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posted by janrinok on Saturday June 02 2018, @05:31AM   Printer-friendly
from the was-not-expecting-that dept.

White Americans' fear of losing their socioeconomic standing in the face of demographic change may be driving opposition to welfare programs, even though whites are major beneficiaries of government poverty assistance, according to new research from the University of California, Berkeley, and Stanford University.

While social scientists have long posited that racial resentment fuels opposition to such anti-poverty programs as food stamps, Medicaid and Temporary Aid to Needy Families, this is the first study to show the correlation experimentally, demonstrating a causal relationship between attitudes to welfare and threatened racial status.

"With policymakers proposing cuts to the social safety net, it's important to understand the dynamics that drive the welfare backlash," said study lead author Rachel Wetts, a Ph.D. student in sociology at UC Berkeley. "This research suggests that when whites fear their status is on the decline, they increase opposition to programs intended to benefit poorer members of all racial groups."

The findings, to be published May 30 in the journal Social Forces, highlight a welfare backlash that swelled around the 2008 Great Recession and election of Barack Obama.

Notably, the study found anti-welfare sentiment to be selective insofar as threats to whites' standing led whites to oppose government assistance programs they believed largely benefit minorities, while not affecting their views of programs they thought were more likely to advantage whites.

"Our findings suggest that these threats lead whites to oppose programs they perceive as primarily benefiting racial minorities," said study senior author Robb Willer, a professor of sociology and social psychology at Stanford University.

[...] "Overall, these results suggest whites' perceptions of rising minority power and influence lead them to oppose welfare programs," Wetts said.


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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by bobthecimmerian on Saturday June 02 2018, @01:13PM (6 children)

    by bobthecimmerian (6834) on Saturday June 02 2018, @01:13PM (#687663)

    I'm a white guy in the middle class and I am angry and I've found all of the people to blame. Hint: they're all above me in their economic class and the overwhelming majority of them have the same skin color as me.

    I really don't get the racism this country is sliding into. "Hey, a rich white guy sent my job to a poor Asian person. Fuck those penniless Asian bastards, it's all their fault!" Aren't they mad at the wrong people?

    I know some white collar job and blue collar job in my area that are flat out racist. They all have a few black people or Latino people they know that are fine, upstanding citizens and hard workers, and when the question of race comes up they'll mention those friends. But when they work with a black idiot or find out some Latino person they know was a criminal, they lump the whole race together with the person and start complaining. Of course, they don't do that with white people. They think a good white guy is just a good guy, and a bad white guy is just an asshole or a criminal, but the fact that some white guy is lazy or a rapist or whatever doesn't say anything about all of the rest of the whites in the world.

    In 1970 the average price of a new house was 7.5 times the annual earnings of a minimum wage earner. Today it's 24 times.

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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Saturday June 02 2018, @01:56PM (2 children)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Saturday June 02 2018, @01:56PM (#687669) Journal

    I'm with you, about ten thousand percent.

    Remember Mitt Romney? Bastard made his money selling off businesses to the Chinese. Times are tough, businesses went under, he bought them up, and shipped them to our main competition. THEN, he had the nerve to run for president? Another damned traitor, who should be stood in front of a wall, in front of an armed audience, none of whom have blanks in their weapons. Right beside both Clintons, and Al Gore.

    Yes, I know who to be angry at. It ain't the blacks, or the Asians, or the Mexicans. It's all those rich SOB's who don't think that twenty, thirty, or a hundred billion dollars is enough.

    • (Score: 2) by bobthecimmerian on Saturday June 02 2018, @09:44PM (1 child)

      by bobthecimmerian (6834) on Saturday June 02 2018, @09:44PM (#687818)

      I think we're on the same page. I will say that Trump managed to make Hillary look like a friend of the middle class, and that's no easy thing to do. But that's only in relative terms, she's still a tool of the oligarchy.

      • (Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Saturday June 02 2018, @10:58PM

        by nitehawk214 (1304) on Saturday June 02 2018, @10:58PM (#687830)

        Yep. I know it sounds like a conspiracy, but it's the rich people on the far left and far right that keep promoting this race-war shit. The leadership of both parties is filled with those same rich people.

        --
        "Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
  • (Score: 1, Troll) by VLM on Saturday June 02 2018, @01:56PM

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Saturday June 02 2018, @01:56PM (#687670)

    Hint: they're all above me in their economic class and the overwhelming majority of them have the same skin color as me.

    Via affirmative action that's actually extremely unlikely.

    Of course, they don't do that with white people.

    Yeah no one is ever anti-white, LOL.

  • (Score: 2) by slap on Saturday June 02 2018, @04:06PM

    by slap (5764) on Saturday June 02 2018, @04:06PM (#687718)

    "In 1970 the average price of a new house was 7.5 times the annual earnings of a minimum wage earner. Today it's 24 times."

    The average new house today is 1,000 square feet larger than a new house from 1970.

    Few minimum wage earners could afford to buy a house in 1970, what with a minimum wage of $1.45/hour.

    Home ownership in the US was 62.9 percent in 1970, and 64.2 percent in 2018.

  • (Score: 1, Troll) by realDonaldTrump on Saturday June 02 2018, @09:52PM

    by realDonaldTrump (6614) on Saturday June 02 2018, @09:52PM (#687819) Homepage Journal

    Laziness is a trait in blacks. There’s no spirit.