Welfare in black and white: The social construction of race between welfare clients and workers

The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PWORA), commonly understood as welfare reform, significantly altered the way in which welfare is administered. Among a number of other things, the Act ended the federal entitlement to a minimum standard of living for the most disadvantaged citizens and implemented a 60-month lifetime limit on welfare benefits. Another significant aspect of welfare reform included allowing states, local offices, and individual TANF workers much more discretion in the interpretation and implementation of welfare policy.; In this changing environment the importance of the front-line TANF employment workers has been magnified. Caseworkers now have the discretion to distribute needed resources and the power to sanction cases that are not successful. Ultimately, this amount of discretion means that the client-caseworker relationship becomes even more significant. One important aspect of the client-caseworker relationship, given the fact that caseworkers now have more discretion combined with the increased significance of their relationship with clients, is the role of race.; This study employs a unique methodology to specifically unpack the meaning of race within the client-caseworker relationship during welfare reform. The goal of this project is to illustrate the various implications that arise when caseworkers construct identities based on race.; Major findings reveal that race indeed plays a key role, albeit a complicated one, in the client-caseworker relationship. Overwhelmingly, caseworkers expressed that they were not racially discriminatory, tried to be color-blind, and never let race matter in their relationships. However, caseworker interviews indicated that culture became a proxy for race because of the loaded nature of the concept. Essentially, they meant that African Americans exhibit qualities such as having an attitude, differences in speech, or adverse reactions to a counselor that make them less successful. Therefore, these cultural traits were taken into consideration when caseworkers constructed notions of good and bad clients where African Americans were much more likely to be deemed as bad or unsuccessful. This study helps to shed light on the significance of the client-caseworker relationship and how race still proves to be a central and often problematic issue within this relationship.