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00:29culture so insistent on holding on to this outdated idea that black women are only out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
01:26digger trope. And these are just the recent examples. Cecily points out the irony in this portrayal.
01:32In some ways, I guess you can say the black women are gold diggers because we have always been in
01:37the
01:37pursuit of education and success and financial independence, but not for men and not at the hands of
01:45the system literally from our own hard work, from our own enterprising spirits. So where did this myth
01:51even come from? Well, there's two specific events that led to the modern iteration of the stereotype. The
01:58first was the Moynihan Report and the second was Ronald Reagan. In 1965, sociologist Patrick Moynihan blamed
02:05black female-led homes for the high crime rates and poverty rates among African Americans. The conclusion
02:12that he came to was that black families do not have enough patriarchal households that have a mother
02:20and a father and are led by the father. And that explains why poverty is so rampant amongst black
02:26communities and crime is so rampant among black communities. Couldn't possibly have anything to do
02:32with institutional racism or anything like that. It's definitely because the women are too strong and
02:38domineering over the men. The Moynihan Report was eventually debunked, but not before it was validated
02:43by the U.S. government. That meant that it was hugely influential when it came to writing actual policy
02:50that would affect black women every day. The Moynihan Report itself was sanctioned and validated by the U.S.
02:57government. So 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, but first you have the Moynihan Report,
03:17which blamed black women for the crime and poverty in black communities. And then you have Ronald Reagan,
03:23who racialized, I'm so sorry, reformed welfare in the 70s and 80s. Specifically, Ronald Reagan just kind
03:32of came out with it and coined this term welfare queen 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 taking advantage
03:46of taxpayer dollars by having all these children taking all this money from the government with no
03:52interest in working. And this image of the welfare queen continues to affect perceptions and policies
03:58regarding welfare. For example, did you know that working class white people without a college degree
04:03receive the most money from federal poverty reduction programs? Of course not, because it doesn't fit the
04:10perception. Who would you say are the real welfare queens of this country? So it's so interesting that you
04:17asked that because what does it even mean to mooch off of the country if it's just using the financial
04:23services that come with being a citizen of this country? That then means that people who get
04:31financial aid, people who receive housing subsidies, food subsidies, first-time home buyer incentives
04:38that are funded by the government, married people who receive tax breaks, like all of those things
04:43count as government assistance. If a welfare queen is defined as someone who lives off of government
04:52handouts, then hi, I'm one of the biggest beneficiaries. As a white middle-class homeowner, I received one of
04:59the largest government subsidies, the mortgage interest deduction. That's what we call what the
05:04government pays us to help us own our own homes. And this isn't a small amount of money. In 2015,
05:10the
05:11U.S. spent so much money helping us own our homes, it was larger than the budgets of the education,
05:16justice, and energy departments combined. But when we think of welfare queens, we don't think of me.
05:25And that's a problem. From the Moynihan Report, we got this image of an emasculating black woman.
05:31She's essentially contributing to the entire downfall of this community. From Ronald Reagan's
05:37welfare queen, we got a black woman who is willing to stoop to criminality and fraud and bribery in order
05:43to get the money that she wants. And I think the result of that culturally was just that we couldn't
05:48trust black women, especially not with money. But Cecily finds deep faults in this thinking,
05:53because the data actually tells a totally different story. She pointed out that the numbers don't really
05:58add up. Well, first of all, black women are one of the most educated groups in America. They are the
06:03fastest growing group of entrepreneurs in America. And they, as individuals, are more likely to escape
06:10generational poverty than black men are. So this idea that black women are only relying on men for
06:17any kind of social mobility, financial mobility, is just simply not true. Even when Moynihan was
06:23demonizing black women for this, it was really just black women supporting their families in the best
06:27way that they knew how. I don't think that there's any reason to have any shame about that. And I
06:33think
06:33what we're seeing in pop culture right now is a lot of clap back to this idea that black women
06:37are
06:37gold diggers. A lot of women are kind of like really leaning into that. Like, yes, I am a gold
06:40digger. If 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 not
06:55out for men's money. We are out to support ourselves and to build wealth and financial independence
07:01within a system that never supported us in the first place. So maybe it's time we take away the stigma
07:07of the
07:07gold digger. Thanks so much for watching. Make sure you click that follow button so you can check out a
07:12new
07:12episode every week.
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