Chicago's 'welfare queen' still colorizes our poverty debate
But Taylor's habitual lies and flamboyant style (her pride wouldn't allow her to wear something more modest than her fur coat to court) gave some credence to the stereotypes that countless people carried around in their heads about welfare recipients.
Levin explores what I call the "colorization of poverty" in news coverage in the 1960s that set the stage for Taylor's unwanted stardom as a political trope.
Michael Harrington's 1962 book "The Other America" brought new attention to the deprivations of the white rural poor and helped inspire Johnson's 1964 "War on Poverty." But after riots later broke out in the Watts section of Los Angeles, the West Side of Chicago and in other cities, the newsmagazine images of poverty that showed black people increased, according to one survey, from 27% in 1964 to 70% in 1972 and 1973.
As such media images increased, so did the perception that poverty is a black problem, despite abundant statistical evidence that the nation's poor whites outnumber poor people of color. One result, as Levin notes, has been the recasting of the word "welfare," especially in conservative conversations, as almost every government social program except Social Security and Medicare, which we tend to prefer to call "entitlements."
Taylor died in 2002, but her legacy lives on in today's polarized Washington. President Donald Trump's exaggerations of immigrants entering the U.S. illegally as "rapists and murderers," for example, sounds like his own version of "welfare queen" code. Yet, the rising popularity of the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare, is pressuring Republicans to come up with a replacement before they leave millions without health insurance.
Post-Reagan Republicans are more comfortable with cutting taxes -- even when it raises deficits -- and dismantling government programs than with creating new ones. Yet, at a time when the Federal Reserve reports that 40% of Americans can't cover a $400 emergency expense, a lot of people are discovering that poverty isn't just somebody's else's problem. It's hitting closer to home.
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(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@chicagotribune.com.)
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