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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.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 02 2018, @05:05PM
And if only we had a mode of progressivism that raises all boats (except, of course, the capitalist elites who have been stealing from the rest of us).
Instead we have identity politics. Identity politics doesn't care about the bourgeoisie. Instead it tells whites and men in the working class who are struggling and objectively losing ground according to just about every economic data point (other than the "you have smartphones! how dare you complain!" crap--no, I don't have a smartphone, and even if I did, I would rather have meat on my table) that they need to fork over even more.
Of course, identity politics hides to whom they want whites and men to fork over even more. Identity politics uses guilt tripping to con whites and men into giving up more wealth, not to people of color or women (who are in the same boat, losing ground, also would rather have meat on the table, savings in the bank, hope for the future, the ability to absorb an unexpected $400 cost without it being a major financial blow, etc than a smartphone), but to the bourgeoisie.
So, women and people of color are never advanced. Amazingly enough, this sets the stage for more guilt tripping and psychological manipulation by the sociopathic capitalist elites.
Is it any wonder that whites and men are fucking sick of this shit? And we're fucking sick of being told that the economic data that shows we're all getting fucked up the ass somehow doesn't apply to us because we're white or were assigned the male gender caste at birth. We're fucking sick of being blamed for women and minorities experiencing the exact same fucking thing we are because they are being robbed by the elites the same as we are!!!
Of course this study is pushing an agenda.
And by what divine powers there may be, I am fucking sick of it. If the pseudo-left and so-called "progressives" don't get their heads out of their asses, I have no problem switching my voting habits to the alt-right. If we can't have progressive politics and all we get is a bunch of regressive identity politics whargargl, FUCK THAT SHIT.
I can't live like this. I am being swindled, and all anybody tells me is that because of my skin color and a letter on my birth certificate that somehow all the data that shows I'm being swindled just doesn't apply!!! Fuck it! Burn it all down!