It’s been said that in politics the definition of a racist is “someone winning an argument against a liberal.” If that’s true, then conservatives have evidently been winning much of the national debate lately.

When Republicans like Newt Gingrich raise important issues like dependency, as he did in South Carolina last week, countless liberal media outlets toss the “racism” accusation around like a football. Democratic congressmen and other politicians have since followed suit.

This reaction to simple differences of opinion has become commonplace among liberals. Normally, conservatives just let it roll off their backs. But because the indictment is so grave, it’s incumbent upon conservatives to stand up for themselves.

The tendency for liberals to call names is not only childish and petty, but also shockingly ignorant of the Democratic Party’s failed policies toward minorities and the poor over past decades.

Dependency is an issue that injures millions of people of all races. Though minorities are more likely to find themselves affected, a plurality of Americans on food stamps are white, a plurality of Americans on unemployment insurance are white, and a plurality of Americans on Medicaid are white.

Since the Great Society in the late 1960s, liberals have loved to congratulate themselves for being the saviors of the poor. But the record of the modern welfare state indicates abject failure.

When John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson originally campaigned for their social welfare programs in the early ‘60s, they did so under the slogan “give a hand, not a handout.” However, it should have come as no surprise that their legacies have shown the exact opposite.

From 1960 to 1976, per capita welfare spending exploded from $259 to $1065 in 2005 prices, a 311 percent increase that doesn’t even include entitlements like Medicaid. The vast majority of these increases occurred in the 1970s.

Today, we are witnessing similar growth. By 2010, real per capita welfare spending grew to $2,293 per capita, about twice as much as 10 years ago.

But instead of raising the fortunes of the poor, these handouts have created an underclass irrevocably mired in poverty. From 1939 to 1967, the national poverty rate steadily improved from about 67 percent to just 11 percent. The rate has remained virtually unchanged since then.

Among black families, the poverty rate dropped from 87 percent to 47 percent from 1940 to 1960. During the beginning and middle of the 1960s it continued to fall rapidly, but progress halted when the Great Society kicked into gear. Consequently, poverty increased slightly from 32 percent to 33 percent between 1969 and 1980.

What the welfare state did accomplish is more crime, more youth unemployment, and more illegitimacy in poor communities than every before.

The national violent crime rate increased by 277 percent from 1961 to 1980, and the surge was almost entirely concentrated in disadvantaged areas.

In 1955, the black and white teenage unemployment rates were about equal at around 10 percent. By 1980 the black teenage unemployment rate grew to more than double that for whites. In 2010 as many as 49 percent of black teens were out of work.

Worst of all, the number of children born out of wedlock has skyrocketed since the introduction of the welfare state, regardless of race.

In 1960, just 6 percent of white children from working class families were born out of wedlock. Today that proportion has grown to 50 percent. In 1960, just 22 percent of all black children were born out of wedlock. By 2005 the number was nearly 70 percent.

What makes this terrifying is the immeasurable adversity faced by children born out of marriage. While the poverty rate for children of married parents is just 8 percent, the rate for children of single parents is 35 percent.

Even more frightening is the plight of these children when they get older. According to academic literature, the single strongest predictor of whether young men will be incarcerated is if they grew up in a single-parent home. That’s even after controlling for income, neighborhood and race.

Clearly, the human toll from the welfare state is substantial. And while liberals sponsored its rapid growth, big-government Republicans from Richard Nixon to George W. Bush were also complicit.

But today, true conservatives have taken the lead on everything from reducing dependency to advancing school choice for inner-city kids to creating competitive enterprise zones in impoverished areas.

Disadvantaged voters deserve the choice of a new direction, not just echoes of failed policies from the past.

Even if liberals call their opponents names to scare them away from the issue, conservatives are responsible for addressing the havoc wreaked by liberal policies on the poor.

To make that case is not racist. In fact, it is a deeply American thing to do.

Ryan Fazio is a Weinberg senior. He can be reached at [email protected]

All opinions expressed in this column are solely the opinions of the columnist and do not reflect the views of The Daily Northwestern. If you would like to respond to the column, you may comment below, email the columnist or submit a 300-word letter to the editor to [email protected].