Welfare and Control: Empowerment or Surveillance?

Within the film Claudine the welfare system functions as a mechanism that keeps black families in a state of prolonged poverty. It definitely reinforces racial and economic hierarchies because capitalism cannot thrive without second class citizens. Welfare is truly the legacy of slavery and this film did a great job of depicting the inequalities that it imposes on marginalized people. The fact that one of the state requirements is that a man not be present in the house in order to receive meager resources for survival is a shameful reality. Economic and social empowerment isn’t attainable under this system and the recipients are treated as burdens. This is the price many black people pay for freedom and it’s hard for anyone to function in a society being under constant surveillance. The welfare state is institutionally racist and it plays a major role in separating families by incentivizing mothers to remain unmarried. When they get married to the state they receive a mere pittance and when they get married in the traditional sense they are taxed excessively which is clearly a form of punishment.  I would say that I’m really shocked by the reality of the system but the truth is that nothing really surprises me when it comes to all the racist systems that are imposed on us by Europeans Americans. After learning about the fear that the ruling class have of minorities one day outnumbering them I can see how a system like this would be implemented. The Aryan ideology has been rebranded as capitalism and the view that black people are somehow less valuable than European Americans is still very prevalent today and its films like these that make Critical Race Theory undeniable.