Institutionalized meanness
Hausknecht, Murray
Before 1982, if your Social Security benefit came to, say, $419.43 you would receive a monthly check of $419.50. If you began collecting Social Security in 1982, however, and were entitled to...
...Failure in American society is always the fault of the individual, a lack of a strong moral character...
...A lack of generosity is an unwillingness to share with others, and this absence partly explains why meanness is considered ignoble...
...In another era the language would have been "lazy, shiftless, and over sexed...
...Connecticut's governor proposes a twenty-one-month limit on welfare payments in the announced belief that it will stop poor people from moving to his state...
...If you began collecting Social Security in 1982, however, and were entitled to the same benefit, your monthly check would be automatically rounded down to $419.00...
...From this perspective the welfare state is an evil...
...it not only supports the undeserving poor but, worse, it does nothing to help build their characters...
...we respect those who are magnanimous and disapprove of the stingy and selfish...
...There is an unmistakable erosion of magnanimity: Californians overwhelmingly approved Proposition 187, which denies educational and me di444 • DISSENT Comments and Opinions cal benefits to illegal immigrants...
...But at the same time the denial of generosity—a traditional value—will make the whole of our society crueler and more ignoble...
...It will condemn the poor to a world apart, almost totally defenseless against the indignities of a "free market economy...
...Its success, still far from complete, will be double-edged...
...FALL • 1995 • 445...
...Now, however, there is a cultural shift under way, heralded by Newt Gingrich as the "transforming of society from a welfare state to an opportunity society...
...One popular proposal is the tightening of eligibility requirements with the hope, voiced by Giuliani in New York, that it will, as a "natural consequence," motivate poor people to leave the state...
...Its semantic resonance can be sensed by considering an antonym, "generous": "1: liberal in giving or sharing 2: magnanimity...
...The implicit promise is that those who leave will be black...
...Other popular ideas, ones that cross political party lines, are to limit the time one can benefit from Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) and capping benefits to mothers who have more children...
...To institutionalize meanness is to fmd nothing problematic or questionable in an ungenerous reaction to need and its threats to human dignity...
...It is becoming increasingly permissible to express an open contempt for the poor: in the House of Representatives welfare recipients were likened to captive animals reluctant to leave their pens and forage for themselves...
...Here, again, the racist stereotype of blacks as incapable of self-mastery and childlike in their responses to the world covertly suggests and supports meanness...
...an unproblematic and unquestioned order of things...
...These are value-laden definitions...
...The law proclaims, in effect, that we cannot expect persons on welfare to be law-abiding citizens...
...But this is meanness with a difference, and a handy piece of jargon helps specify the difference: today we are witnessing the institutionalization of meanness...
...they belong to a hostile world, and a line must be drawn between their world and ours...
...But institutionalized meanness endorses as "natural" the idea that the poor are radically different from the rest of us and that we must protect ourselves from them...
...This is the specter that haunts the project of "transforming the welfare state...
...To be "mean," a dictionary tells us, is to be "la: selfish in a petty way, unkind b: cruel...2: ignoble, base...3: miserly, stingy"—all perfectly exemplified by the changes in Social Security procedures...
...In a class society, of course, there are always lines between the poor and the others...
...Generosity means sharing, and that implies a relationship between people who have enough in common to make sharing a sensible act—one does not share with one's enemies...
...What some mistake for meanness is, in reality, akin to the loving kindness of parents who, concerned with developing the moral character of their children, subject them to a strict and sometimes harsh discipline...
...With this requirement Ronald Reagan's urban folklore story, "The Tale of the Welfare Queen," is formally enshrined in the legal code as the presupposition that welfare clients are predisposed to fraudulent behavior...
...Today's language is more civil —a not inconsiderable gain in a society where civility is too often problematic— but it taps into a traditional pool of meanness fed by racism...
...A New Jersey legislator defending a cap on benefits talks of parental "irresponsibility," while throughout the country everyone, from politicians to editors, talks of welfare as a "culture of dependency...
...A perfect example of how meanness is institutionalized in the course of "welfare reform" is a new Connecticut law that mandates electronic fingerprinting of all welfare recipients...
...A combination of class and race shapes the way welfare reform is discussed...
...But institutionalized meanness draws stronger lines and increases the social distance between the two worlds...
...Politicians expect and receive approval for proposing severe cuts in welfare programs: New York City's mayor, Rudolph Giuliani, supported by the governor, proposes the elimination of Home Relief, a state program dating back to 1931 that provides help to needy adults who do not qualify for federal aid...
...these reforms are, rather, "tough love...
...A social worker in San Diego talks of "so much passivity in the welfare system...
...Sharing is a result of a common bond, and the welfare state, to the extent that it rests on the value of generosity, confirms that common bond...
...The change is emblematic of the meanness of the Reagan-Bush administrations, now mutating into a more virulent form...
...Dependency," "lack of responsibility," "passivity" are also part of another descriptive vocabulary...
...Institutionalizing meanness points to a fundamentally new way of thinking about and dealing with the inherent vicissitudes of a "free market" economy...
...Thus, proposals restricting access to welfare, capping payments, and reducing the length of time one can remain on the rolls are not motivated by selfishness...
...Rules and their expectations of behavior are institutionalized when they are accepted as "natural": this is the way the world works...
Vol. 42 • September 1995 • No. 4
