I Refuse to Feel Embarrassed About Being on Welfare

In this pandemic, everyone’s hurting. There’s nothing wrong with receiving government aid.

It used to be that a trip to the market for food could fill me with shame. Simply getting in line at checkout could send a wave of humiliation rushing over me.

I wasn’t actually purchasing my groceries — the state was.

Or, rather, the taxpayer.

I went on welfare after leaving my husband. I received food stamps for four years until recently, I went off the program.

I still have welfare health insurance. A week ago, I was mailed pandemic food vouchers.

This aid has been much-needed and yet, the fact I get any welfare used to eat at me.

I felt like I was “mooching” off the government.

It’s taken until this current crisis to move past this belief. I no longer feel guilty about being on welfare.

No one should.

I grew up believing welfare was bad.

Blame it on the Republican family I was raised in. They believe that people go on welfare because they’re lazy. I marinated in my parents’ belief system for half my life; it couldn’t help but rub off on me.

Even if I didn’t abide by their ideas intellectually, I absorbed them. My formative years took place during the Reagan era.

Regan loved to talk about “welfare queens” defrauding the system. These women — typically Black — lurked in the projects, greedily gobbling up government aid to fund their lavish lifestyles.

No bother that the woman the moniker was based on, Linda Taylor, was a skilled scam artist.

Josh Levin wrote in his book about Taylor, The Queen: The Forgotten Life Behind an American Myth: “Linda Taylor…had as much in common with a typical welfare rule breaker as a bank robber does with someone who swipes a piece of penny candy.”

Welfare has simply kept my head above water rather than actually keep me afloat.

In my case, receiving welfare has hardly meant swimming in luxury. My food stamps provided me with $10/day on which to feed a family of three.

The current meal vouchers I get for my children allot for the same amount.

Don’t get me wrong — to receive any aid has thrilled me. However, welfare has simply kept my head above water rather than actually keep me afloat.

Welfare is no assurance against poverty, though it did enable me to stake a new life away from my husband.

But the reason I left him wasn’t so I could go on welfare as the Heritage Foundation has argued, or so I could depend on the government as my new “husband,” as Ann Coulter has accused.

I left my husband because staying married to him was untenable. Welfare helped me survive when I needed it most.

I left my husband because I had no other choice.

My husband and I were living a middle-class lifestyle until the financial crisis of 2008 bankrupted us. We lost everything, including our house.

On top of this, he started suffering from mental illness. I knew I had to leave him but didn’t know how I’d survive.

He wouldn’t be able to give me child support for our two children. If I left, I’d be on my own.

I stayed until I couldn’t anymore. One morning, in a fit of anger, my husband hit our eldest son. His teacher reported the black eye to Child Protective Services. The Sheriff showed up at the school.

Now I had to leave and take the kids with me.

Being on welfare was an unsightly scar I wanted to keep hidden.

Welfare saved me during this period but it was neither easy to be approved nor to keep receiving the aid.

The application was long and complicated. I had to have a job even to be considered.

I also had to regularly verify my income and my dependents to stay on the program. Any attempt to defraud the government could land me in jail.

And yet, something still told me I wasn’t deserving of this aid.

Whenever it got time to use my benefits to buy my groceries at the market, I’d wallowed in self-pity.

I felt pathetic. Being on welfare was an unsightly scar I wanted to keep hidden.

My humiliation was palpable. But what exactly made being on welfare so embarrassing?

America hates the poor.

I believe it has to do with growing up in the U.S. America hates socialism.

The dominant view of the poor in this country is that they somehow deserve their circumstances. They’ve brought their poverty upon themselves with bad decisions and laziness.

UCLA political scientist Daniel Treisman even believes the poor choose their poverty. He wrote a book about it called, Why the Poor Don’t Vote to Soak the Rich.

Otherwise, he writes, “The poor majority should vote to tax the rich and divide the proceeds among themselves. But that’s not happening in the United States.”

Spencer Piston, the author of, Class Attitudes in America, claps back at Treisman in his piece in Jacobin:

“In fact, in a representative democracy, people vote for politicians, and the politicians make policy. There is no guarantee that politicians will do what the public wants.”

Many politicians are rich anyway. They have a vested interest in keeping the rich, rich.

The starker truth is that America loathes the poor.

A study by researchers from Kansas State and Rice Universities found that respondents described poor people as ninety-five percent more “unmotivated,” and twice as “dirty” as other people.

The problem comes when poor people are blamed for their poverty because they’re seen as not working hard enough.

In another study, researchers from Princeton, UCLA, and Lawrence University found respondents classified the poor as both “unfriendly” and “incompetent.”

Is it any wonder that finding myself financially bankrupt and on welfare has been humiliating?

Dr. Elizabeth Anderson at the University of Michigan blames America’s dislike of the poor on our Protestant roots.

“America was so dominantly Protestant for such a long time,” Dr. Anderson told The Irish Times, “the culture was really shaped by Protestants.”

This meant the adoption of the Protestant work ethic. While there’s nothing wrong with working hard, the problem comes when poor people are blamed for their poverty because they’re seen as not working hard enough.

“There is no appreciation for the existence of structural poverty,” Dr. Anderson told The Irish Times, “poverty that is not the fault of your own but because the economy maybe is in recession….”

Or because there’s a global pandemic that’s not only put you out of a job but made it obsolete.

Even in a crisis of this proportion, the poor are dismissed.

The 2018 Budget Message of the President said: “We must reform our welfare system so that it does not discourage able-bodied adults from working…”

This objective has carried over to today, even as people suffer in this crisis.

The Republicans had the gall to declare that aid given to laid-off workers would de-incentivize them to return to work.

Republicans are presently pushing back against the HEROES Act bill, passed by Democrats last week, which would extend unemployment compensation to out-of-work people until January, instead of July, when it’s supposed to end.

This aid is proposed for those whose industries have disappeared overnight. Their jobs are gone and there’s no guarantee they’ll even return once businesses reopen.

The utter disrespect our government has shown toward the poor and middle-class alike as well as the greed of big businesses during this crisis have finally pushed me over the edge.

Now when I wait in line to purchase my food with my benefits card, I hold my head high.

The real shame is not the people who desperately need aid at this moment but that the most affluent and powerful in this country have enabled a situation where the health of businesses is favored over the health of families.

Reading about thousands of cars lined up outside food banks or that two in five households with children under twelve are currently food insecure — I’m horrified.

This, in the richest country in the world…

It’s been enough to rinse the shame right out of me. I’m sick of the belief that people who need help have simply brought their hard times upon themselves.

I’ve made the conscious decision to disabuse myself of the shame I used to feel.

I refuse to feel guilty about being on welfare — especially not as a single mother caring for two children completely on my own.

Now when I wait in line to purchase my food with my benefits card, I hold my head high. I no longer try to hide how I’m paying, pretending I’m using a debit card when I have an EBT card in my hand.

Welfare has helped me when I needed it most. There’s nothing wrong with receiving government aid — especially not now.

No one should feel ashamed about being on welfare. At least I’m no longer shaming myself for it.