Prometheus 6

"In other words, liberal social policy had rendered the black poor unable or unwilling to work, content to collect a government check, and thus, had made them incapable of saving themselves. This lie -- and it is just that, not an exaggeration or simplification or overstatement, but a flat-out falsehood -- has been parroted by the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Shawn Hannity, Bill O'Reilly and Charles Murray (of "Bell Curve" fame), not to mention such viciously self-loathing black conservatives as Star Parker, John McWhorter and the Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson, all despite the lack of evidence to sustain it, and the amazing amount of evidence, both contemporary and historical, to refute it.

"But of course the media, having long ago decided not to challenge the mainstream public's view of folks on welfare -- and indeed to collaborate with the framing of such persons by politicians of both major parties -- has done nothing to set the record straight, suggesting either that they are incredibly inept at research, or just as incredibly craven in their attitudes towards the poorest of this nation's citizens (7).

"But the facts, however unsettling they may be for conservative mythmakers, are clear.

"To begin with, as of 2004, according to the Census Bureau, there were only 4600 households in all of New Orleans receiving cash welfare from the nation's principal aid program, TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, formerly Aid to Families With Dependent Children, or AFDC) (8 ). That is not a misprint: 4600 out of a total of 130,000 households in the black community alone (9). Which means that even if every welfare receiving household in Orleans Parish had been black (which was not in fact the case), this would have represented only a little more than four percent of black households in the city.

"According to the same Census data, the average household size in a welfare receiving family in New Orleans is the same as the citywide average for non-recipients: roughly 3.5 persons. So the number of individuals receiving welfare in New Orleans, by the time of Katrina would have been about 16,000 (10).

"Thus, even if we assume that all of the 130,000 persons left behind were poor, and that no persons receiving welfare managed to escape before the flooding with friends or family, this would mean that at most, perhaps twelve percent of the persons left behind (and whose faces we may have been seeing on national TV) would have been welfare recipients at all, let alone persons who had been rendered dependent on such benefits for long periods of time.

"And speaking of dependence, or the notion that the city's welfare recipients had grown content to sit back and collect government checks instead of doing for self, this hardly seems likely when you consider that the average annual income received from TANF, for those small numbers actually getting any such benefits at all, was only a little more than $2,800 per year, in New Orleans prior to the catastrophe (11).

"Indeed, such paltry amounts explain why most of the poor in New Orleans, far from being happy to receive so-called handouts, work whenever they can find steady employment, which admittedly, is not often the case.

"For example, in the ninety-eight percent black and forty percent poor Lower Ninth Ward, one of the hardest hit communities (and one about which many negative things were said in terms of so-called welfare dependence), seventy-one percent of families prior to the flooding reported income from paid employment, while only eight percent received income from cash welfare. In other words, folks in this community were almost nine times more likely to earn their pay than to receive government benefits. Forty percent of workers from the community worked full-time, and the average commute time for Ninth Ward workers was over 45 minutes each day, suggesting that the work ethic was quite common to the folks who lived there, irrespective of commonly held and utterly false stereotypes (12).

"Even food stamps -- a program with much more lenient terms and where even the near poor can often qualify for minimal benefits -- were only received by eleven percent of New Orleans households as of last year: hardly indicative of a general mindset of welfare entitlement (13). As for public housing, far from being the location of residence for most poor blacks in New Orleans -- let alone those in the streets in the wake of Katrina -- fewer than 20,000 people lived in such units at the time of the flooding: this representing no more than five percent of black New Orleanians (14). In the Lower Ninth Ward, for example, few lived in public housing and nearly six in ten families owned their own homes (15).

"Even in the city's poorest communities, like the Iberville or Lafitte housing developments, or parts of Central City, at least a third, and often a majority of households report income from paid employment (16). What's more, tenants in the B.W. Cooper development have been managing their own housing for years, teaching job and leadership skills to the persons who live there (17).

"Likewise, in the mid-90s, several public housing developments participated in a national Jobs Program, funded by the Annie E. Casey Foundation: a successful effort that matched low-income black residents with businesses looking for employees (18 ). In the former St. Thomas development -- the first public housing "project" funded by the federal government under the Roosevelt Administration -- residents had started their own coffee shop and bookstore, and had created innovative teen pregnancy prevention and safe sex initiatives (19).

"When St. Thomas was torn down a few years ago, residents were told there would be mixed-use economic development in its place, and although they mourned for the loss of their neighborhood, many looked forward to participating actively in the economic lifeblood of the community. Then the city reneged on its promises and offered the land to Wal-Mart, which then placed a superstore on the property--the very store whose gun supply was looted during the flooding (an ironic turn of events if ever there was one). Poor folks wanted economic opportunity and jobs; the city's elite (black and white alike) gave them a gun supply shop (20).

"Bottom line: the stereotype of poor blacks in New Orleans (and elsewhere) as lazy and dependent on government is false. In Louisiana, it should be noted that only a very small share of those receiving TANF benefits, and AFDC before that, are able-bodied adults. Indeed, even prior to welfare reform, only eleven percent of those receiving AFDC in the state were able-bodied adults who did no work: the rest were vulnerable children, the elderly, the disabled, or adults who were already working (mostly part-time), but earned too little to come off assistance (21).