The Persistence of White Racism, Anti-Non-Whiteness, & Anti-Blackness in the United States is Spiritually and Emotionally, and Mentally Defeating: Weaponizing Politics, Law, Economics, Government, and Healthcare; Weighing Government Sponsored Affirmative Action for White Families Against Pathologizing Black Women as Welfare Queens, Forced Sterilization through the Classifications of “Unfit” Mothers, Mothers of “Illegitimate” Children, and/or “Unwed”
The Aid for Dependent Families with Children (AFDC), better known as the Federal Welfare System of the United States, was created for White women and children only, under the Social Security Act of 1935, which was part of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal (which rendered social security, jobs, minimum wage, housing, labor standards, and a series of other benefits to White Americans, almost exclusively - while targeting Black people in the most oppressive and severe manner). The AFDC program operated as a Whites Only subsidy program for more than 25 years, "to provide cash welfare payments for needy children who had been deprived of parental support or care because their father or mother was absent from the home, incapacitated, deceased, or unemployed. All 50 states, the District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands operated an AFDC program. States defined "need," set their own benefit levels, established (within federal limitations) income and resource limits, and administered the program or supervised its administration."
It was not until 1962 approximately, with the entrance of President Kennedy’s (and then Johnson’s) Great Society legislation and strategies, that the Whites Only exclusions and preferences were removed, and Black women were able to receive payments. Yet, because states oversaw rendering benefits based upon who they thought needed more, White families received higher payments than Black families.
Because Black, and non-White women and families’ participation, and increased representation in the Aid to Dependent Families program during the 60’s into the 70’s, the predominantly White state legislatures, and members of the U.S. Congress became resentful, and organized to respond in racist ways (such as requiring that men could not be present in the home; leading to a mass exodus of Black men leaving homes) that would discourage and target Black women particularly, and non-White women and families from accessing benefits. The resentment led these White political, and governmental bodies of law makers to conspire with economic and healthcare institutions to institute systematically oppressive strategies to address this problem. For example, Black women on AFDC were systematically targeted and subjected to compulsory sterilization (a program codified by the Eugenics program of America through the 1927 Buck v. Bell Supreme Court decision, that legalized forced sterilization of the “unfit”), many without their knowledge. This was the case for Nial Ruth Cox, in North Carolina in February, 1965; and Deborah Blackmon, who was 14, in 1972. Hospitals instituted policies that insisted women consent to sterilization to receive, and/or continue receiving welfare. By 1970, approximately 200,000 Black females had been sterilized. However, because the acceleration of targeting “welfare mothers”, “unwed mothers”, and “mothers of illegitimate children”, more than 700,000 Black women were sterilized by 1980. This could not have unfolded as successfully without the help of Ronald Regan's focus on targeting Black women as "welfare queens" in 1976 (and many other White women and men who led campaigns targeting Black people).
In addition, the federal government began gradually reducing benefits through the 1980's and 90's, and ultimately dismantling the program by 1997. It was replaced by the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program; a temporary program that saw a dramatic reduction in benefits.
The irony that Black people, females, and males, were targeted to be compulsory sterilized, whose bodies were once exploited through a White-engineered legal system, is mind boggling. Black females, women, and young girls predominantly, and males, were prostituted, and pimped-out by the White community, males, and females, who legalized rape, and normalized “illegitimacy” to build this country, the U.S. economy (and virtually everything in it). Decades later, once the enslavement of Black people was no more, the U.S. government strategically manufactured a system to target and limit the births of Black people born in the U.S. sterilizations, combined with mass incarceration, economic deprivation, biased educational and employment practices, police brutality, and daily social surveillance equals racial genocide through oppression.
Note:
Adolf Hitler literally copied the United States' Eugenics program (engineered by the Supreme Court decision of 1927, Buck v. Bell, which legalized compulsory sterilization of the "unfit), and was an avid fan of Eugenicists Madison Grant (also supported by people such as Sir Francis Galton, Dr. Josiah Nott, and Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz, etc.), which were the doctrines he pulled from to force compulsory sterilization onto Jewish people.
Conclusion:
The depths of this country's racism have no bottom or end, and the legal, economic, political, governmental, and all institutional structures and systems are tools for White people, and token non-White people, to execute an anti-Black, anti-non-White, and White supremacist agenda.
We must learn and know our history to fully understand the depths, and ways White supremacy, and anti-Blackness have functioned to systematically build White stability, comfort, entitlement, and security (mentally, emotionally, and physically); while systematically working to destroy and kill Black people in the same ways.
Black people are living in a situation of racial genocide, and that is the reality of this situation. Food violence, housing violence, economic violence, healthcare violence, social violence, and all other violence committed against Black people - in a White capitalistic culture = murder.
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