The Welfare System... and what I hate about it.

I'm just going to go on a personal rant here because I've worked with enough welfare recipients to observe a pattern, and get angry because of it. Just as a disclaimer, I'm not predjudice, and I wholeheartedly believe in working social programs. I guess there is just a large group in Ohio that gives it a bad name... so here goes:

I, for 3 years, worked at a meat market. I'm talking raw poultry, beef, and pork. We had a deli and sold fried chicken as well, but for the most part, it was a meat market. Aside from the fact that my boss exploited foreign immigrants to get cheap labor (though that is another story in itself), there was another problem with my job: it was in the ghetto. Nevermind that I lived right down the street, right after the point where the area made a turnaround. I lived in a nice house with my family, but we are by no means rich, and even then, before moving out of state, I had no help with college or the few bills I had. I worked this job to pay my tuition. A smelly, disgusting job to pay for my college education. No complaints here.

Enter the customers. Rude, loud, obnoxious individuals wearing timberland boots and baby phat. They treated us like we were dirt, looked at me in disdain because I'm white, made my job harder by changing thier minds over and again(though that's more just a personal peeve...), and screamed at us if we didn't do something right. Aside from that, my poor asian co-workers not only could hardly understand thier dialect, but the customers themselves could not understand the asian accents and made rude comments about the "chinks" in between bitching about how the white man's got them down. Did I mention they bought T-Bone steaks, delmonico's, whole pork loins, pounds and pounds of chicken wings and boneless breasts (those are the most expensive parts of the chicken, for those not informed...), loaded thier baskets with fruit punch (we had a convenience stock of groceries as well), doughnuts, snack cakes, and cookies? And then paid on foodstamp cards.

I've seen women with a trail of children behind her that span the whole store. All unshowered and unruly. I've seen episodes of shoplifting like you wouldn't believe. By the same people usuing thier Ohio Cards. When does it all stop? I've seen men scream at thier "baby's mamas" and treat me in the same manner. What's the deal?

As stated before, I am not predjudice. But they need to get over it already with this whole "you owe me something because I'm black and your people enslaved my people many years ago." We owe them nothing. They call us predjudice, but I'm certainly not. I have plenty of black friends, and I respect even more that I dont know personally. They, on the other hand, hate on us all the time. Not only do they do that, but they discriminate within thier own race (I've seen it before) if someone's not "black enough"... mentally or physically. And they way they treated my foriegn coworkers shows that they have no problems discriminating if it goes beyond the bounds of this country.

On the subject of foodstamp cards: I know that no one has the ability to choose where they come from. I do believe, however, that we have the choice of what to do once we're there. I've seen people and families who were in desparate need of that grocery allowance each month, and it hurt me. But they didn't spend the bulk of thier money on sweets and empty calories to shovel into thier children's mouths. They bought bread and vegetables, and budgeted how much they could spend on meat. These people who dressed nicer than me, drove nice cars that I couldn't afford even living at my parent's and working 2 jobs, treated me like the scum of the earth. I couldn't buy those nice things. I didn't have the money. I was a student, and did I get any hand-outs? The FAFSA, you say? My parents made too much to qualify for anything, and didn't give me any money to put towards tuition or books.

Dont get me wrong, I consider myself lucky. I got a decent education as a child, and had the opportunity to go to college, but so do all of these minority kids! There are countless scholarships out there for minorities, if they were driven enough to seek them out. There's no reason for this increase in poverty. But I guess when we give out free grocery-money to the underpriveledged, they feel no reason to strive for something more. It kills me how content some people are living that way.

At any rate, I'm going to cut this short. As a final note, I believe in equality. I believe in everyone being treated equally and fairly. For those who get the assistance they need and use it wisely, I commend you and hope you the best. For all others who blow it on stupid shit, I hope the many children you will probably bear are a little smarter than yourselves.