Real Babies, Illegitimate Debates

If she followed the welfare-reform debate, Anita Hill must be having post- traumatic flashbacks. Here we have a collection of important white males, including Bill Clinton, Pat Moynihan and Bill Bennett, scowling down on one small, scared, female figure -- embodied, in this case, in the Welfare Recipient. The women in the 5 million families on welfare are no more, and no less, representative of American womanhood than Anita Hill was. But the assault on welfare, like the Senate committee's interrogation of Professor Hill, is an implicit attack on the dignity and personhood of every woman, black or white, poor or...

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