And yet, the majority of poor people in this country are not black - whites in the Appalachians and parts of the South, recent hispanic immigrants, etc.
Speak for yourself. I know of MANY men who would turn there noses up at a pile of FREE money in the street. Wise men who know that nothing is free, and who are more than willing to sacrifice for what they think is right.
Those guys are out hunting their own food though and building their own cabins in the woods. They are not in line for food stamps.
Years ago, my wife and I were graduate students at UVA, in Charlottesville, VA. We had sclolarships, our own car, etc, but money was somewhat tight. A friend suggested that we qualify for food stamps, that she and her boyfriend had enlisted already. We were very naive back then (newlyweds, clueless about life, you get the picture) and we didn't think much about it. As a matter of fact, we didn't even know what foodstamps were - perhaps another scholarship of sorts... So, we just walked to the nearby welfare office. A young woman, clearly bored out of her skull, handed us a set of documents and applications forms and waved us off to the waiting room, no questions asked. As we were filling out the paperwork, we realized where we were just by seeing who was there, how they were dressed and how they talked to each other. Poor, desperate people most of them. And here we were, two graduate students at a premier University - perhaps relatively cash strapped for the moment but with bright professional futures ahead of us, definitely qualified to get a student loan or two if we felt lke it. We looked at each other, got up and walked out. One of the lessons we learned that day was that such programs are very useful to some people and highly vulnerable to abuse by others. I remember reading an article recently about a French guy whose "job" is to live off welfare in France and how well he does it, totally legally - he even wrote a book about it: http://www.whytraveltofrance.com/20...off-unemployment-benefits-in-france-for-life/