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Politics & Gender
Pinder puts the discussions of neoliberalism, globalization, and the existence of poor black women in the welfare state in conversation. This work is a valuable way of understanding how poor black women fit into the United States political economy. The "workfare" system requires that recipients work to receive welfare benefits, and in this globalized political economy the type of job available to recipients is the low-skilled service work that comes without benefits and protections, like healthcare and sick leave. Altogether, recipients have enough to get by, but not enough to have a quality life. Pinder makes it clear that the welfare system as it stands not only stigmatizes black women but also results in what she calls "death in life."
Politics & Gender, 2019
Sherrow O. Pinder's book explores the connection between globalization and the United States welfare system as we know it today, "workfare," with particular attention to its impact on black women. Although black women are by no means the largest welfare recipient group, Pinder highlights the irony that poor black women have become the face of welfare and are disadvantaged by the United States welfare system. Throughout the book, Pinder interrogates what it means to have a quality life in a neoliberal state and argues for a welfare system that provides universal benefits to all, such that who receives what from the state might one day lose its stigma. However, in advancing the argument of what the welfare state should be, she does not lose sight of what it is for poor black women. In the first chapter, Pinder lays out the theoretical underpinnings of the book. She makes it clear from the start that this is a work that seeks to discuss how poor black women are situated in the welfare state. Black women are both hypervisible due to the trope of the "welfare queen," and also invisible concerning the labor they are forced to engage in to remain welfare recipients. She asserts that we cannot understand the current welfare state without considering the role of globalization. At a time in which corporations have the autonomy to move, both domestically and internationally, in search of cheap labor and lower costs to production, the welfare-to-work system acts a source of low-skilled labor. Furthermore, the ethos around the "deserving poor" and the fact that
For nearly four-hundred years, blacks in North America have survived under conditions of oppression or in environments where they are required to assimilate into communities that have historically served the predominantly white privileged culture. This thesis examined the results of black needs to assimilate into the predominantly and historically powerful white American culture that often believes it understands what best serves the needs of blacks, without having ever been subject itself to historically evolved black survival culture and values. Unfortunately for blacks, over the centuries the black socio-economic development emulates more of a survival culture and identity that is unequal to white privileged culture and identity. Blacks have neither the economic nor the political power in North America to accumulate the wealth or socio-economic status of the privileged white Americans, and remain disadvantaged unless they can redeem black identity through assimilation. The unique black survival culture has its own communication styles and interpersonal relation values. For blacks to exist comfortably in predominantly white communities, their communication styles and interpersonal relational styles may be exhibited briefly, but ultimately blacks must assimilate into white culture to obtain acceptance. Although diversity and inclusion have both emerged as popular concepts for white Americans, they address only the inclusive behaviors and diversity for the physical and legal identity of blacks. The evolutionary black survival strategies of unique interpersonal and communication styles remain inappropriate for integration into white culture; consequently, black identity and culture will only be tolerated by whites for a second and exhibited by blacks for a mere second more.
Black life, complexities, nuances, and insights
Canadian Review of Sociology, 2022
Indigenous and Black Canadians are two racialized groups that have been identified as needing special or purposeful measures by which they would be able to gain access to employment, edu- cation, social, health and other services. Indeed, data have long shown that Indigenous and Black people continue to experience barriers to their participation in these areas; and as such, tend to be under-represented (Briggs, 2018; James, 2021; Thompson, 2018), even as legislation, policies, reports and programs like Multiculturalism (1971), Employment Equity (1984), Truth and Recon- ciliation (2015) and other such mechanisms are thought to signal governments’, businesses’, and institutions’ commitment – and that of society generally – to accommodating and responding to the needs, concerns, issues and challenges of minoritized Canadians. But clearly, these mecha- nisms have failed to change the situation for these Canadians because if they did, there would be no need for today’s education and employment initiatives to specifically identify Indigenous and Black people. In other words, if indeed, all minoritized or racialized people were benefitting from the promise of multiculturalism and Employment Equity policies and programs, then today’s EDID initiatives would not have had to specially target Black people.
#CritEdPol: Journal of Critical Education Policy Studies at Swarthmore College, 2021
To what do we owe Black women? Everything. To be Black and female in America means that you are ignored, silenced, and sometimes erased. the very fabric of history would be quite different for all of us without the contributions, tears, blood, and love of Black women. As a result of the intersection of patriarchy and white supremacy, Black women are too often left exhausted, overworked, and left out of the historical narrative. This multi-modal creative work is a call to action to end the erasure of Black women with scholarship, visual art, and poetry.
RACE GENDER AND CLASS, 2007
In Horton, Allen, Herring, and Thomas ' (2000) study of the black working class, a historical picture is painted in which black women are shown to be uniquely disadvantaged as it pertains to economic position more so than either black men or white women, their experiences parallel neither group. The factors that precipitated this pattern are the concern of this paper. In particular, I propose an integrative theory of race, gender, and class that is based on the utilization of one's occupation as an indicator of economic class. I will then explore the intersection of race and gender in historically creating the disadvantage experienced by black women in the American occupational structure. The advancement of black men, I argue, occurred under the guise of male privilege although they were black and the advancement of white women occurred under the guise of white privilege although they were female, however, black women were both black and female, thus there was no guise, no point of privilege by which they could have advanced. Hence we see their increase in the bottom class during the time when the rates for black men and white women were decreasing.
2004
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The Black studies reader / Jacqueline Bobo, Cynthia Hudley, Claudine Michel, editors. p. cm. ISBN 0-415-94553-4 (hardback)-ISBN 0-415-94554-2 (pbk.) 1. African Americans-Study and teaching. 2. African Americans-History. 3. African Americans-Social conditions. I.