00:00Hey, I'm Elisa Kreisinger and every Saturday I unpack my strong opinions with the help
00:04of an expert who might not have all of the answers, but they certainly know more than
00:08I do.
00:09That's why this is Strong Opinions, Loosely Held.
00:12And on this week's show, why do we still consider black women gold diggers?
00:17I recently learned that black women are the fastest growing group of entrepreneurs in
00:22this country, and black women are also the most educated group in America.
00:27So, why is our culture so insistent on holding on to this outdated idea that black women
00:33are only out for men's money?
00:34And where did the idea even come from?
00:37This is something Refinery29 senior entertainment writer Cecily Bowen has thought a lot about.
00:43So long as black women have been on screen to be seen, there has been suspicion specifically
00:49around them and sexuality and money.
00:52This myth of the black woman as a gold digger is constantly being reinforced in popular culture.
00:57Now, for starters, there was a Kanye West song called Gold Digger.
01:00And Blac Chyna was considered gold digger number one when she started dating Rob Kardashian.
01:06And let's not forget reality TV.
01:09We can look at shows like Love & Hip Hop, Real Housewives of Atlanta, where it's always
01:13this conversation about what is this woman's intention with this man?
01:19What is she trying to get from him?
01:21So, I think we can literally look everywhere for this gold digger trope.
01:27And these are just the recent examples.
01:29Cecily points out the irony in this portrayal.
01:32In some ways, I guess you can say that black women are gold diggers because we have always
01:36been in the pursuit of education and success and financial independence, but not for men
01:43and not at the hands of the system, literally from our own hard work, from our own enterprising
01:48spirits.
01:49So, where did this myth even come from?
01:52Well, there's two specific events that led to the modern iteration of the stereotype.
01:57The first was the Moynihan Report and the second was Ronald Reagan.
02:01In 1965, sociologist Patrick Moynihan blamed black female-led homes for the high crime rates
02:08and poverty rates among African Americans.
02:11The conclusion that he came to was that black families do not have enough patriarchal households
02:19that have a mother and a father and are led by the father.
02:22And that explains why poverty is so rampant amongst black communities and crime is so rampant
02:29among black communities.
02:30Couldn't possibly have anything to do with institutional racism or anything like that.
02:34It's definitely because the women are too strong and domineering over the men.
02:39The Moynihan Report was eventually debunked, but not before it was validated by the US government.
02:45That meant that it was hugely influential when it came to writing actual policy that would
02:50affect black women every day.
02:53The Moynihan Report itself was sanctioned and validated by the US government.
02:57So it was used to influence politicians and like actual policies that were being made in
03:05the country.
03:06So it really got this kind of formal stamp of approval that a lot of the criticism of the
03:11Moynihan Report did not get.
03:13Okay.
03:14So to regroup, first you have the Moynihan Report, which blamed black women for the crime
03:18and poverty in black communities.
03:21And then you have Ronald Reagan, who racialized, I'm so sorry, reformed welfare in the 70s and
03:2880s.
03:30Specifically, Ronald Reagan just kind of came out with it and coined this term welfare
03:36queen when he wanted to reform the welfare system.
03:39And he created this trope of black women as leeches on the American system who were like
03:46taking advantage of taxpayer dollars by having all these children taking all this money from
03:51the government with no interest in working.
03:53And this image of the welfare queen continues to affect perceptions and policies regarding
03:58welfare.
03:59For example, did you know that working class white people without a college degree receive
04:04the most money from federal poverty reduction programs?
04:07Of course not, because it doesn't fit the perception.
04:10Who would you say are the real welfare queens of this country?
04:16So it's so interesting that you asked that, because what does it even mean to mooch off
04:20of the country?
04:21If it's just using the financial services that come with being a citizen of this country,
04:28that then means that people who get financial aid, people who receive housing subsidies, food
04:36subsidies, first time home buyer incentives that are funded by the government, married
04:41people who receive tax breaks, all of those things count as government assistance.
04:48If a welfare queen is defined as someone who lives off of government handouts, then hi, I'm
04:54one of the biggest beneficiaries.
04:57As a white middle class homeowner, I received one of the largest government subsidies, the
05:01mortgage interest deduction.
05:03That's what we call what the government pays us to help us own our own homes.
05:07And this isn't a small amount of money.
05:09In 2015, the U.S. spent so much money helping us own our homes, it was larger than the budgets
05:15of the education, justice, and energy departments combined.
05:20But when we think of welfare queens, we don't think of me, and that's a problem.
05:27From the Moynihan Report, we got this image of an emasculating black woman.
05:31She's essentially contributing to the entire downfall of this community.
05:35From Ronald Reagan's welfare queen, we got a black woman who is willing to stoop to criminality
05:41and fraud and bribery in order to get money that she wants.
05:45And I think the result of that culturally was just that we couldn't trust black women, especially
05:49not with money.
05:50But Cecily finds deep faults in this thinking because the data actually tells a totally different
05:55story.
05:56She pointed out that the numbers don't really add up.
05:58Well, first of all, black women are one of the most educated groups in America.
06:02They are the fastest growing group of entrepreneurs in America.
06:07And they, as individuals, are more likely to escape generational poverty than black men
06:12are.
06:13So this idea that black women are only relying on men for any kind of social mobility, financial
06:19mobility, is just simply not true.
06:21Even when Moynihan was demonizing black women for this, it was really just black women supporting
06:26their families in the best way that they knew how.
06:28Right.
06:28I don't think that there's any reason to have any shame about that.
06:32And I think what we're seeing in pop culture right now is a lot of clap back to this idea
06:36that black women are gold diggers.
06:37A lot of women are kind of like really leaning into that.
06:39Like, yes, I am a gold digger.
06:41If you want any of my time, you need to make it worth it financially and otherwise.
06:44And like, I'm actually going to embrace that and like own that because black women know
06:49that the reality for us is that like we have to go get it ourselves.
06:52And that's always been the case.
06:54Black women are not out for men's money.
06:56We are out to support ourselves and to build wealth and financial independence within a system
07:02that never supported us in the first place.
07:04So maybe it's time we take away the stigma of the gold digger.
07:08Comment below.
07:08I'd love to hear your thoughts and I'll see you back here next week.
07:12Thanks so much for watching.
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