Using data from an original and nationally representative survey of 506 Black Americans and 538 White Americans, I attend in my dissertation to the convergences and divergences between Blacks' and Whites' attitudes about welfare policy. I find that while Blacks and Whites agree that welfare recipients should be morally regulated in their reproductive, sex, parenting, and work lives, they disagree over the use of sanctions—benefit reductions or revocations—to punish infractions. I contend that the divergence over sanctions arises out of differences of structural positioning: one's exposure to and experience with poverty. Though a sizable Black middle class sustains, Blacks are overall much more likely than Whites to live in poverty or close to it, or have ties to others struggling with it. Blacks as a group, therefore, are more likely than Whites to understand the material realities of poverty and thus the need for benefits. They are also more likely to have complex schemas of those in poverty, which work against stereotypical depictions of the poor. Whites, who are largely insulated from the realities of poverty, rely more on stereotypes—symbolic depictions of the poor and their orientations to work and reproduction. Structural positioning combines with ideology and group interest to generate divergence over benefit sanctions, despite agreement over the principle of behavioral regulation.

Structural positioning also helps us understand intra-racial diversity in attitudes. My work shows that Blacks and Whites who live below the poverty line or have prior experience with public assistance are, on the whole, less likely to accede to stereotypes about the poor, more likely to offer structural attributions for poverty, and more likely to say that the state is responsible for ensuring basic needs of the poor. I suggest that structural positioning is a potentially powerful mechanism for bringing the views of Blacks and Whites closer together. Indeed, it suggests that working-class Whites' racialized judgments of the poor might be somewhat counteracted by a developed understanding of poverty borne out of proximity.