In particular, we should expect lower-middle class African Americans to be especially worried about looking like they’re on the dole and therefore especially vociferous in their opposition to welfare. But we in fact we find the opposite: African Americans overwhelming support welfare programs relative to whites. And this response is exactly what one would expect with the “more for mine” attitude associated with farmer norms. Fearful occasions of resource uncertainty cause us to shrink or sphere of moral concern, be less willing to share and be more suspicious of strangers especially those who look different.
While I am a fan of the farmer vs. forager paradigm myself you are forgetting that wealth redistribution is not perfectly efficient, and it requires a bureaucracy to support it.
For US Blacks government jobs are a major source of middle and even lower upper class employment. The status boost from those and a whole bunch of policies usually clustered with wealth redistribution due to political gains more than offset any such loss.
Also mistaking a middle class Black for a underclass Black carries heavier penalties for non-Black Americans than say mistaking a middle class White or Asian for a member of the underclass. Since non-Blacks form a grand majority of the US middle and upper class, there is far less need for status competition among Blacks of the same status.
While I am a fan of the farmer vs. forager paradigm myself you are forgetting that wealth redistribution is not perfectly efficient, and it requires a bureaucracy to support it.
For US Blacks government jobs are a major source of middle and even lower upper class employment. The status boost from those and a whole bunch of policies usually clustered with wealth redistribution due to political gains more than offset any such loss.
Also mistaking a middle class Black for a underclass Black carries heavier penalties for non-Black Americans than say mistaking a middle class White or Asian for a member of the underclass. Since non-Blacks form a grand majority of the US middle and upper class, there is far less need for status competition among Blacks of the same status.