Opinions about SNAP recipients based largely on stereotypes

Today, automatic cuts to SNAP or "food stamps" program to pre-stimulus levels, reducing benefits for 47 million recipients.



The article indicates that, presently, a family of four may have their benefits reduced by $36, and the average benefit for all US states + DC is around $278 per household.



Here's a small collecting of things people say about SNAP recipients:

Quote:

FoxNews "Jesus never said "Feed the poor, unless you feel your taxes are too high then screw them let the poor starve." "A Christian is not commanded to feed the lazy." "The lady in the photograph looks like she needs more than $36 taken out of her Supplemental food stamps" "Yep, even the lady in the photo is a fat babymomma for colored men. END THE FOOD STAMP PROGRAM !"

Quote:

USA Today "47 million families ??? Holy crap I did not know as a working person that I was supporting so many people. Could you all just go back to work, or get a second job, or even a third job like I did several years back. Stop leaching off me and other working Americans." "stop Fu$king complaining and and deal with the fact that you will be poor for the rest of your life because you are a idiot." "Maybe those Fat Ass'es will lose some weight."

Quote:

Washington Post "How about females that continue to reproduce even though they require financial assistance to support their brood be STERILIZED to prevent any more moochers?" "Maybe the food stamp recipients could create a program called self reliance and get off the federal dole." "Require drug tests for anyone that requests government assistance and put a one year cap on claims. There, no need to cut benefits."

Quote:

FreeRepublic "There is a sure cure for hunger. It is called a job." "" "Don't tell me they might have to cut into their beer, cigarette, dope, and scratch off lotto ticket money!" "So, if a family is fraudulently collecting benefits for 100 recipients, then that's $3600/month lost. That's some serious money, so I can understand the concern. "

A lot of these opinions appear to be based on stereotypes: that SNAP recipients are lazy, drug users, con artists, unemployed, welfare queens, etc.



Also looks like these opinions are based on mutually contradictory, "let them eat cake" attitudes held simultaneously: food stamp enrollment doubled because job-killing Obama caused long-term unemployment, BUT the poor are just lazy morons who should get a second or third job.



I ran across this except from Paul Gorski's Reaching and Teaching Students in Poverty :

Quote:

Cognitively speaking, our stereotyping has been shown to be a natural and necessary human response in the face of limited context-specific knowledge. A woman’s stereotype about men might prove to be an over-generalization in most instances but her intuition eventually could protect her from sexual assault. However, the content of stereotypes is only partially organic, only partially based upon a measured consideration of the totality of our experiences. [. . .] When I teach a class or deliver a workshop about poverty and schools, I often begin by asking participants to reflect on a question: Why are poor people poor? Answers vary. However, even when participants believe that societal inequities are responsible for a portion of or even most poverty they almost always qualify their responses with a litany of stereotypes: Poor people are lazy. They don’t care about education. They’re alcoholics and drug abusers. They don’t want to work; instead, they are addicted to the welfare system. Unfortunately, these are not outlier views. Most people in the U.S. believe that poor people are poor because of their own deficiencies rather than inequitable access to services and opportunities (Rank, Yoon, & Hirschl, 2003). [. . .] I decided several years ago to test a list of the stereotypes about people in poverty that are most common among my teacher education students against social science evidence (Gorski, 2008a), a process I revisited more recently in preparation for writing this book (Gorski, 2012). Is there a hint of truth in every stereotype? I wondered. [ Dessi: I cut out the author's analysis of the stereotypes listed below to keep the size of this post reasonable. Please read the analysis in full. ] Stereotype 1: Poor People Do Not Value Education Stereotype 2: Poor People Are Lazy Stereotype 3: Poor People Are Substance Abusers Stereotype 4: Poor People Are Linguistically Deficient and Poor Communicators Stereotype 5: Poor People Are Ineffective and Inattentive Parents

The author indicates that some stereotypes, like poor people being lazy, are simply unfounded in anything. Other stereotypes, like alcohol abuse, are more true of wealthy people than the poor. [See full-text of excerpt above for citations. ]



Still, we have people in our US congress, and substantial portion of the constituency, rationalizing policies to reduce or eliminate welfare based on stereotyping and villifying the poor. And that these toxic opinions are a cultural norm, not an outlier.

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