CNN.com John Blake has analyzed the concept of the “welfare queen” and its return to the political landscape. Blake puts forward that the idea was made popular by Republican president Ronald Regan. Scholars have said that the, often racialized, image of an individual that abuses the system feeds into white America’s fears about social services. Others are quoted saying that discussion in this campaign season of welfare, food stamps, etc signals the return of the welfare queen as a political tool:
She has 12 Social Security cards, mooches on benefits from four fake dead husbands, and collects food stamps while driving a Cadillac. She rakes in about $150,000 a year in welfare benefits and, of course, people assume she must be African-American.
President Ronald Reagan gave America a sunny “Morning in America” optimism, but he also gave it the “Welfare Queen,” an infamous character who has re-emerged in this year’s presidential race.
Critics have accused the three leading Republican presidential candidates of resurrecting Reagan’s Welfare Queen by calling President Obama the “food stamp president,” implying that blacks live off other people’s money, and by declaring that America is moving toward an “entitlement society.”
Yet few people have examined the story behind the birth of the Welfare Queen. Did she really exist? Why do people still talk about her when welfare ended 15 years ago? Can her story still swing voters at a time when the great recession has forced more whites to rely on government assistance?
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