George Will, Too, Is Unchanged By Welfare Reform
Copyright © 2004
Earl Dunovant
Let me get this out of the way. I’m a progressive, a
liberal, whatever you want to call it. I’m one of those
people that think about public policy. As such, I’ve had to
find conservatives whose basic integrity I could respect. George
Will has been in that group of representatives of the right for
some time. Today, though, I find myself disheartened by his
editorial,
"http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35656-2004Dec29.html?nav=rss_opinion/opeds">
Unchanged by Welfare Reform. It purports to be about Jason
DeParle's book, "American Dream: Three Women, Ten Kids and a
Nation's Drive to End Welfare." He calls it a “riveting
drama”…perhaps he got so engrossed in the drama of
those everyday lives he missed the point of the book.
NPR presented two shows on this book, both available online.
If you have the time, please listen to
"http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=3927552">The
Fresh Air broadcast of September 20, 2004…it’s
about 30 minutes. Listen to Mr. DeParle describe his own work.
Then listen to
"http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4202600">The
Weekend Edition broadcast of December 4, 2004, a joint
interview with DeParle and Angela Jobe, one of the women he
writes about. You will come away with a far different picture of
the book and Ms. Jobe than the one planted by Mr. Will.
Beyond the misrepresentation of the book, there are other
disturbing things about the editorial. He writes:
After the liberalization of welfare in the mid-1960s, the percentage of black children born to unmarried mothers reached 50 by 1976 (it is almost 70 today), and within a generation the welfare rolls quadrupled. But DeParle says people mistakenly thought people like Jobe were organizing their lives around having babies to get a check. Actually, he says, their lives were too disorganized for that.
You cannot read this paragraph without coming away feeling Mr.
Will is implying the entire quadrupling of welfare rolls was due
to the increase in Black children born out of wedlock. If asked
was this his intent I'm sure he would say no. And yet you cannot
read this paragraph without coming away feeling Mr. Will is
implying the entire quadrupling of welfare rolls was due to the
increase in Black children born out of wedlock. And Mr. Will is a
skilled writer.
DeParle started his project with all the same assumptions Mr.
Will’s editorial promotes and came away rather
disillusioned with them. No planned parenthood. No sense of
entitlement. Each projected benefit realized had serious
trade-offs. And a major point of the book is that, even given an
ideal candidate like Ms. Jobe, their situation improves only
marginally, barely visibly.
I understand Conservatives feel welfare encourages dependency
but as a graduate of the program I assure you it is not the
lifestyle you aspire to as a child. But if the hardest working
person you know is at 102% of the poverty level and you’re
at 98%, what is your motivation? Consider the possibility the
bottom is not so much attractive as sticky…that
getting off the bottom when you’re poorly equipped is
difficult enough to make one adapt in the name of efficiency. Or
realism. Or fatalism.
In addition, what Mr. Will calls disorganization is a lack of
resources. I understand his confusion; “people like
Jobe” organize things differently than a person that is
comfortably ensconced in the mainstream, to deal with things a
person who has been essentially comfortable all their lives can't
even see. I can imagine someone who has never lived such a life
thinking, "What the hell is that about?"
Mr. Will also says:
What can help organize lives, at least those that are organizable, is work. The requirements of work -- mundane matters such as punctuality, politeness and hygiene -- are essential to the culture of freedom.
…which says a lot about what he thinks of “people
like Jobe,” I would say. (Hygiene?)
And may explain why he so badly misrepresented the book.