likewise, for the sake of condemning Black men for allegedly abandoning their children while simultaneously accusing Black women of choosing welfare over family is a form of unparalleled gaslighting. Truth be told, the current state of Black America is intertwined almost entirely in record and historic under and unemployment, extreme prejudice within the United States public and social structures, and repeated untruths that depict Black Americans as lazy instead of a product of all of the above.
When non-white mothers applied for welfare benefits, not only did they not receive public assistance during the most financially tricky eras, 30 years would pass before they qualified. The qualifications for Black women were more extensive than for their counterparts. The idea that Black people, women in general, were lazy and reproducing children to avoid working is easily disproven. African American women worked religiously from when they could walk until they could no longer take a step.
The most potent legislators devised painstaking efforts to shape a narrative in the minds of white America of welfare dependence and unwed reproduction in Black communities before the Civil and Voting Rights Acts passed in 1965. Black Americans have worked or sought employment since the day of emancipation, fearing criminal repercussions if found idle during the workday. To make the accusations worse, GOP leaders, including former President Ronald Regan, attribute the massive growth of welfare recipients, programs, and costs to the population who receives less from the program.
Strangely, America undeniably needed government interference like the War on Poverty more than national leaders and regular citizens care to admit. The lack of accountability for the problems that plague non-white families is still an issue based on the state of Black America. Although many criticize the war as a waste of money and a catastrophic failure, the outcome may have reached domestic warfare without some assistance. When the poor cannot work to eat and provide for their families, the rich can become food. We must adjust the narrative to reflect true Black history as it relates to poverty, welfare dependency, and what role the program actually played in molding Black futures.
References:
Bell, W. (1965). Aid to dependent children:. Columbia University Press, New York, NY.
Ford, T. (2023, February 14). Historical unemployment for Black women and men in the United States: 1954-2021. Brookings. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/historical-unemployment-for-black-women-and-men-in-the-united-states-1954-2021/
Heritage Foundation. (2023, April). Mandate for leadership the conservative promise. Project 2025 presidential transition project. Retrieved December 13, 2024, from https://www.project2025.org/policy/
Heritage Foundation. (2024). Building for conservative victory through policy, personnel, and training. Get the facts. Just a moment… https://www.project2025.org/
Hymowitz, K. S. (2023, May 18). The Black family: 40 years of lies. City Journal. https://www.city-journal.org/article/the-black-family-40-years-of-lies
