{"product_id":"from-slavery-to-poverty-gunja-sengupta-9780814740613","title":"From Slavery to Poverty: The Racial Origins of Welfare in New York, 1840-1918","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe racially charged stereotype of \"welfare queen\"--an allegedly promiscuous waster who uses her children as meal tickets funded by tax-payers--is a familiar icon in modern America, but as Gunja SenGupta reveals in \u003cb\u003eFrom Slavery to Poverty\u003c\/b\u003e, her historical roots run deep. For, SenGupta argues, the language and institutions of poor relief and reform have historically served as forums for inventing and negotiating identity.\u003cbr\u003eMining a broad array of sources on nineteenth-century New York City's interlocking network of private benevolence and municipal relief, SenGupta shows that these institutions promoted a racialized definition of poverty and citizenship. But they also offered a framework within which working poor New Yorkers--recently freed slaves and disfranchised free blacks, Afro-Caribbean sojourners and Irish immigrants, sex workers and unemployed laborers, and mothers and children--could challenge stereotypes and offer alternative visions of community. Thus, SenGupta argues, long before the advent of the twentieth-century welfare state, the discourse of welfare in its nineteenth-century incarnation created a space to talk about community, race, and nation; about what it meant to be \"American,\" who belonged, and who did not. Her work provides historical context for understanding why today the notion of \"welfare\"--with all its derogatory \"un-American\" connotations--is associated not with middle-class entitlements like Social Security and Medicare, but rather with programs targeted at the poor, which are wrongly assumed to benefit primarily urban African Americans.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Gunja SenGupta\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 0814740618\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780814740613\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e New York University Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 03\/01\/2009\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 352\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Hardcover\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 1.35lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 9.00h x 6.00w x 1.30d\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eReview Citation(s): \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eChronicle of Higher Education\u003c\/i\u003e 05\/01\/2009 pg. 20","brand":"Gunja SenGupta","offers":[{"title":"Hardcover","offer_id":48086917644543,"sku":"9780814740613","price":107.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/files\/img_ba3956ab-bdd3-42f6-b965-250901ef01e5.jpg?v=1769097310","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/from-slavery-to-poverty-gunja-sengupta-9780814740613","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}