"Don't Bite the Hand that Feeds You"

In the essay, “Black and on Welfare: What You Don’t Know About Single-Parent Women” by Sandra Golden, it explains the lifestyles of black women who struggle with welfare. In the essay Golden states, “The study’s participants noted that they were not against the welfare reform law, rather they resented the discriminatory treatment from their self-sufficiency coaches (SSC)… the disrespect was a manifestation of public assistance are uneducated and lazy.” This statement posed a question in my mind that wonders whether what she studied in her participants is really the causing factor to their disrespect. When it comes to the respect that should be given from a “SSC” to a welfare participate should it be based on their education and personal behavior or simply should it be reflected from the respect given?  From a personal viewpoint I have interacted and I am acquaints to black women on welfare.  In observing their behavior and attitude towards people, majority of the women have a negative attitude to others. How can they expect someone to fully apply themselves in assisting you with the help you need if they treat have a bad temper? To a certain extent I can understand why some of the SSC may treat the women with less respect and it is because they earned it. Many of the women who struggle with financial issues that are single mothers have so much anger bottled up in them that they began to take it out on the people around them, especially those that may be in better situations than them.  Another thing to be mindful of is that many people have to depend on social services for assistance and it has nothing to do with their education. Some people who might have college degrees may be in the same predicament as someone who has a GED but that does not mean they should be treated with a higher degree of respect. It does not matter where they came from or what they have done in the past but it is where they are now. That now is being a single mother on welfare needing help and guide to have the ability to provide for herself and her children. Some of these women believe that the people that are helping them are obligated to help them and that is not true. They need to learn how to be respectful and not bite the hand that feeds them, while in this case help them. You do not need a high school diploma to understand the importance of manners, that should be a given.  I can understand Golden’s point as well as the participants with believing that a lot of mistreatment is rooted from the societal stigma that all black women on welfare are uneducated and have the “welfare mentality”. Some women who are mannerful are treated disrespectful because of that stereotype. Some "SSC" workers like to catergorize everyone in a certain catergory but not all. If you take the time to think about it, a lot of the SSC workers chose that job because they have a passion to help others in need not because they were stuck with it. So their focus is to provide the support that their participants need not to treat them with disrespect.