SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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: 1) by nitehawk214 on Saturday June 02 2018, @09:42PM (3 children)
What is this clickbait bullshit doing on this site? Let me guess, someone that is far-right accepted it in order to help discredit the far-left. The author is so far out in left field that they can be ignored.
Unless we want to start claiming that Nazis represent the right wing politics as well?
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 2, Offtopic) by realDonaldTrump on Saturday June 02 2018, @10:20PM
Believe me, they don't represent me. 2000, I was running for President. I was in the Reform Party. And wow, did we have some wackos. Some nutjobs. That's not what I stand for. So I dropped out. And I said "the Reform Party now includes a Klansman, Mr. Duke, a neo-Nazi, Mr. Buchanan, and a communist, Ms. Fulani," goodbye!!
Pat Buchanan has written too many inflammatory, outrageous, and controversial things to ever be elected President. He singled me out among his critics because I was the first presidential candidate to blow the whistle on his revisionist rantings. While it took other Republican presidential candidates four days to locate their sense of outrage -- and George W. Bush has yet to locate his -- it took me only minutes to issue my denunciation of him.
Buchanan not only was seeking to rewrite history but to have his shabby and dangerous views ratified by popular vote.
Buchanan winks at barbarism in his book A Republic, Not an Empire. There is no other way to describe his views. Buchanan argues that we should have ignored Hitler's rampage to Eastern Europe during World War II. Hitler meant us no harm, Buchanan says. The same man who argued forcefully -- and in my opinion correctly -- that we should not give an inch during the Cold War then said in effect that Hitler should have been appeased.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Sunday June 03 2018, @12:03AM (1 child)
This is why we cannot have aristarchus submissions.
(Score: 1) by charon on Sunday June 03 2018, @02:03AM