Introducing: The Direct Message Podcast
Blog Post
April 19, 2018
The Direct Message Blog was born out of a recognition that our personal experiences shape our outlooks on policy and politics. In our blog-posts - many of which emerged through ordinary conversations about our lives, academic work and professional experiences - the Millennial Public Policy Fellows attempt to level with our audience and invite dialogue across difference.
The two of us, Myacah and Christian, came to New America with a desire to think critically about how public policy has actively shaped the marginalization of communities in the United States and abroad. This is due in no small part to our own backgrounds as children of single mothers, people of color, and people with scholarly interests in racial and ethnic studies - perspectives often excluded from intergenerational policy analysis.
In this four-part Direct Message Podcast series, we’ll work to leverage our positions at New America to center some of the narratives and understandings of policy issues that have been historically marginalized both before and during our lifetimes. By chatting with friends and experts alike, we'll revisit discussions about the impacts of things like welfare reform, No Child Left Behind, the PATRIOT Act, and the Great Recession to gain a better understanding of the future of American politics.
We’ll ask questions like: How has living in a post-9/11 world affected our perceptions of security, safety, and surveillance? What did the Great Recession mean for our perceived financial security? How are our partisan affiliations (or lack thereof) affected by contemporary shifts in two-party politics? How have past and present social movements reshaped how young people conceptualize political progress? The DM Podcast will attempt to show the benefits and costs of analyzing these moments through a generational lens.
For our first episode, “Raised by a Welfare Queen,” we chose a topic that greatly shaped our childhoods - welfare reform. In the 1990s President Bill Clinton campaigned on a promise to “end welfare as we know it” in response to mounting concerns about the decline of marriage rates and the myth of the welfare queen. What did this mean for the children who grew up under this policy prescription that became a flashpoint in the erosion of the American social safety net? To help us answer this question, we sat down with Associate Professor of History at Georgetown University, Dr. Marcia Chatelain to discuss the fraught history of welfare policy and the gendered and racialized narratives that have shaped it.
“Raised by a Welfare Queen” epitomizes some of the struggles central in framing the work that think tanks do. The arc of public policy in the late ‘90s easily elevated the two-parent household, but how can you identify the ways that this affected the children that grew up during this time period, regardless of how many people raised them? We spent some time talking with Dr. Chatelain about the ways in which the loaded idea of “personal responsibility” still lingers in the financial decision-making that Millennials deal with now. In the discussion, we mention a few things worth reading:
Millennial Fellow Roselyn Miller’s Direct Message blogpost on chosen family
Family-Centered Social Policy Director Rachel Black’s article in The Atlantic titled The ‘Welfare Queen’ Is a Lie’
An annotated version of The Negro Family: The Case for National Action, also known as the Moynihan Report
Becoming Visible: Race, Economic Security, and Political Voice in Jackson, Mississippi
Political Reform’s Mark Schmitt’s New York Times article on the “Scam Economy”
We hope you enjoy our discussion and keep a look out for our next episode.
As always, thanks for letting us slide into your DMs.