User:Mviva22/Welfare Queen

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A "welfare queen" is a derogatory term used in the United States to describe individuals who are perceived to misuse or abuse the welfare system, often through fraudulent means, child endangerment, or manipulation. The media's coverage of welfare fraud began in the early 1960s and was featured in general-interest publications such as Reader's Digest. The term gained widespread recognition following media reporting in 1974 regarding the case of Linda Taylor. It was further popularized by journalists during Ronald Reagan's 1976 presidential campaign when Reagan frequently cited Taylor's story in his speeches.

Since its inception, the phrase "welfare queen" has remained a stigmatizing label and has at times been disproportionately associated with black, single mothers. This stereotype implies that these women intentionally have multiple children to maximize their welfare benefits, avoid seeking employment, and live extravagantly at the expense of taxpayers. As a result, it has been widely criticized as racist by many observers.

Despite changes in welfare policies, notably with the introduction of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families(TANF) program in 1996, the term "welfare queen" continues to persist in American discourse on poverty. It maintains a negative influence on welfare policies and outcomes for families in need.

Origin[edit][edit]

The idea of welfare fraud goes back to the early-1960s, the emergence of the "Welfare queen" stereotype occurred during a period of significant social change in the United States. The Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s challenged racial segregation and discrimination, leading to legal and societal changes aimed at promoting racial equality.^[1] Despite this, many journalistic exposés were published at the time on those who would come to be known as welfare queens. Reader's Digest and Look magazine published sensational stories about mothers gaming the system.

The term was coined in 1974, either by George Bliss of the Chicago Tribune in his articles about Linda Taylor, or by Jet magazine. Neither publication credits the other in their "Welfare Queen" stories of that year. Taylor was ultimately charged with committing $8,000 in fraud (equivalent to $47,471 in 2022) and having four aliases. She was convicted in 1977 of illegally obtaining 23 welfare checks using two aliases and was sentenced to two to six years in prison. During the same decade, Taylor was investigated for alleged kidnapping and baby trafficking, and is suspected of multiple murders, but was never charged.

Accounts of her activities were used by Ronald Reagan, beginning with his 1976 presidential campaign, although he never identified her by name or race.

She has 80 names, 30 addresses, 12 Social Security cards and is collecting veterans' benefits on four non-existing deceased husbands. And she's collecting Social Security on her cards. She's got Medicaid, getting food stamps, and she is collecting welfare under each of her names. Her tax-free cash income alone is over $150,000. —

Used to illustrate his criticisms of social programs in the United States, Reagan employed the trope of the "Welfare Queen" in order to rally support for reform of the welfare system. During his initial bid for the Republican nomination in 1976, and again in 1980, Reagan constantly made reference to the "Welfare Queen" at his campaign rallies. Some of these stories, and some that followed into the 1990s, focused on female welfare recipients engaged in behavior counter-productive to eventual financial independence such as having children out of wedlock, using AFDC money to buy drugs, or showing little desire to work. Reagan's characterization of these individuals were used to justify real-life changes to policies and play a role in the shrinking of the social safety net. These women were understood to be overwhelmingly women of color in an effort to push racialized narratives. They were also understood to be social parasites, while engaging in self damaging behavior while draining society of valuable resources. Stories about able-bodied men collecting welfare continued to dominate discourse until the 1970s, at which point women became the main focus of welfare fraud stories (despite these early appearances of the "Welfare Queen" icon).

In political discourse[edit][edit]

Prior to former President Ronald Reagan's campaign, in the 1960s, the Moynihan Report was created. This report addressed the ways that Black people experienced poverty and tried to cite a cause of the inequality in income this group faced. Moynihan's central argument of the report was that the "breakdown" of the Black family was the cause of poverty among Black Americans. This argument had two key points, which were Black children growing up without a father, and in matriarchal systems, was damaging which contributes to deviancy in children. The report changed the thought process surrounding welfare, specifically concerning welfare laws and policy and the "solution" to poverty. Politicians began to place blame on gender and cultural differences between Black and white people rather than welfare laws. While feminists and other activists fought against the ideas birthed from this report, but the belief of a fractured Black family began to take hold and influence policy.

The term "welfare queen" became a catchphrase during political dialogue of the 1980s and 1990s. The term came under criticism for its supposed use as a political tool and for its derogatory connotations. Criticism focused on the fact that individuals committing welfare fraud were, in reality, a very small percentage of those legitimately receiving welfare. Use of the term was also seen as an attempt to stereotype recipients in order to undermine public support for AFDC.

The welfare queen idea became an integral part of a larger discourse on welfare reform, especially during the bipartisan effort to reform the welfare system under Bill Clinton. Anti-welfare advocates ended AFDC in 1996 and overhauled the system with the introduction of TANF with the belief that welfare discouraged self-reliance. Despite the new system's time-limits, the welfare queen legacy has endured and continues to shape public perception and policy. The current TANF policies restrict welfare support in ways that appear to align with and may be the result of the fears and concerns centered around the welfare queen trope. For example, welfare payments are intended for temporary support (a maximum of five years) and restrict welfare support through work requirements and family caps to avoid the fear of "welfare queens" and other "undeserving" recipients from taking advantage of welfare benefits or from an overly generous welfare system encouraging financial and moral irresponsibility.

Despite the fact that the majority of welfare recipients are white, welfare attitudes are primarily shaped by public perceptions of black people on welfare, which perpetuates racial tropes such as the "welfare queen" and blocks access to resources that are needed by these families.

During Governor Mitt Romney's 2012 campaign, he alluded to the "welfare queen" stereotype again when he attacked President Barack Obama by spreading television advertisements vilifying President Obama's leniency on the "undeserving" poor through reducing the rigor of TANF requirements to primarily appeal to a white, middle class demographic who believe in cutting government spending on welfare programs to force people in poverty out of perceived laziness and into self-reliance.

Do you support work for welfare? Barack Obama has a long history of opposing work for welfare... On July 12th, Obama quietly ended work requirements for welfare. You wouldn't have to work and wouldn't have to train for a job. Mitt Romney strongly believes that work must be part of welfare. The Romney plan for a stronger middle class. It will put work back in welfare. —

Gender and racial stereotypes[edit][edit]

Political scientist Franklin Gilliam has argued that the welfare queen stereotype has roots in both race and gender:

While poor women of all races get blamed for their impoverished condition, African-American women commit the most egregious violations of American values. This story line taps into stereotypes about both women (uncontrolled sexuality) and African-Americans (laziness).

The trope of the welfare queen may be analyzed from the framework of intersectionality to better understand how race, class, gender, and other identities shape individuals' and groups' privileges and disadvantages.^[2]

The media's image of poverty shifted from focusing on the plight of white Appalachian farmers and on the factory closings in the 1960s to a more racially divisive and negative image of poor blacks in urban areas. All of this, according to political scientist Martin Gilens, led to the American public dramatically overestimating the percentage of African-Americans in poverty. By 1973, in magazine pictures depicting welfare recipients, 75% featured African Americans when in fact African Americans made up 35% of welfare recipients and only 12.8% of the US population. According to the United States Census, "In 2019, the share of Blacks in poverty was 1.8 times greater than their share among the general population. Blacks represented 13.2% of the total population in the United States, but 23.8% of the poverty population." Van Doorn states that the media repeatedly shows a relationship between lazy, black, and poor suggesting why some Americans are opposed to welfare programs.

From the 1970s onward, women became the predominant face of poverty. In a 1999 study by Franklin Gilliam that examined people's attitudes on race, gender, and the media, an eleven-minute news clip featuring one of two stories on welfare was shown to two groups of participants. Each story on welfare had a different recipient—one was a white woman and the other was a black woman. The results showed that people were extremely accurate in their recall of the race and gender of the black female welfare recipient in comparison to those who saw the story with the white female welfare recipient. This outcome confirmed that this unbalanced narrative of gender and race had become a standard cultural bias and that Americans often made implicit associations between race, gender, and poverty.

Furthermore, research conducted by Jennifer L. Monahan, Irene Shtrulis, and Sonja Givens on the transference of media images into interpersonal contexts reveal similar results. The researchers found that "Specific stereotype portrayals of African American women were hypothesized to produce stereotype-consistent judgments made of a different African American woman"

Additionally, some believe that black single women on welfare are irresponsible in their reproductive decisions and may continue to have children to reap welfare benefits. However, as analyzed from the United States General Accounting office data, there is no greater likelihood of these occurrences with women on welfare.

The "welfare queen" stereotype is driven by false and racist beliefs that place the blame of the circumstances of poor black single mothers as the result of their own individual issues while bringing forward racial tropes such as their promiscuity, lack of structure and morals, and avoidance of work. With primary narratives regarding poverty being driven by the myth of the meritocracy (the ideologies that are centered in self-reliance and hard work being enough to pull oneself out of poverty), the "welfare queen" trope illustrates the result of adding racial and gender dimensions to these inaccurate claims. This became a public identity mapped onto black women's bodies and the perpetuation of this public identity has been used to inform welfare policy outcomes. In addition to work ethic, family values, such as a heteronormative, working, two-parent household and having children only when married, are seen as the cultural standard. As a result, deviations from this ideal constitute a lower social value. By stereotyping single black mothers as "welfare queens," the interpersonal, structural, and institutional barriers that prevent adequate resources and opportunities for them which lead to or reinforce poverty are not addressed. The lack of accountability seen by institutions and structures within our government promotes individualistic and neoliberal ideals that put societal failures onto the individual rather than analyzing institutional barriers that might be preventing any necessary changes within the U.S. welfare system.

Impact of the stereotype[edit][edit]

The "Welfare queen" stereotype has had profound and far-reaching consequences, particularly during the 1990s and beyond. In the 1990s, partly due to widespread belief in the "welfare queen" stereotype, twenty-two American states passed laws that banned increasing welfare payments to mothers after they had more children. In order to receive additional funds after the birth of a child, women were required to prove to the state that their pregnancies were the result of contraceptive failure, rape, or incest. Between 2002 and 2016, these laws were repealed in seven states. California State Senator Holly Mitchell said at the time of the repeal of California's law, "I don't know a woman—and I don't think she exists—who would have a baby for the sole purpose of having another $130 a month."

The impact of the "Welfare queen" stereotype extended to welfare policies, affecting poor single mothers. These policies often failed to provide adequate access to contraceptives or abortions, limiting welfare benefits for women with children through family caps. This restricted women's reproductive autonomy and perpetuated the cycle of poverty. The stereotype's underlying belief that having children outside of marriage leads to reliance on welfare further marginalized Black single mothers.

Champlin argues that the current welfare system punishes poor single mothers by not providing adequate access to contraceptives or abortions, if a woman does not wish to get pregnant, or having family caps that limit welfare benefits for women with children. It seems that regardless of whether a woman chooses to have children or not, her capabilities in achieving those desires are severely restricted by the policies and attitudes of the welfare system, which places the blame of poverty on the women and reinforces the cycle of poverty. Welfare benefits have been used as a tool for reproductive oppression and prevent their autonomy over their bodies. The reproductive oppression is partially rooted in the beliefs that having children outside of a marriage results the reliance on welfare and additional children that will continue the culture of poverty. These limitations in black single mothers' reproductive rights as requirements for welfare follows a theme of the social control of the poor, specifically where the reproduction of "fit" or "unfit" groups are controlled by those in power who deem minoritized groups, who do not follow a white, heteronormative ideal, as substandard and less fit to have reproductive autonomy.

This racial trope fostered resentment against Black families, portraying single-parent or non-normative households as unfairly exploiting the welfare system. As a result, policies provided inadequate resources to these families, trapping them in poverty and stigmatizing them. This reduction in the welfare safety net ran contrary to the intended goal of supporting the well-being of mothers and children. The stereotype of the welfare queen, along with other black tropes such as the "Jezebel", "Mammies, and "matriarchs," are reflected in the attitudes of welfare care workers, positioning of welfare clients, and the talks between them.^[3] Overall, these tropes result in negative interactions between the welfare recipients and the caseworkers. For example, some caseworkers viewed the mothers as sexually irresponsible, negligent, or entitled, leading some to talk to mothers attempting to seek welfare in a degrading or patronizing way.

The United States Department of Health and Human Services' TANF (Temporary Assistance to Needy Families) program aimed to reduce "out-of-wedlock pregnancies" and promote "two-parent families" and self-reliance. However, the "Welfare queen" stereotype contradicts these ideals, depicting single, unemployed women as irresponsible and overly reliant on government benefits. Critics argue that welfare policies prioritize punishing "undeserving" recipients rather than supporting mothers and children.

The stereotype also influenced policies like the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, emphasizing work requirements and benefit time limits. This legislative shift reflected patriarchal and heteronormative ideals as the moral standard for tackling poverty. Moreover, the stereotype seeped into the attitudes of welfare caseworkers, leading to negative interactions with welfare recipients. Some caseworkers viewed single mothers as sexually irresponsible, negligent, or entitled.

Some scholars argue against the welfare requirement of having single mothers work by posing the question of why there is a greater focus on ensuring that single mothers contribute to the workforce rather than them having the time and resources to support and care for their children. Roberts and others point to one of the reasons being the devaluation of maternal work, particularly surrounding black single mothers. They explain that, due to society's perception of black single mothers as "unfit" for mothering or as deviations from the ideal maternal figure in a 2-parent, heteronormative family structure, the importance of black mothering is often neglected and undervalued, resulting in separating black mothers from their children in requiring them to participate in the workforce. This reflects similar themes from slavery, where enslaved mothers were often forced to be apart from their children in order to serve their enslavers' labor needs. Additionally, in requiring mothers to work, discussions about their children and their wellbeing are lost from the focus of these conversations. Instead, they are positioned as not a priority, as compared to the productivity required from their mothers, and their wellbeing is at the expense of these work requirements for their caregivers. Roberts argues that this implies that society does not place value in the children of mothers on welfare and the potential for their growth and development. Rather, these children are seen as already lost in what society deems valuable. They are not viewed as being worthwhile to be invested in and that they will likely to grow up and perpetuate the same moral "deviance" and culture of poverty as their mothers.

Media Rhetoric[edit]

The "Welfare queen" stereotype has had a profound impact on the media landscape, with media outlets frequently sensationalizing and perpetuating harmful stereotypes about Black women who rely on welfare programs. This portrayal has had far-reaching consequences, including the reinforcement of public misconceptions, the shaping of policy decisions, and the exacerbation of racial and gender disparities within society. This damaging trope has manifested across various media platforms, including television, film, print journalism, and political discourse.

[Insert list of shows & films that leverage the trope]

Despite ongoing efforts to challenge and debunk the stereotype, its enduring presence in media continues to influence public discourse and shape perceptions about welfare recipients, racial minorities, and poverty in the United States. The power of media portrayal ensures that this stereotype remains a persistent and troubling aspect of contemporary American culture.

Movements for welfare reform and destigmatization[edit][edit]

In the 1960s, grassroots movements led by Black and female activists emerged across the United States, aiming to secure fair welfare benefits and challenge negative stereotypes. These movements operated at the local and community levels, employing various strategies such as political demonstrations, the creation of welfare resource guides, and advocacy against restrictive welfare requirements, which often disqualified recipients if an adult male figure resided in the household. Additionally, these activists challenged the prevailing notion that a heteronormative, two-parent family structure represented the ideal for self-reliant households.

These women, who proudly identified themselves as "mothers" to underscore the value of their homemaking labor, sought to empower welfare recipients, reduce stigmatization, and advocate for greater autonomy. They argued against the regulation of female reproduction through welfare policies, emphasizing that women should have the freedom to make their own choices regarding birth control, and that welfare support should not be contingent on perceived "deservingness" based on these choices.^[4]

The perpetuation of the welfare queen stereotype often relies on storytelling, and research into narrative structures and transmission has provided insights into countering false claims about welfare recipients and their motivations. While social media has become a platform for sharing welfare-related legends and memes, the majority of these narratives tend to portray welfare recipients negatively, with the welfare queen stereotype at the forefront. Theories from sociology, psychology, communications, and folklore studies have shown that efforts to debunk such stereotypes can sometimes backfire, inadvertently spreading misinformation. However, through strategies such as moral reframing theory, active perspective-taking, anti-legends, and counternarratives, these risks can be mitigated, paving the way for more accurate depictions of poverty and welfare. Welfare recipients themselves are also working to challenge these stereotypes. Some authors have argued that the construction of the strong black woman image, one that portrays black mothers as resilient leaders of their household, stemmed from the desire of black women to resist and reject the welfare queen trope.

Welfare recipients themselves have taken proactive steps to challenge these stereotypes. Some argue that the construction of the "strong Black woman" image, portraying Black mothers as resilient household leaders, was a response to the desire to resist and reject the welfare queen trope. In interviews with middle to high-income Black mothers, many shared strategies they employ to counter this stereotype when placed upon them by others. These strategies include highlighting their educational backgrounds, mentioning their husbands, and dressing in ways that signal their belonging with other mothers to counteract the welfare queen stereotype.

However, it's crucial to acknowledge that this approach risks reinforcing a false distinction between the deserving and undeserving poor. Additionally, interviews with aid recipients have revealed that the stigma associated with welfare and the welfare queen stereotype often dissuade individuals from seeking assistance when they initially require it. By the time they do apply for aid, they are often burdened by substantial debt, making it exceedingly challenging to escape poverty.

Research has shown how the historical construction of welfare around race continues to affect Black women. People of color, especially Black and Hispanic individuals, have been disproportionately represented in less generous social programs, leading to their overrepresentation in welfare programs. This pattern, coupled with the media's portrayal of Black individuals as welfare recipients, has played a role in perpetuating the welfare queen trope. Furthermore, in the 1940s, southern states enforced "suitable home" laws, allowing welfare workers to deny aid to those who did not conform to sexual norms. These rules reinforced stereotypes about Black women and deprived them of assistance.

Scholars have conducted extensive research on the experiences of Black women within the welfare system, particularly in the context of the 1996 Personal Responsibility Act. This legislation ushered in work-first programs that disproportionately affected Black women in racialized and gendered ways. These programs prioritized immediate employment above all else to qualify for support. Black women often found themselves directed toward these programs due to biases, whether conscious or subconscious, held by government employees who believed that Black women were more suitable for work programs. This perception hindered Black women's access to education reform and longer-term training programs. Ultimately, racialized stereotypes portraying Black women as lazy, overly sexually active, or struggling with substance addiction influenced welfare workers to push them into work-first programs. This overrepresentation in welfare programs has prompted further research into potential reforms that could better serve the needs of Black women.