Surprise! A majority of Americans don’t realize how many white people get government assistance—or, as Republicans want us to call it, welfare. The reality is that a plurality of the people who get government assistance are white, but that’s not what people believe, according to a new HuffPost/YouGov poll.
For instance, more than 60 percent of the people surveyed thought either that more food stamp recipients are black than white or that about the same amount of white and black people get food stamps. In reality:
Of 43 million food stamp recipients that year, 36.2 percent were white, 25.6 percent black, 17.2 percent Hispanic and 15.5 percent unknown. (Food stamps are formally known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.)
Similarly, more than 50 percent of respondents thought that about the same number or more Head Start kids are black, when reality is that 44 percent are white and 29 percent are black. This victory of stereotype over reality has real consequences:
The perceptions of who benefits from programs may affect the favorability of the programs themselves. White Americans are more likely to support “assistance to the poor” than “welfare,” one 2014 study found. And other polling has shown that whites are 30 points likelier to agree that “average Americans have gotten less than they deserve” than they are to say the same about black Americans.
There’s a loop, with racist views of who’s poor and the causes of poverty reinforcing negative views of programs associated with poverty (and, via stereotype, with people of color), while negative views of “welfare” reinforce racist stereotypes of the people imagined to receive welfare. That can mean less support for funding programs that millions of people—led by white people—rely on. And, by the way:
Trump supporters are also more likely than Clinton voters to overestimate the share of welfare and public housing benefits that go to black recipients.
You don’t say!