00:00Hey, I'm Elisa Kreisinger, and every Tuesday I unpack my strong opinions with the help of an
00:05expert who might not have all the answers, but they certainly know more than I do. That's why
00:10this is Strong Opinions Loosely Held. And on this week's show, why do we still consider black women
00:16gold diggers? I recently learned that black women are the fastest growing group of entrepreneurs
00:22in this country, and black women are also the most educated group in America. So why is our
00:29culture so insistent on holding on to this outdated idea that black women are only out
00:33for men's money? And where did the idea even come from? This is something Refinery29 senior
00:39entertainment writer Cecily Bowen has thought a lot about. So long as black women have been
00:44on screen to be seen, there has been suspicion specifically around them and sexuality and
00:51money. This myth of the black woman as a gold digger is constantly being reinforced in popular
00:56culture. Now, for starters, there was a Kanye West song called Gold Digger, and Blac Chyna
01:02was considered gold digger number one when she started dating Rob Kardashian. And let's
01:07not forget reality TV. We can look at shows like Love & Hip Hop, Real Housewives of Atlanta,
01:12where it's always this conversation about what is this woman's intention with this man? What
01:19is she trying to get from him? So I think we can literally look everywhere for this gold digger
01:26trope. And these are just the recent examples. Cecily 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
01:37been in the pursuit of education and success and financial independence, but not for men and
01:44not at the hands of the system, literally from our own hard work, from our own enterprising
01:49spirits. So where did this myth even come from? Well, there's two specific events that led to the
01:55modern iteration of the stereotype. The first was the Moynihan Report, and the second was Ronald Reagan.
02:02In 1965, sociologist Patrick Moynihan blamed black female-led homes for the high crime rates and poverty
02:09rates among African Americans. The conclusion that he came to was that black families do not have
02:17enough patriarchal households that have a mother and a father and are led by the father. And that explains
02:23why poverty is so rampant amongst black communities and crime is so rampant among 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 U.S. government.
02:45That meant that it was hugely influential when it came to writing actual policy that would affect
02:50black women every day. The Moynihan Report itself was sanctioned and validated by the U.S. government.
02:58So it was used to influence politicians and like actual policies that were being made
03:05in the country. So it really got this kind of formal stamp of approval that a lot of the criticism
03:11of
03:11the Moynihan Report did not get. Okay, so to regroup, first you have the Moynihan Report,
03:16which blamed black women for the crime and poverty in black communities.
03:20And then you have Ronald Reagan, who racialized, I'm so sorry, reformed welfare in the 70s and 80s.
03:30Specifically, Ronald Reagan just kind of came out with it and coined this term welfare queen when he
03:38wanted to reform the welfare system. And he created this trope of black women as leeches on the American
03:44system, who were like taking advantage of taxpayer dollars by having all these children taking all
03:50this money from the government with no interest in working. And this image of the welfare queen
03:55continues to affect perceptions and policies regarding welfare. For example, did you know that working
04:01class white people without a college degree receive the most money from federal poverty reduction programs?
04:07Of course not, because it doesn't fit the perception.
04:10And who 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 of the
04:21country? If 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 subsidies,
04:36first-time homebuyer incentives that are funded by the government, married people who receive
04:42tax breaks, like all of those things count as government assistance. If a welfare queen is defined
04:50as someone who lives off of government handouts, then hi, I'm one of the biggest beneficiaries.
04:57As a white middle-class homeowner, I receive one of the largest government subsidies,
05:01the mortgage interest deduction. That's what we call what the government pays us to help
05:06us own our own homes. And this isn't a small amount of money. In 2015, the U.S. spent so
05:12much money
05:12helping us own our homes, it was larger than the budgets of the education, justice, and energy
05:18departments combined. But 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. She's essentially
05:32contributing to the entire downfall of this community. From Ronald Reagan's welfare queen,
05:37we got a black woman who is willing to stoop to criminality and fraud and bribery in order to get
05:43money that she wants. And I think the result of that culturally was just that we couldn't trust black
05:48women, especially not with money. But Cecily finds deep faults in this thinking because the data
05:53actually tells a totally different story. She 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. They are the fastest
06:04growing group of entrepreneurs in America. And they, as individuals, are more likely to escape generational
06:11poverty than black men are. So this idea that black women are only relying on men for any kind of
06:18like
06:18social mobility, financial mobility is just simply not true. Even when Moynihan was demonizing black
06:24women for this, it was really just black women supporting their families in the best way that
06:27they knew how. I don't think that there's any reason to have any shame about that. And I think what
06:33we're seeing in pop culture right now is a lot of clap back to this idea that black women are
06:37gold diggers. A lot of women are kind of like really leaning into that. Like, yes, I am a gold
06:40digger.
06:41If you want any of my time, you need to make it worth it financially and otherwise. And like,
06:45I'm actually going to embrace that and like own that because black women know that the reality
06:50for us is that like we have to go get it ourselves. And that's always been the case. Black women
06:54are
06:55not out for men's money. We are out to support ourselves and to build wealth and financial
07:01independence within a system that never supported us in the first place. So maybe it's time we take
07:06away the stigma of the gold digger.
