Why Americans Hate Welfare

March 6, 2014

by Joshua Holland

 

Whatever his faults, Ronald Reagan was undoubtedly a gifted communicator. His ideological preferences often came wrapped in memorable anecdotes.

Reagan justified his antipathy for the social safety net — and capitalized on the racial anxieties held by many white voters — by invoking the infamous, Cadillac-driving welfare queen and the “strapping young buck” who lived large on T-bone steaks purchased with food stamps. Reagan didn’t actually coin the term “welfare queen” — that was the Chicago Tribune. (He did in fact use the term “young buck” — derogatory slang for a young black man.) Reagan merely took advantage of an existing media frenzy surrounding the case of a Chicago woman named Linda Taylor who may have been guilty of murder as well as welfare fraud on a massive scale, according to Josh Levin’s profile on the real “welfare queen.”