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The Truth and Consequences of Welfare Reform

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from: Jonah Edelman
to: Ron Haskins and Mickey Kaus

All Our Children

Posted Wednesday, Nov. 17, 2004, at 11:48 AM ET

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Dear Ron and Mickey,

First of all, I'm not sure what led Mickey to think I was gleeful about the awful casework depicted in painful detail by DeParle. Actually, as I thought I expressed in my last entry, I was furious and dismayed. And if those who still remain on the rolls are going to become economically self-sufficient, good casework plays an even more critical role.

I absolutely don't want recipients to just sit on the rolls, Mickey, and I agree that stricter work requirements will prod even more people to go out into the labor market. But I wonder how many of those left on the rolls are, like Opal, addicted to crack or methamphetamine or heroin, or are, like a welfare recipient named Amber Peck whom DeParle briefly profiles, "depressed all the time."

I wonder, too, in the absence of more effective casework, how many families will just end up in the same sorry situation as Opal and Amber. Opal's kids, a couple of whom were born with cocaine in their bloodstream, wind up in the child welfare system. The book ends with Opal out on the streets, in the estimation of a residential program director, "til somebody kill her, or she overdose." Amber Peck, a "fiftyish woman who lost her [welfare] check, her apartment, and after a drug binge, her spot in a homeless shelter," ends up behind bars on a drug charge.

Clearly, a social transformation on the scale of that which occurred in the past eight years will not be without such casualties. And we've all agreed we're better off with a system that requires work to get assistance. But when you're dealing with addictions and mental health problems, if you want good outcomes, caseworkers have to be as good as or better than the only good one in American Dream, and there have to be better places to refer recipients who are ready to deal with their problems.

And what about the children in all of this? One of the most compelling justifications for strict work requirements was the example it would set for children. "Ordered lives, elevated hopes, and inspired kids," Bill Clinton used to claim grandiosely. Bill Clinton also loved to tell the story of Lillie Harden (who Mickey also mentions), a former welfare recipient in Arkansas who, Clinton said, "looked me straight in the eye and said, 'When my boy goes to school and they say, "what does your mama do for a living," he can give an answer.' " Harden, DeParle reports, did have a daughter who got straight A's and went on to college:

But the son that Clinton was celebrating was better known for his rap sheet than his grades. Between the time Governor Clinton first told his story and the time President Clinton revived it, the teenage Carlton Harden had already served two years for shooting at some students outside a North Little Rock high school. In the past decade, he has been arrested twenty times, for offenses ranging from disorderly conduct to possession of crack cocaine with intent to deliver; he's gone to prison on drug charges twice.

What's up with that? There must be literally hundreds of thousands if not millions of examples of African-American families where the females make it and the men go astray. Two weeks ago I had a conversation with an impressive African-American woman who excelled in a troubled big-city school system, made it to college on a scholarship, got her MBA, and is now back in the community trying to improve the schools. She grew up with a single mother and two siblings, and none of the fathers of the children were involved in her upbringing. When I asked her what her brother was up to, she just shook her head and said, "No good."

What's going on? This is a crisis of epic proportions, which is rooted in history and perpetuated by, among other factors, the family, black culture, white racism, our public school systems, the criminal justice system, and inner city economies where, as Jewell said at one point, selling drugs "was every black man's job."

Ron, at my most "cold-eyed and unsparing," I can't see how you get to "a resurgence in married-couple families" without improving dismal black male employment rates, and I can't see how you do that in any significant way without:

  • investing in early childhood education so that black boys start elementary school prepared;
  • reducing class sizes in elementary school so that black boys learn to read by third grade;
  • improving the quality of teachers and principals in inner city school districts;
  • requiring that all black boys take algebra and other college prep courses rather than being tracked into remedial classes;
  • changing school suspension and expulsion policies so that fewer black boys get "pushed out" of school;
  • making our middle schools and high schools smaller and more relationship-oriented so fewer black boys drop out;
  • having quality after-school programs available so that black boys engage in positive rather than negative behaviors in the critical hours between 3 and 6 p.m.;
  • providing young black men with summer jobs and internships to get accustomed to the work world; and
  • expanding access for young black men to universities and community colleges.

I'm willing to go to the mat for any strategy that results in more married-couple black families—governmental or non-governmental—but I just don't buy the argument that more married-couple black families, in the absence of all those things I listed above, will solve our nation's social problems and promote the full development of our children. Both are needed.

It's sure been fun and thought provoking to debate with you both about such an impressive, provocative book. I look forward to more dialogue on other topics in the future.

Jonah

dialogues
entries
123456789
from: Jonah Edelman
to: Ron Haskins and Mickey Kaus

All Our Children

Posted Wednesday, Nov. 17, 2004, at 11:48 AM ET
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Jonah Edelman, Ph.D, is executive director of Stand for Children, a citizen voice for children with affiliates in four states. He lives in Portland, Ore. Ron Haskins is a senior fellow in the economic studies program at the Brookings Institution and senior consultant at the Annie E. Casey Foundation in Baltimore. Mickey Kaus, a Slate contributor, is author of The End of Equality.
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Remarks from the Fray:

This is a rather odd dialogue. A book that generally approves of welfare reform comes out, and to discuss it, slate selects three people who...generally approve of welfare reform. There's some quibbling about the details, perhaps--Edelman seems to think welfare reform is going a bit too fast, and Haskins seems to think it isn't going fast enough--but nobody seems willing to argue that welfare reform was a step in the wrong direction.

This can't possibly represent a complete consensus among commentators and experts that welfare reform was a good thing. All three panelists take a moment to rail against writers from the "left" who defend welfare as we knew it. I don't think these people are a myth, and I certainly don't think they're all idiots with nothing interesting to say.

--afaderman

(To reply, click here.)

(11/16)

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