Schram, Sanford F.

English

Scholarship;  Research;  and Creative Work at Bryn Mawr College

Bryn Mawr College
Scholarship, Research, and Creative Work at Bryn Mawr
College
Graduate School of Social Work and Social
Research Faculty Research and Scholarship
Graduate School of Social Work and Social
Research
2000
Review of Why Americans Hate Welfare: Race, Media,
and the Politics of Antipoverty Policy, by Martin Gilens
Sanford F. Schram
Bryn Mawr College, sschram@brynmawr.edu
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Schram, Sanford F. Review of Why Americans Hate Welfare: Race, Media, and the Politics of Antipoverty Policy, by Martin Gilens.
American Journal of Sociology 105 (2000): 1226-1227.
American Journal of Sociology 
for colorblind policies and programs, "as the sentiment of racial anxieties 
has become even more silent" (p. 238). 
Despite a few repetitious points in the book and places where I would 
have liked to have had the wealth of impressions and concerns expressed 
by officials in memos and policy documents corroborated and challenged 
by other related sources and nonwhite perspectives, these do little to over- 
shadow Fuiredi's accomplishment with this historical project on imperial- 
ism. It has much to offer postcolonial studies in the social sciences. 
Why Americans Hate Welfare: Race, Media, and the Politics of Antipov- 
erty Policy. By Martin Gilens. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 
1999. Pp. xii+296. $25.00. 
Sanford F. Schram 
Bryn Mawr College 
This book's title is surely a loaded question. Yet, that is Martin Gilens's 
point: by the time Americans are asked about welfare, it has been dis- 
torted beyond recognition. In the end, so is welfare policy. How does this 
happen? In this meticulously researched and well-written book, Gilens 
documents how many Americans come to misunderstand welfare and 
how those misunderstandings influence welfare policy making. For Gi- 
lens, a prime culprit is the news media. Moving from portraits of public 
opinion to analyses of news reporting to finally a critical examination of 
the welfare reforms of recent years, Gilens adroitly uses a variety of em- 
pirical sources to demonstrate that (1) Americans are supportive of gov- 
ernment aid to "deserving" recipients; (2) they are however misinformed 
about who is receiving assistance because of how the news media misrep- 
resent welfare recipients; (3) visual misrepresentations are especially in- 
fluential and misleadingly overrepresent African-American, single moth- 
ers as recipients; (4) journalists and editors in particular are almost as 
misinformed as the general public about the real proportionate break- 
downs of the welfare population as well as the extent of their own misre- 
porting; and (5) race is systematically related to the making of welfare 
policy, with welfare being considered a "black" program that therefore 
is less deserving of support. 
What an indictment, especially given the methods and data used. Gi- 
lens creatively analyzes public opinion polling data to illuminate mass 
support for not just the welfare state in the abstract, but also for welfare 
to the poor in particular. Gilens reviews his already widely noted, previ- 
ously published research on racial attitudes and opposition to welfare. 
This book however goes well beyond the survey data. It builds on other 
work Gilens has done on news media representations of welfare recipi- 
ents. In perhaps the most interesting section, there is an analysis of how 
media representations of people living in poverty have changed over 
time. Gilens finds that overrepresentation of African-Americans in stories 
1226 
Book Reviews 
about poverty started to increase in the 1960s when rapid growth in the 
number of welfare recipients occurred under conditions of political insta- 
bility, racial turmoil, and civil unrest. Gilens notes that the welfare popu- 
lation both black and white grew during this period in proportionate 
amounts, maintaining whites as the largest group. Yet, the public increas- 
ingly came to see welfare as a program for African-Americans. Gilens 
finds that the news media have for years now overrepresented African- 
Americans in negative stories about poverty and welfare and that these 
are tied to the growing mass antipathy toward welfare. 
Gilens not only makes a real contribution to understanding the role of 
mass communication in the making of social welfare policy, his work here 
adds significantly to the growing body of research that demonstrates that 
the news media do not simply reinforce existing political attitudes but 
change them as well. Gilens's analysis eventually turns to the role of race 
in the welfare retrenchment of 1996. He helps us understand how the 
public could come to support draconian welfare reforms even as it op- 
posed cutting back assistance levels to those who are genuinely needy. 
With careful attention to the particulars of welfare reform, Gilens reviews 
survey data to suggest that Americans supported the welfare retrench- 
ment of 1996 based on the mistaken assumption that most welfare recipi- 
ents were underserving, that is, were not trying to achieve personal re- 
sponsibility in regards to work and family. 
Yet, it is here and in its conclusion that this excellent book falls short. 
Gilens is too content to accept as legitimate that the American public 
relies on the prevailing distinction between the "deserving" and "unde- 
serving" poor. He faults the news media not for reinforcing this problem- 
atic distinction but only for misrepresenting it. The implication is that if 
the stories had been accurate, that is, if most adult welfare recipients 
were African-American, single mothers who chose welfare over work, 
then the public's opposition to welfare would be justified. Gilens's im- 
plied solution is to counter these false images with more correct images 
of recipients as people from a variety of ethnicities who are trying to 
become self-sufficient. This is not enough. It leaves the false dichotomy 
of merit intact, allowing it to continue to marginalize poor single mothers 
who need public assistance in lieu of the inadequate support that paid 
employment might provide them. Simply put, Gilens fails to consider the 
possibility that no one "deserves" to be poor. If he had done so, he could 
go beyond emphasizing that the media exaggerate the extent to which 
African-Americans rely on welfare to the more critical issue of how the 
political economy sytematically works to relegate disproportionate num- 
bers of African-Americans to lives of poverty and deprivation. 
Gilens effectively uses the "master's tools" in the form of quantitative 
analysis of public opinion data, but without enough of the necessary criti- 
cal reflection. He recognizes these tools can only take us so far; however, 
his limited conclusion suggests we need to go further. 
1227 


Review of \u3ci\u3eWhy Americans Hate Welfare: Race, Media, and the Politics of Antipoverty Policy\u3c/i\u3e, by Martin Gilens

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Review of \u3ci\u3eWhy Americans Hate Welfare: Race, Media, and the Politics of Antipoverty Policy\u3c/i\u3e, by Martin Gilens

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