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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, Informative) by Phoenix666 on Saturday June 02 2018, @12:35PM (12 children)
TFA didn't have the questionnaire the study participants completed, but the description of the setup screams bad design. The study authors set up the structure that way because that is the result they wanted to "prove." Let's see, let's show a bunch of white people a scenario where the country is majority white, and stable, or one where white people are an endangered species and their prosperity is slipping away. OMG! You mean the white people don't like the latter scenario?! They're racists!!!
In other words, it's what you'd expect from a wanna-be sociology department at Berkeley, in a study designed by "woke" Millenials.
It's devilishly difficult to fashion a survey that gets at real attitudes about race, class, ethnicity, etc because they are such hot-button topics. It's very easy to steer the answers based on the way you structure the survey, the way you phrase the questions, and so on. Careful researchers take measures like asking the same question several ways to make sure what they're seeing is a true result and not survey bias.
So we can't take anything this study says at face value, so it's not even worth anyone's time to debate its conclusions.
There are macro-economic trends, however, that are factual and factor into tensions over consumer confidence and identity. Free trade agreements have significantly eroded the middle class in America. Companies, manufacturing, and even white collar employment have been outsourced to markets with lower labor costs. Programs like the H1-B visas have put significant downward pressure on wages in the United States. Illegal immigration has increased competition in the American labor market, especially in jobs and roles that require less education and training. Cuts in capital gains taxes and the elimination of financial regulations have produced a situation where Wall Street investors pay less in taxes than the working stiffs who report to work 9-5. Real incomes for 99% of Americans have been on an uninterrupted 40-yr slide.
In short, the American middle class has been squeezed left, right, center, from below, and from above. It is inevitable that they'd be angry and looking for someone to blame.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bobthecimmerian on Saturday June 02 2018, @01:13PM (6 children)
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.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Saturday June 02 2018, @01:56PM (2 children)
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)
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
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
Via affirmative action that's actually extremely unlikely.
Yeah no one is ever anti-white, LOL.
(Score: 2) by slap on Saturday June 02 2018, @04:06PM
"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
Laziness is a trait in blacks. There’s no spirit.
(Score: 1, Disagree) by khallow on Saturday June 02 2018, @11:39PM (4 children)
Note that most of the erosion (something like 60% [reason.com]) has resulted in people getting richer than middle class rather than poorer. Get a narrative that reflects reality.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Sunday June 03 2018, @06:33AM (3 children)
I like khallow's alternative universe. I could be in it too but first person experience does not fit with his data ever. Sad.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday June 03 2018, @12:26PM (2 children)
Fallacy of composition. The few people you know aren't the entire middle class.
Do you have a reason you think the poll might be in error?
(Score: 2) by Bot on Monday June 04 2018, @07:54AM (1 child)
Given that first person experience is the only absolutely certain thing in the universe, even for solipsists, and experiencing the results of other studies mismatching the one you listed about the middle class, I'd rather risk being biased than trusting a study because science. BTW I know how to massage numbers myself.
Why in your universe antidepressants and drug and binge eating and binge drinking increased? Is that a sign of happy meatbag?
Account abandoned.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday June 04 2018, @12:38PM
Ok, even if we grant that is true, why is that relevant? I didn't claim the world and its people were perfectly happy or without problems. I merely pointed out the error in a statement about the "eroding" of the middle class.