Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty

Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) was set up as a grant within the Social Security Act of 1935, enabling states to provide funds in the form of welfare payments to children living in poverty. Public discourse has vilified AFDC recipients, many of whom are Black women. Welfare programs initially supported white women who lacked support from working spouses. When benefits shifted more toward aiding Black women and children in the mid-20th century, public support for welfare declined steadily. The public came to view women on welfare as amoral freeloaders—a view that the “welfare queen” media stereotype notably promoted—and as burdens on taxpayers, though no controversy has ever existed about providing tax-funded Social Security payments to widows and children of the deceased, who are sometimes rather affluent.

Starting in the 1960s, numerous state legislatures “considered a rash of punitive sterilization bills aimed at the growing number of Blacks receiving [AFDC]” (92). In the 1990s, some states, such as Tennessee, began to pass laws encouraging women who receive AFDC to get free Norplant implantations. Some states denied “increases in AFDC payments to women who declined the device” (107).