SACRAMENTO, Calif (NC Daily Gazette) — The city of Oakland, California has launched a program targeting low-income black families to give them a guaranteed income of $500.00 per month. The program, however, is only for non-white families–white people are disqualified on the basis of skin color.
No, this is not satire, the Associated Press reported earlier this week that the welfare program will give low-income families of color 500 dollars per month with no rules on how they can spend it.
Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf said that the program was designed as a “demonstration project” to “add to the body of evidence, and to begin this relentless campaign to adopt a guaranteed income federally.”
Justification for adopting the program to fund black families only is based on the statistics that white households earn nearly three times as much as black households, therefore, the one-size-fits-all program instead fits only non-white families, regardless of actual income.
The program, which is clearly racists–not to mention, illegal–is flawed on this simple premise. There are plenty of white families in the city living at least as far below the poverty threshold as black families. Yet, the program does not target households by income, it targets by race and ethnic statistics.
