Race and Poverty in America: Public Misperceptions and the American News Media

Abstract

Over the past decades, the black urban poor have come to dominate public images of poverty. Surveys show that the American public dramatically exaggerates the proportion of African Americans among the poor and that such misperceptions are associated with greater opposition to welfare. In this article I examine the relationship between news media portrayals and public images of poverty. I find that network TV news and weekly newsmagazines portray the poor as substantially more black than is really the case. In more detailed analyses of newsmagazines, I find that the most sympathetic subgroups of the poor, such as the elderly and the working poor, are underrepresented, while the least sympathetic groupunemployed working-age adults-is overrepresented. Finally, these discrepancies between magazine portrayals of the poor and the true nature of poverty are greater for African Americans than for others. Thus the unflattering (and distorted) portrait of the poor presented in these newsmagazines is even more unflattering (and more distorted) for poor African Americans.

The Changing Color of Welfare? How Whites’ Attitudes toward Latinos Influence Support for Welfare

“…The historic and enduring relationship between race and the welfare state is well established (Brown 1999;Edsall and Edsall 1992;Gilens 1995Gilens , 1996aGilens , 1996bGilens , 1999Lieberman 1998;Luttmer 2001;Peffley, Hurwitz, and Sniderman 1997;Quadagno 1990Quadagno , 1994Wright 1976). Nonetheless, Americans' contemporary ambivalence toward welfare has often been ex-plained primarily in terms of economic self-interest or principled individualism.…”

“…Means-tested programs such as TANF therefore garner little public support, except among those who have already made use of them, think they might use them in the future, or have friends or family who benefit from the program. Empirical evidence indicates that support for welfare is indeed inversely correlated to family income and positively correlated to previous welfare receipt (AuClaire 1984;Gilens 1995). Using data from the 1983 Detroit Area Study, Hasenfeld and Rafferty (1989) found that people who were socioeconomically vulnerablepeople who were low-income, with low levels of education, nonwhite, and young-and therefore more likely to benefit or to know someone who benefited from means-tested programs (such as AFDC and Food Stamps) were more supportive of them.…”

“…The notion that economic self-interest is at the root of such ambivalence has led some to argue that only universal welfare programs will garner meaningful and sustained public support (Cook and Barrett 1992;Skocpol 1991). However, theories that emphasize self-interest are generally unable to explain near universal support for programs to the poor that do not provide direct cash subsidies such as job training or food assistance (Gilens 1999).…”

“…During the debates about welfare reform two congressmen stood on the House floor and compared welfare recipients to wild animals-wolves and alligatorswho had lost their ability to forage in the wild (Congressional Record 1995). The media has done its part to fan the flames, often portraying mothers on welfare as promiscuous, lazy, and-especially when the depiction is unfavorable-black (Clawson and Trice 2000;Gilens 1996aGilens , 1999Williams 1995).…”

“…Gilens (1995Gilens ( , 1996bGilens ( , 1999 argues that antiwelfare sentiment is driven largely by whites' negative stereotypes of black people's work ethic. He argues that whites hate welfare because they believe that most people on the welfare rolls are black and that blacks are in general lazy and therefore undeserving of government help.…”