Be Calm and Take a Deep Breath

The Huff Post POLITICS article began with the following statement.  “WASHINGTON -- Gene Alday, a Republican member of the Mississippi state legislature, apologized last week for telling a reporter that all the African-Americans in his hometown of Walls, Mississippi, are unemployed and on food stamps.” 

I’m not really sure what the author was trying to say in this piece.  Maybe he was taking a potshot at a Republican state legislator from the South and trying to make him look bigoted.  Who knows?  Maybe he is.  Maybe he isn’t.  I would prefer to err on the side of caution and believe that he isn’t. Perhaps the author was congratulating the legislator for acknowledging a terrible fact.  I rather doubt it.  The author took a second shot over somebody’s bow though by saying that those big bad Republicans “are conducting a review of nutrition assistance with an eye toward figuring out how to nudge more people into the workforce” and how those big bad Republicans have “lamented that (there is) a growing share of recipients (who) are able-bodied adults without children”.  The author goes on to say that the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (whoever they are) estimates that one million people “will be kicked off the rolls by next year as states reimpose time limits on childless, non-disabled adults”.

You had to read half way through the article to discover that more African Americans in Alday’s legislative district do indeed receive more assistance than his white constituents.  But, before you got there you learned that the main thrust of the article was that nationally there is a higher percentage of white recipients than black recipients on government assistance.  The author relied on US Department of Agriculture data on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.  I found it interesting that the author took national figures and tried to apply them on a micro-stage.  It doesn’t always work that way.  The author’s rationale is like saying that since most Americans are white that everybody who lives in Paducah, Kentucky is white.  I’d call it pretty poor journalism.  Still, the author makes a pretty convincing argument about how whites take up a larger share of the SNAP funds than blacks.

According to the author’s article, there were 47 million Americans receiving SNAP assistance each month in 2013.  I would liked to have seen exact numbers, but I can roll with 47 million.  Of those 47 million Americans, 40.2% of the recipients were white, 25.7% were black, 10.3% were Hispanic, 2.1% were Asian, and 1.2% were (and still presumably are) Native American.  This amounts to about 1.6 times as many whites receiving SNAP assistance than blacks.  That’s a ballpark figure.  I suspect a skilled mathematician who is really interested in getting a precise figure could take it out three or four decimal points.  O.K., so point made.  On the face of things, whites receive more assistance than blacks.  Agreed.  In fact, what these numbers say is that there are 19 million whites and only 12 million blacks receiving SNAP assistance.  This is where you hear claims of white privilege.

The author included a few bar graphs to help impress us with the research that went into the article.  One bar graph showed the percent of SNAP recipients who are children, disabled, and elderly adults and another one show the percentage of SNAP recipients who had earned income, Social Security, SSI, other forms of assistance, and no income.  Unfortunately, the author never correlated that data with his ethnicity data.  In all, the article was a pretty good presentation for a fifth or sixth grade social science project.  But, it left me asking more questions than it answered, chief among those was the motivation for such a report.  However, the author’s motivation is far overshadowed by more pertinent questions that need addressed had the author taken another 20 minutes and did additional research.

I went to the United States Census Bureau (http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html) for a little help in obtaining the estimated 2013 United States population.  Of the approximately 316.5 million US population, 77.7% are white, 13.2% are black, 17.1% are Hispanic, 5.3% are Asian, and 1.2% are Native American. (I’ll put this all in a nice little table for you near the bottom of my comments.)  Now, if all things were equal, you would expect to see 78% of the SNAP assistance going to whites, 13% to blacks, 17% to Hispanics, 5% to Asians, and 1% to Native Americans.  But, we don’t.  Instead, this little table is what we see.

	Whites	Blacks	Hispanic	Asian	Native Am
% of US Population	77.7	13.2	17.1	5.3	1.2
% of SNAP Use	40.2	25.7	13.3	2.1	1.2

Do you see the problem here?  Though whites take up 40.2% of the SNAP dollars, they make up 77.7% of the total US population.  Meanwhile, blacks make up only 13.2% of the US population but take up 25.7% of the SNAP dollars.  So, maybe it is black privilege?

There is a second way to look at the problem, which I believe is more telling than the mere comparisons of general and SNAP populations.

While whites take up 40.2% of the SNAP funding, whites on SNAP account for only 7.7% of the white US population.  Blacks, on the other hand who take up 25.7% of SNAP funding, constitute 28.9% of the total black US population.  Do you understand the significance here?  While 7.7% of whites receive SNAP assistance, 28.9% of blacks receive SNAP assistance.  Maybe it really is black privilege.  No.

But, here’s the real shocker.  You’ll find it at the far right side of the table below.  Native Americans account for 1.2% of the US population and 1.2% of SNAP funds go to Native Americans.  That sounds nice and equitable until you keep working out the math.  You see, that 1.2% of SNAP assistance going to Native Americans amounts to 564,000 individuals.  That is 14.85% of the Native American population.  Go figure.  Let those numbers and percents sink in. Maybe we should call it Native American Disadvantage. And, instead of pointing fingers at those big bad Republicans maybe it would be good for all of us to be calm and take a deep breath and then go beyond fifth and sixth grade social science projects and determine what the real data are and what they mean.  And then do something about it.

Total US Population	White Population	Black Population	Hispanic Population	Asian Population	Native American Population
316,497,531	245,918,581.59	41,777,674.09	54,121,077.80	16,774,369.14	3,797,970.37	Total Population
	77.70%	13.20%	17.10%	5.30%	1.20%	% of Total Population
	40.20%	25.70%	10.30%	2.10%	1.20%	% Receiving Assistance
47,000,000	18,894,000.00	12,079,000.00	4,841,000.00	987,000.00	564,000.00	Individuals/Assistance
	7.68%	28.91%	8.94%	5.88%	14.85%	% of Race Population