Myth Of The Welfare King Analysis

Myth of the Welfare Queen, by David Zucchino. Simon & Schuster: ¬New York, New York, 1999. 366 pages. Reviewed by Emily White.

David Zucchino is a former Los Angeles Times correspondent as well as a Pulitzer Prize winning author in 1995 for his feature writing in South Africa. He received an education at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and has since been travelling to dozens of nations reporting on social issues on a global scale, recently focused on Afghanistan, Libya and Iraq, some of those pieces being when he was the foreign editor for The Philadelphia Inquirer. With his remaining time, he has written two well-known books, Thunder Run and, Myth of the Welfare Queen, both true counts of social problems viewed up close.

Zucchino has been nominated for several literary awards, being a four-time Pulitzer Prize finalist for reporting throughout his career and nominated for a 2016 GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Newspaper Article about the Navy’s first openly gay SEAL. Zucchino has plenty of experience researching and reporting on present issues that affect wide varieties of people, meaning he has strong accessibility to his audience and is more than qualified to report on social issues.

When writing Myth of the Welfare Queen, David Zucchino exposes the lives of two women who are honestly using the American welfare system in the hopes that families across the

nation will eventually no longer have to resort to “trash picking rounds” and degrading means of work to survive in this country. Zucchino depicts these two women's lives in the hopes of debunking the stereotypes wrongly placed on mothers on welfare, showing all the kinds of people whose lives depend on welfare programs, and the benefits people on welfare give to society.
The author develops his thesis throughout the entirety of the book, as it is a story unfolding in front of his eyes. The purpose of Zucchino following these two women for six months was to show that the notion of people abusing the welfare system to be lazy is a myth and welfare programs are used primarily because the recipients will not survive otherwise. This is not because they are not working hard enough, for example, in class, it was stated that most impoverished families have two breadwinners each working the equivalent of one and a quarter full-time jobs. The term “Welfare Queen” was brought into popular culture through Ronald Reagan in 1976 through his welfare reform plan and since then has demonized people, mostly women, for relying on welfare programs in fear that these women are using it out of fraud and/or manipulation. Even after the 1996 welfare reform when women could not rely on welfare indefinitely through the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act, people tend to overlook the facts and believe what they want to, continuing to show a lack of sympathy and an increase of support to reduce the benefits available to impoverished and homeless individuals.
Zucchino witnesses firsthand the struggles of participating in welfare programs through Odessa Williams and Cheri Honkala, two welfare mothers in Philadelphia.

The myth of “Welfare Queens” is quickly debunked watching Odessa trying to support her four grandchildren on $400 a month and Cheri trying to raise a child and organize a welfare rights group while being unpaid. Odessa Williams, once on welfare in the 60’s, was only allotted $25 more a week for having to feed four other children. That little amount of money is clearly not enough to maintain a household and Odessa results to trash picking as a way to cut down on a shopping budget. On page 64, Zucchino depicts what the typical person receiving welfare benefits looks like—it certainly is not the image Ronald Reagan and the media feeds to the American people. In the state of Pennsylvania, only 32% of recipients were black while 57% were white. The passage describes those using the program AFDC (Aid to Families with Dependent

Children),
“Just 5% of the state’s AFDC mothers were under 19 years old. Four out of 10 were in their late twenties and two out of 10 were in their 30’s. Nor was the state’s typical AFDC mother a woman who refused to work. Fully a third of AFDC mothers in Pennsylvania had worked within a year of receiving benefits. Only 11% had never worked in all. Nor did these women give birth to inordinate numbers of children. The average number of children per AFDC family in the state was 1.6. And the state of the AFDC mothers had hardly turned welfare into no way of life. One in four had been receiving AFDC checks for a year or less. Just 7% had been on AFDC for more than three years. More than half have never been on AFDC before.”
These statistics alone suggest that the common stereotype of someone using this program is inaccurate as well as inappropriate. A wide variety of people use welfare programs for survival, it is not just one type of person looking for fast cash.
The main cause of people’s support for decreased welfare support is the fear of fraud and manipulation, which is a real problem. However, nobody is living a lavish lifestyle because of fraud—fraud does not create unwed “welfare mothers” who stay at home and have internet, television, and electronics used by other upper-class families in the United States. Zucchino went along with Odessa on “Check Day” in chapter three to receive her welfare check. Right outside the building were “Stamp Men,” meaning people who bought food stamps off people and selling them, usually to buy drugs (81). The Stamp Men are those who manipulate the system and deserve to be called out as “cheats.” However, even Odessa herself stated, “they ruin it for people who really need welfare—and there’s plenty that do need it” (82). Odessa believes that many of the people using welfare benefits rely heavily on religion and would play by the rules—God’s rules. That same day, Odessa went home and budgeted her finances for the next two weeks, only she only had about $200 for food and expendable items. The rest has to go towards the family’s crippling debt in an attempt to keep the lights on and the water running (82). This family does not have disposable income, despite the beliefs of those preaching about “welfare queens.” It is not survival if someone’s $1.75 sausage is all their disposable income for the entire month.
Those believing in the myth might equate people using welfare programs with individual characteristics such as being lazy or selfish. Cheri Honkala, with all her socioeconomic restrictions, set out to be an advocate for homeless rights. Zucchino observed her attempt to make “Tent City” in order to support the homeless and still have the time, money, and effort to raise her child. She dedicated her life to helping homeless people find a way to exist in society. During the winter, she held families in St. Edward’s Church, knowing she was breaking the law for trespassing (160). She was aware of her consequences and expected the worst as she gathered everyone around in the church. The policemen and Civil Affairs knew that she was smarter than to blatantly break the law, but she was fearless enough to stay true to her cause in the face of oppression (168). That is as selfless as one can be—willingly putting down your life and reputation for the safety of others. This strength turns into change when Cheri sucessfuly organizes Thanksgiving dinner for 45 people in the homeless community and even went as far as to give children presents from Santa (279-280). Because of her hard work, the dinner was a success and so many lives were touched. And while that was a success, the burden of everything else she has brought upon herself humbles her greatly. That is not the image of a welfare mother who abuses the system; that is a hero looking out for the forgotten people—those with no representation or a voice to make change otherwise.
This book has a strong message that refuses to be ignored; the thesis is encompassed eloquently in one statement on page 294, a quote from Cheri Honkala states,
“Everyone who drives on a toll-free highway, attends a public school or university, deducts mortgage interest payments from their income tax, or enjoys a national park is getting the equivalent of welfare from the federal government. In one way or another, we are all welfare recipients.”
Zucchino refuses to give way to the term, “welfare queen,” a popular term most Americans are familiar with, and exposes the flaws of that stereotyping. All individuals are receiving benefits from the American government and rely on its aid. Individuals participating in welfare programs are trying any less to be successful in this country. This book exposes the evident struggle of being impoverished. Furthermore, this book shows the result of that stigmatization and how that negatively affects society as a whole. Making welfare cuts is not going to bring a resolution to any of the problems Zucchino presents in this book, the same goes for demonizing people collecting welfare benefits and treating them poorly for their current situation. It only makes it more difficult for those people to reach a stable economic status. Everyone should read this book in an effort to become more educated and involved in the issue of poverty in the United States. This account is a reporting of a true story—Zucchino witnessed all of these events; this makes it harder to argue with his argument. This raw material is not found on television or in print because of the political conflicts attached with this “war on the homeless.” Myth of the Welfare Queen is a true story that reveals what most of the mass media refuse to touch and will cause a revelation in anyone who reads it.