The Need to Fit In: Why Welfare Recipients Have Cell Phones and Nike Shoes

The propaganda that drove the Welfare Reform engine is no different than the propaganda driving the recent moves towards cutting social security, Medicare, Medicaid, and unemployment benefits (which only benefits 40% of US workers are eligible to receive, leaving 60% of America's jobless utterly impoverished). These are programs that largely benefit the middle class. And it was middle class Americans who helped to dig their own graves.

Universities, which are bastions of upper-middle class privilege, helped accelerate the global capitalist rat race to the bottom by advancing the "culture of poverty" theory. University professors are, unfortunately, some of the most vulnerable to propaganda for three reasons¹:

• they absorb the largest amount of unverifiable second-hand information

• they feel a compelling need to have an opinion on every important question of our time

• they consider themselves capable of judging for themselves; i.e. they know it all because they are the "educated" ones, they are the "experts."

It was this pampered, sheltered phalanx of upper-middle class foot-soldiers for the rich that influenced the discourse of Welfare Reform and excluded the voices of the chronically poor. "Giving money to the poor won't help them", "poverty can't be solved by wealth redistribution", "poverty is the result of no personal discipline", "if you work hard enough you won't be poor", etc., are all part of the social Darwinist propaganda that shaped social and economic policy in the past 30+ years War on the Poor.

Propaganda doesn't just sway public opinion; it leads people to action

Like Newton's laws of motion, propaganda obeys the laws of force and inertia as it takes on a life of its own. The fallout from any major propaganda campaign and all if its consequences, once the propaganda is launched, tends to become irreversible — like an inelastic collision. Although propaganda is a form of psychological warfare, its victims suffer very real, physical consequences. But the victims whom the propaganda targets as the "Other" are never on the radar of concern of the propagandists, who are well aware of the public's vulnerability to propaganda.

And one of the reasons that the public at large is easy prey for propagandists is because of the common misnomer that propaganda is composed only of lies and exaggerations.

The fact is that modern propaganda utilizes partial truths, which is what makes it seem credible — even in the eyes of many well-educated professionals whose credentials qualify them as "experts." The use of facts (albeit one-sided and of limited scope) in modern propaganda is what makes propaganda powerful enough so that the public abandons critical thought. Facts are worshiped by scholars and laymen alike. The propagandist's use of facts draw the listeners into an irresistible current that is as difficult to resist as an oceanic rip tide.

Another reason propaganda is underestimated in its effectiveness and far-reaching consequences is due to the nature of man. Human beings are social creatures with a need to belong, to fit in.

Middle class hatred — especially white male middle class hatred — for the poor (84% whom are women and children of all races) was fueled by propaganda lambasting the poor for living large off the backs of hard-working taxpayers, and buying expensive clothing like Nike sneakers. This propaganda painted the poor (most whom have been economically excluded and socially marginalized through no fault of their own) as "parasites" and everyone else as "producers."

The same poor people least likely to get hired due to a legacy of gender and socio-economic discrimination were blamed for being marginalized, and hence made into beggars having to subsist on paltry welfare benefits that were never enough to live on with a bare minimum of human dignity². Those lambasting poor women (94% of all AFDC recipients in 1995 were women, 63% whom were white) for being "welfare queens" begrudged poor women an equal opportunity for a proportional share of the good-paying jobs in all fields in this country.

Middle class white males, who never suffered in poverty due to systematic job discrimination and denial of most other opportunities, feel that women and minorities shouldn't get "special treatment" in the form of Affirmative Action because "nobody gave them anything." They deny their own unearned privilege of the most unfair Affirmative Action program of all: middle class white male nepotism.

What do you think happens to those struggling in poverty after they're repeatedly turned away and sent home empty-handed instead of getting that chance for that badly needed job that they were qualified for because someone in the middle class used their connections or their social class status to get that job?

When pointing out that poor women and poor people of color were still being heavily discriminated against for jobs and access to opportunity (which is why they were desperately poor and on welfare), propagandists emerged in the early 1980's to shout down advocates for the poor, cloaking their venom under the respectable habiliments of "personal responsibility" and "tough love."

Conservative propagandists (who, according to Jacques Ellul, hailed exclusively from the upper-middle class), demonized poor welfare recipients, criticizing them for being "third generation welfare recipients who never worked" while having things like cable TV and Nike sneakers — saying that the poor didn't deserve to have these middle class luxuries because they did not "earn" them.

Those of us from generational poverty (defined as having been poor and marginalized for two or more generations) knew the truth, but mainstream middle class America had long silenced our voices and defined us in their terms to suit their agendas. Nobody ever really cared about us — and they still don't.

The truth: AFDC (before it was gutted with the 1996 Welfare Reform Act) was only around for about 15 years by 1980 when the Reagan Revolution began, therefore it was not in existence long enough for there to be "third generation welfare recipients" and not all welfare recipients had a TV and Nike shoes and nice clothing (although some did).

Attacks on welfare began less than 8 years after women finally won the right to have control over their own bodies regarding pregnancy prevention and termination with US Supreme Court rulings in cases like Griswold v. Connecticut and Roe v. Wade, and less than 8 years after women finally won the right to an equal opportunity to post-secondary educations and decent-paying careers.

But nobody raised these issues to counter the mean-spirited engineers of the Welfare Reform engine or the propagandists who fueled Reagan's War on the Poor by invoking resentment over sexually immoral "welfare queens" mooching off of the public while being "too lazy" to get off their butts to get a job outside of the home — as if care-giving, changing diapers, cleaning up after others' messes, doing others' laundry, raising children, and taking care of a home isn't "work", while garbage collection is.

About those Nike sneakers

World poverty expert Paulo Freire says that every society teaches its people what they need to have or do in order to belong. Since every society teaches its people what they need in order to belong, what does our society teach?

Our society says that you have to have the right kind of personal appearance, clothing, a car, the "right" address, a phone, and a computer with Internet access and a TV so you can keep up with current events in order to belong.

Most job applications are now taken online and state job placement centers and employers require online resume and cover letter submissions. Many employers even require you to have a printer to print out paperwork needed for assignments and even a digital camera for most merchandizing jobs. People who can't afford these things can't get those jobs and if those are the only kinds of jobs available to them that they can get, where does this leave them?

The middle class carps about poor people on welfare having cell phones, nice clothes or Nike shoes while making it plain to people struggling with poverty that without these things, they won't be accepted and won't be a "good fit" for a job or be socially accepted at school — which are important if one is to have any chance of escaping the clutches of poverty.

Instead of blaming the "undeserving poor" for trying to get what they're told by society that they need in order to belong, maybe the middle class ought to take a good hard look in the mirror and be honest with themselves about their roles as king-makers, trend-setters, and consumerist snobs who set the criteria and determine the punishments and serve as the gate-keepers.

Human development expert Abraham Maslow has shown that being able to fit in and be accepted ranks very high and close in importance along with eating in terms of human needs. Social acceptance and fitting in is not merely a phase associated with the junior high and high school experience. It carries over into adult life. Those who are unable to fit in are excluded economically and socially. And fitting in for getting that job (after going into debt for an education that was supposed to open doors) means having the right looks, the right clothing, and everything else that "normal" people are expected to have.

In a society that punishes its poor for their conditions of poverty, a person struggling with poverty doesn't stand a chance for getting a good job so they can "bootstrap" their way out of poverty into the middle class if they look like they're poor. And with almost every employer, temp agency, and staffing firm now using the credit report as a main litmus for an applicant's "deservingness" of a job, things are already hard enough for the poor.

And who serves as the "gate-keepers" in deciding who is worthy of a chance for a job and who is not? The middle class managers, low-level executives, university professors and job placement staff, self-improvement gurus, political pundits, prime time talking heads, vocational rehabilitation "specialists", and small business owners.

Propaganda is not only powerful in what it says, it is also equally powerful in what it does not tell you.

1. Ellul, Jacques (1965). Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes, US: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
2. Beegle, Donna M. (2003). See Poverty, Be the Difference, US: Communications Barriers, Inc.

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Jacqueline S. Homan (1967 - ), author of Classism For Dimwits, was born in Philadelphia, PA into chronic, generational poverty. Orphaned and homeless at 13, she struggled to survive in America's permanent underclass. She graduated from college with a Bachelor's degree in mathematics as a non-traditional aged student at the age of 34 in 2001 -- the very first in her family to graduate from high school and college. Her speaking engagements include the October 2009 international human rights conference in London, UK.