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Disruptive Christian Ethics
as a contagion that must be controlled. On the other hand, Mary has also
been celebrated in a primary way within Christian tradition for fulfilling
what much of the tradition has considered the quintessential vocation for
women: motherhood. But the motherhood of poor women and their
financial dependency that allows them to stay home while fulfilling this
role is debased and scorned in popular images and political rhetoric.25
When sorting out these contradictory representations of motherhood,
issues of race and poverty seem to be determining factors for deciding
when motherhood is and is not considered a virtuous quality for women.
Media images can instill the idea that the term “welfare recipient” refers
to an individual with a moral problem, and that “welfare recipient with a
moral problem” equals black woman. For instance, a degrading caricature
of a black woman shown in the early 1990s on a
Boston Globe
opinion-
editorial page depicted the “welfare mother” problem. A drawing of sev
eral blackened figures grabbing for cash appeared on this editorial page of
the
Globe
beside an article written by columnist Ellen Goodman, entitled
“Welfare Mothers with an Attitude.”26The most prominent silhouette in
the center of the illustration was a female with an Afro hairstyle, a wide
nose, and a baby on her hip who was also reaching up to get some of the
cash. In this instance, the public is literally drawn an object lesson on “the
welfare problem” and taught to focus on black women. The news con
sumer viewing this page is led to believe that “the welfare problem” is
mainly embodied in black, big-nosed females who are greedy for cash like
this one, and who sexually reproduce similarly greedy offspring.
In the accompanying article, Goodman asserted the need to teach
“middle-class values” to “welfare mothers.” She proclaimed the impor
tance of telling “AFDC mothers” that “no, we won’t pay more for more
children born onto the welfare rolls.” This contention emphasizes the
assumption that “AFDC mothers” are morally flawed in a manner that
“middle-class people” are not. Again, without offering any proof, this
argument about the need to tell them, “no, we won’t pay,” presupposes
that these mothers are instinctively concerned with gaining welfare ben
efits when they have children. How do we know that they are? Why isn’t
some proof of this accusation necessary? In the logic used here, since the
women are poor, they are also condemned as inherently immoral (with
out “middle-class values”), which leads one to deduce that by their very
nature, they are greedily focused on birthing children to gain welfare
money. This circular argument traps poor mothers inside of a degrading
stereotype. They can never be seen as innocent mothers struggling to care