Racism undermines support for government spending

[KamaAina]

http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2016/2/racism-undermines-support-for-government-spending.html

Racism divides the American political system, strengthening opposition to social programs and reinforcing a plutocratic agenda. This is the lesson to draw from new YouGov data, which reveals that most Americans wrongly believe African-Americans make up a majority of welfare recipients and are net “takers.”

The survey, an Internet-based poll with a sample of 1,000 respondents, was performed between Jan. 23 and 25. I requested that YouGov researchers ask respondents questions about how they perceive government benefits across race and class lines, in order to examine how racial prejudice affects these views....

Politicians and journalists fuel these racist narratives. President Ronald Reagan’s famous denunciations of “welfare queens” and a “strapping young buck” buying steak with food stamps offer quintessential examples of the former. As for the latter, political scientist Martin Gilens finds that “network TV news and weekly newsmagazines portray the poor as substantially more black than is really the case.” In fact, “the elderly constitute less than 1 percent of the black poor shown in these magazines (compared with 5 percent of the nonblack poor) and the working poor make up only 12 percent of poor blacks (compared with 27 percent of poor non-blacks).”

According to the YouGov survey, 41 percent of all respondents say the government does “a lot” to help black people, but this disguises deep partisan and racial divides. For instance, 48 percent of white respondents say “a lot” compared to 6 percent of black respondents. Similarly, 23 percent of Democrats say “a lot” compared with a whopping 66 percent of Republicans.

[bravenak]

1. Exactly