That last one showed up a couple of dozen times in one message I got
this past week from a particularly nutty right winger, and of course,
it’s a meaningless construct, just one of those things that Limbaugh
tells his followers to always accuse liberals of because it drives them nuts.

This particular one has been around for a while. I first spotted it on
FidoNet back in the late 80s, and it was usually spouted by users who
named themselves after figures from the Norse deist pantheon, and who
quoted from “Dr.” William Pierce about pure blood. As people expressing
deep concern for the psychological and emotional erosions occasioned by
accepting welfare for black Americans, they were less than credible.

However, like most really poisonous, stupid ideas, it spread hard and
fast among the far right. Some gleefully saw it as a way of turning
charges of racism around against liberals and democrats, sounding good,
and finding a way to screw black Americans all at once. Others, less
cynical and perhaps less bright, simply assumed it was true.

A few weeks earlier, I wrote a commentary that I entitled “The Welfare Trap”.
I picked the title deliberately, since the phrase, “welfare trap” is one that these
right wingers like to use to claim that Democrats are using welfare to keep
black people servile and contained. If I could lure some right winger into
reading it and perhaps thinking, I wasn’t going to complain.

I’m in the habit of going back and reviewing my commentaries a few weeks
after I write them. They always read well when I first put them up, but
I’ve learned to go back and check. Every so often I see something that
makes me wince. If it’s a typo or a misstatement of fact, I change it.
If it’s just something I said that on reread sounds profoundly stupid, I
leave it alone. It’s been said, it’s been published, and I’m human.
I’ll let it go, and try and do better the next time.

I was particularly proud of the Welfare piece, and read it with a certain amount
of anxiety. I was delighted with the reread. It held up, and since I felt it was one
of the more important things I had to say, I was relieved.

As I read, I came across this line: “When you think about it, it’s
pretty amazing that LESS THAN ONE PERCENT of the entire population is on
welfare.” That was a straightforward enough statement. The number of
people on Welfare was down to 2.1 million. The population of the United
States is over 280 million. The math is self-evident.

Thinking about message I got from the email nutball (he tried to sic his
psychiatrist on me) with the repeated claim that I was racist because I
was “for” welfare, I considered the status of blacks vís a vís welfare.
Let’s see. Less than one percent of the population is on welfare, which
means if black people make up 11% of the population, and if every
welfare recipient was black, then 9% of all blacks are on welfare.

Except that not all welfare recipients are black. Most, in fact, are
white. Nearly seven in ten, approximately. Then there’s another one in
ten who are Native American or Asian or “decline to state” (almost
always white). So a hair over two in ten welfare recipients are black.

Out of some 30 million black people in America, 472,500 are on welfare.
That’s one out of 63 black people.

Now, if we pretend that EVERY SINGLE BLACK PERSON on welfare, including
the children, voted Democratic in the last election, then that bloc made up slightly less
than one half of one percent of the vote. Of course, it’s nowhere near that, since voting
rates drop with income, and children can’t vote.

The logic of the right wing is that Democrats are for Welfare because it
bribes the black people who then vote Democratic. And it must work: 91%
of all black voters voted Democratic in the last election.

Except for one little problem. Less than two percent of those black voters were on welfare.
That means that even if every single black who was on welfare voted Democratic, something
like 90% of all other blacks who weren’t on welfare ALSO voted Democratic,
even though they weren’t on welfare.

Maybe right wingers figure that any black who isn’t on welfare will be
soon enough (it’s a gene thing, you know) and are just exercising a
little forethought and planning in voting for Democrats.

Yeah. That must be it. Nice to see right wingers finally admitting that black people
are capable of mentation higher than base animal cunning, at least.

The supposition by the right that welfare would have a major influence
on the black vote when 98% of black voters aren’t on welfare is racist
and insulting. But of course, they are smearing the Democrats, too.

Welfare declined by 55% under President Clinton, a Democrat. No President in
history has enjoyed stronger or more widespread popularity among the black citizenry.

He must have done it by bribing them with welfare. By cutting the number of black
people receiving welfare by over 60%, based on the unemployment numbers, which
declined more sharply among black people than among white.

This item won’t stop any right winger from running around, endlessly
repeating the claim that Democrats bribe and control black people with
welfare. It’s a gene thing, you know. But it will give any thinking
person something they can use to respond, and it will give most people
reading this a clear idea of who the bigots are. Democrats aren’t the
ones claiming that you can easily bribe 30 million people by giving a
pittance to the neediest two percent. They aren’t the ones smearing one
adversary – so they can smear another.
 

--
"Nor is there sufficient objective evidence today of a national
consensus against executing mentally retarded capital murderers,
since petitioner has cited only one state statute that explicitly
bans that practice, and has offered no evidence of the general
behavior of juries in this regard. Opinion surveys indicating
strong public opposition to such executions do not establish a
societal consensus, absent some legislative reflection of the
sentiment expressed therein."

"Justice" Sandra Daye O'Connor, Penry v. Lynaugh, 492 U.S. 302 (1989)
(USSC+)
Explaining why it's ok to gas the mentally retarded.