Hey, I'm Elisa Kreisinger and every Saturday I unpack my strong opinions with the help
of an expert who might not have all the answers, but they certainly know more than I do.
That's why this is Strong Opinions Loosely Held.
And on this week's show, why do we still consider Black women gold diggers?
I recently learned that Black women are the fastest growing group of entrepreneurs in
this country.
And Black women are also the most educated group in America.
So why is our culture so insistent on holding on to this outdated idea that Black women
are only out for men's money, and where did the idea even come from?
This is something Refinery29 Senior Entertainment Writer, Sesali Bowen, has thought a lot about.
So long as Black women have been on screen to be seen, there has been suspicion specifically
around them and sexuality and money.
This myth of the Black woman as a gold digger is constantly being reinforced in popular culture.
Now for starters, there's a Kanye West song called Gold Digger, and Blac Chyna was considered
gold digger number one when she started dating Rob Kardashian.
And let's not forget reality TV.
We can look at shows like Love and Hip Hop or Housewives of Atlanta where it's always
this conversation about "what is this woman's intention with this man?"
"What is she trying to get from him?"
So I think we can literally look everywhere for this gold digger trope.
And these are just the recent examples.
Sesali points out the irony in this portrayal.
In some ways I guess you can say that Black women are gold diggers because we have always
been in the pursuit of education and success and financial independence, but not from men
and not at the hands of the system.
Literally from our own hard work, from our own enterprising spirit.
So where did this myth even come from?
Well, there's two specific events that led to the modern iteration of the stereotype.
The first was the Moynihan Report and the second was Ronald Reagan.
In 1965 sociologist Daniel Moynihan blamed Black female-led homes for the high crime
rates and poverty rates among African Americans.
The conclusion that he came to was that Black families do not have enough patriarchal households
that have a mother and a father and are led by the father, and that explains why poverty
is so rampant amongst Black communities and crime is so rampant among Black communities.
Couldn't possibly have anything to do with institutional racism or anything like that.
It's definitely because the women are too strong and domineering over the men.
The Moynihan Report was eventually debunked, but not before it was validated by the U.S. government.
That meant that it was hugely influential when it came to writing actual policy that
would affect Black women every day.
The Moynihan Report itself was sanctioned and validated by the U.S. government, so it
was used to influence politicians and actual policies that were being made in the country.
So it really got this kind of formal stamp of approval that a lot of the criticisms of
the Moynihan Report did not get.
Okay, so to regroup: first you have the Moynihan Report which blamed Black women for the crime
and poverty in Black communities.
And then you have Ronald Reagan who racialized—I'm so sorry—
reformed welfare in the '70s and '80s.
Specifically, Ronald Reagan just kind of came out with it and coined this term "welfare queen"
when he wanted to reform the welfare system and he created this trope of Black
women as leeches on the American system who were taking advantage of taxpayer dollars
by having all these children, taking all this money from the government with no interest in working.
And this image of the welfare queen continues to affect perceptions and policies regarding welfare.
For example, did you know that working class White people without a college degree receive
the most money from federal poverty reduction programs?
Of course not, because it doesn't fit the perception.
Who would you say are the real welfare queens of this country?
So interesting that you act that because what does it even mean to mooch off of the country
if it's just using the financial services that come with being a citizen of this country?
A taxpayer.
That then means that people who get financial aid, people who receive housing subsidies,
food subsidies, first time home buyer incentives that are funded by the government,
married people who receive tax breaks — all of those things count as —
Yeah, health insurance.
All of those things count as government assistance.
If a welfare queen is defined as someone who lives off of government handouts then hi,
I'm one of the biggest beneficiaries.
As a White middle class homeowner, I receive one of the largest government subsidies: the
mortgage interest deduction.
That's what we call what the government pays us to help us own our own homes.
And this isn't a small amount of money.
In 2015 the U.S. spent so much money helping us own our homes, it was larger than the budgets
of the education, justice and energy departments combined.
But when we think of welfare queens, we don't think of me, and that's a problem.
From the Moynihan Report we got this image of a emasculating Black woman.
She's essentially contributing to the entire downfall of this community.
From Ronald Reagan's welfare queen, we got a Black woman who was willing to stoop to
criminality and fraud and bribery in order to get money that she wants.
And I think the result of that culturally was just that we couldn't trust Black women,
especially not with money.
But Sesali finds deep faults in this thinking because the data actually tells a totally different story.
She pointed out that the numbers don't really add up.
Well first of all, Black women are one of the most educated groups in America, they
are the fastest growing group on entrepreneurs in America, and they as individuals are more
likely to escape generational poverty than Black men are.
So this idea that Black women are only relying on men for any kind of social mobility, financial
mobility, is just simply not true.
Even when Moynihan was demonizing Black women for this, it was really just Black women supporting
their families in the best way that they knew how.
I don't think that there's any reason to have any shame about that.
And I think what we're seeing in pop culture right now is a lot of clapback to this idea
that Black women are gold diggers.
A lot of women are kind of really leaning in to that.
Like, "Yes I am a gold digger.
If you want any of my time, you need to make it worth it financially and otherwise.
I'm actually gonna embrace that and own that," because Black women know that the
reality for us is that we have to go get it ourselves and that's always been the case.
Black women are not out for men's money, we are out to support ourselves and to build
wealth and financial independence within a system that never supported us in the first place.
So maybe it's time we take away the stigma of the gold digger.
Comment below, I'd love to hear your thoughts.
And I'll see you back here next week.
Thanks so much for watching, click here to watch more videos on Riot, and click here to subscribe.
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