The Threat of Poverty Without Misery

Focusing on contemporary United States social policy, this essay makes three interrelated arguments. First, it shows how twenty-first century US social policy is organized around an aspiration to intensify the immiseration of impoverished people of color. Second, it contends that this legislative and programmatic orientation toward cruelty is at least partially galvanized by the idea that any aspect of the lives of welfare recipients in excess of bare survival, any pleasure they may enjoy, is in effect stolen from taxpayers and so-called productive members of society. The marriage promotion and “responsible father” initiatives of Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) serve as the primary example for this argument. Third, in this context, the everyday practices and politics of pleasure theorized by women of color feminism and queer of color critique offer an especially indispensable resource for collective living otherwise.