Black and on Welfare Blog

Black and on Welfare: What You Don’t Know About Single-Parent Women by Sandra Golden was an eye opening essay about the often neglected personal side to women on welfare. She started the essay with the following quote from Maya Angelou, “Women should be tough, tender, laugh as much as possible and live long lives. The struggle for equality continues unabated, and the woman warrior who is armed with wit and courage will be among the first to celebrate victory”. Angelou is a renowned writer who is known for inspiring black women to be aware of their strength and use all of their positive attributes to build on to their self esteem. Golden dissolved the barriers among black women from different financial backgrounds by pulling from a writer we could all relate to.

In the essay Golden recalls her experience being on welfare. She starts by outlining her pregnant, unemployed, and homeless circumstances. At the time Golden was 20 years old and she vividly expresses how she felt dehumanized and humiliated after leaving the welfare office. Golden goes further to claim black women are stereotyped as ignorant and lazy with minimum education or skills by the social workers. Like a good writer she is vulnerable in her testimony and used her personal experiences to make the story of a single woman on welfare more compelling to the reader. Like a great writer she followed her account with several accounts from different black women, and writers to report similar stories. Golden even used the welfare reform law of 1996 to discredit welfare training programs designed without integrally learning about the women who need them.

I enjoyed the essay because I could relate to Golden’s experiences. The women told stories that reminded me of things my mother had said. Being polite despite a person looking down on you was a big one. My mother knew she needed to take care of her family and sometimes smiling when you wanted to cry was necessary. Honestly I did not like going down to those offices and in some ways this experience inspired me to do better. Golden was 20 and on welfare and now is pursuing a doctorate degree in curriculum.