There was an article on yahoo today about how the 24 hour grocery stores will be packed midnight the day that food stamps hit the EBT cards. The article mostly just talked about how unfortunate it is that even after the recession is technically over, people are still having a hard time and that we’re at an all time high for the number of people on food stamps.
The comments were just…disgusting. Look I agree that there are abuses of public assistance, and there are some people who use it just because they can and don’t attempt to find a way for it not to be necessary. But that’s NOT the majority of people. Comments range from everything to ‘close your legs; black women have too many kids; lazy ass; fat ass; they should be drug tested; if they own ANYTHING material they shouldn’t receive them; stupid ass; minorities get them the most and yet they have the upper hand in the workforce (really? smh)’ and the list just goes on.
IT IS NOT THAT SIMPLE!!!!!! This shit just makes me crazy! It doesn’t take much to need public assistance. Yes, some people shouldn’t have as many kids as they do, but the answer isn’t to cut food assistance, we have an entire american educational system that FAILS people that contributes to that. We have CENTURIES of discrimination, oppression, and inequality that doesn’t make it a level playing field for opportunities to access education and other necessary resources to get higher paying jobs.
What people don’t think about is, even if every person in this country got a college degree, there would still be service jobs that need to be filled, which aren’t necessarily going to necessitate a degree and which would be stupid to have after you indebted yourself 50-100 THOUSAND dollars. Then again, we could just hire more immigrants to fill those jobs, tell them they’re worthless, and pay them pennies, and then treat them like subhumans when they have the nerve to be upset about not having enough money.
I’m just tired of these blanket statements and people who don’t take account of how they got to where they were (almost definitely it wasn’t JUST sheer hard work, there was some level of opportunity and privilege). Instead they want to sit around and say if you’re on food stamps, we should be able to control every aspect of what you eat, how you eat it, and tell you that you’re not allowed to do anything or have anything because you haven’t earned it by being on foodstamps—meanwhile, getting a job nowadays almost necessitates internet and a computer and you have to have a phone. People say if you’re on public assistance, you shouldn’t smoke, drink, get tattoos, have piercings, have any technology, and so on…be drug tested…
It’s already been established that people’s feeling of self-control, the ability to make decisions for themselves and not always be under the direction of an external source, correlates with their self-worth, and their self-determination, and a lack of these things only adds to decreased potential for success.
I’m as tired as the next person about abuses of the system, but you rarely hear this much outrage at all the tax dollars we spend on jails and wars, and somehow funneling more money into the hands of the already stupid rich. Stop spending so much energy cussing these people out and put all that energy into advocating for a better society that advocates for the humanity and rights of ALL people.
like black butterflies 