WASHINGTON -- Gene Alday, a Republican member of the Mississippi state legislature,
apologized last week for telling a reporter that all the African-Americans in his hometown of Walls, Mississippi, are unemployed and on food stamps.
"I come from a town where all the blacks are getting food stamps and what I call 'welfare crazy checks,'" Alday said to a
reporter for The Clarion-Ledger, a Mississippi newspaper, earlier this month. "They don't work."
Nationally, most of the people who receive benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program are white. According to 2013 data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which administers the program, 40.2 percent of SNAP recipients are white, 25.7 percent are black, 10.3 percent are Hispanic, 2.1 percent are Asian and 1.2 percent are Native American.
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Who Gets Food Stamps? White People, Mostly
Probably mostly in red states.
Oh, my goodness. This is too funny. Do you know what the term "per capita" means? Obviously, whatever math classes you had never covered even the basic aspects of statistics.
Whites comprise 72% of the American population. So, naturally, in terms of raw percentage they're going to be getting the most food stamps. But you have to do a per capita analysis and then compare the results to get a clear, complete picture.
Whites comprise 72% of the population but only 40.2% of food stamp recipients are white. In contrast, blacks only comprise 13% of the population, but they account for 25.7% of food stamp recipients. Hispanics comprise about 17% of the population, but they only account for 10.3% of food stamp recipients.
In case you still don't get it, the percentage of whites on food stamps is about 42%
less than the white percentage of the population. The percentage of hispanics on food stamps is about 40%
less than the hispanic percentage of the population. The percentage of blacks on food stamps is nearly 100%
more than the black percentage of the population.