The Welfare Queen
People assuming you’re a welfare recipient, lazy & ignorant…even though you have 3 degrees…with honors.
#howitfeelstobeablackgirl– @aDoseOfVee
11:54 PM – 10 Jul 2015
CNN Politics contributor John Blake in “Return of the ‘Welfare Queen'” discusses how the conversation resurfaced during the 2012 presidential elections. Blake states that for some “the Welfare Queen is an epic political lie. (Former President Ronald) Reagan invented her, and Americans keep buying the lie.”
Kaaryn Gustafson, author of “Cheating Welfare: Public Assistance and the Criminalization of Poverty,” states:
“It’s one of those persistent symbols that come up every election cycle. This image of the lazy African-American woman who refuses to get a job and keeps having kids is pretty enduring. It’s always been a good way to distract the public from any meaningful conversations about poverty and inequality.”
The Miseducation of the Black Female Body
#HowItFeelsToBeABlackGirl having your body fetishized and sexualized but not loved.
– @kashmirVIII
5:30PM – 20 Jun 2015
Audre Lorde in the essay “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power” discusses the sexualization and fetishization of the Black female body, but discusses the power that lies within her sexuality.
Lorde states:
“The erotic has often been misnamed by men and used against women. It has been made into the confused, the trivial, the psychotic, the plasticized sensation. For this reason, we have often turned away from the exploration and consideration of the erotic as a source of power and information, confusing it with its opposite, the pornographic. But pornography is a direct denial of the power of the erotic, for it represents the suppression of true feeling. Pornography emphasizes sensation without feeling… The erotic is a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings. It is an internal sense of satisfaction to which, once we have experienced it, we know we can aspire.”
