White America’s racial resentment is the real impetus for welfare cuts, study says
White Americans are more likely to favor welfare cuts when they believe that their status is threatened and that minorities are the main beneficiaries of safety net programs, the study says.
The findings suggest that political efforts to cut welfare programs are driven less by conservative principles than by racial anxiety, the authors conclude. That also hurts white Americans who make up the largest share of Medicaid and food-stamp recipients.
.. Those results show that the push to cut welfare programs is not driven by pure political motives, such as decreasing government spending or shrinking government bureaucracy, Wetts said.
“We find evidence that these shifts [in sentiment against welfare programs] are specifically directed at programs people see as benefiting minorities instead of whites,” she added.
.. people embrace more conservative politics during periods of rapid social change — not necessarily because they fear their racial status is threatened, but because they fear change is happening too fast.
.. Researchers have also shown that white Americans’ racial prejudice affects their views on everything from healthcare policy to the death penalty to dogs. On the same day Wetts’ paper published, a separate study in the journal Environmental Politics found that people with high levels of “racial resentment” are more likely to believe that the scientific consensus on climate change is false.
.. “More and more, white Americans use their racial attitudes to help them decide their positions on political questions such as whom to vote for or what stance to take on important issues including welfare and health care.”
.. white Americans make up 36 percent of food-stamp recipients, 43 percent of Medicaid recipients and 28 percent of recipients for cash welfare.