We can't assume poor men have regular "paychecks," much less typically larger incomes than those of the poor women with whom they hook up, especially in black communities.
"Black women have been a majority of black workers since 1990" (at <http://www.jointcenter.org/DB/factsheet/employ.htm>).
"For African Americans, it [unemployment among teens] reached 42% for men and 37% for women, and was 19% and 16%, respectively, for white men and women" (at <http://www.jointcenter.org/DB/factsheet/employ.htm>).
At 6:22 PM -0400 8/14/03, JBrown72073 at cs.com wrote:
> >. . . The issue that best reflects Berlant's argument . . . is the
>>emphasis on state and federal efforts to encourage, through funding
>>allocated for governmental programs and individual incentives, single
>>welfare mothers to marry the fathers of their children. Consider that
>>in West Virginia, a couple's welfare benefits are augmented if they
>>wed, while the state has reduced the welfare benefits cohabitating
>>non-married adults receive by 25 percent.
>
>But that has to do with wanting to put the financial burden of
>raising children squarely on the underpaid shoulders of the working
>class as a whole, men included, more than it has to do with
>controlling working class women (although it does that, too). This
>is true even for these incentive schemes, as welfare is now
>temporary and much outlasted by child support and marriage property
>issues. As Kelley mentioned earlier, the feminist focus should be
>universal supports funded by corporate taxes, not on more thoroughly
>dunning working class guys.
That's news to me -- the last time the question of child support came up here, she was in favor of strict enforcement of collection of child support payments from men. -- Yoshie
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