Book Review:
The Long Shadow of the Welfare Queen.

When Ronald Reagan and his advisors wanted to undermine the very institution of social programs, he turned to a news story out of Chicago—the tale of one Linda Taylor, who’d bilked the government benefits system out of so much money she was dubbed the “welfare queen.”

The trope of the “welfare queen” is powerful, toxic, and stubbornly persistent. Cemented by Reagan in his campaign for the presidency, the idea helped to both racialize and poison the very idea of financial assistance for the poor, a rhetorical trick that rendered everyone who applied for Aid to Families With Dependent Children benefits suspect by association. Even Joe Biden came to deal in the imagery, advocating for reform legislation in 1988 in the Newark paper: “We are all too familiar with the stories of welfare mothers driving luxury cars and leading lifestyles that mirror the rich and famous,” he wrote. “Whether they are exaggerated or not, these stories underlie a broad social concern that the welfare system has broken down—that it only parcels out welfare checks and does nothing to help the poor find productive jobs.” The words still have enough juice in the American consciousness that there’s a GLOW character who performs in the ring as “Welfare Queen.”

It is beyond folklore, it is received wisdom, part of the mythos of conservative America. Taylor herself was a major criminal, involved in all kinds of shady stuff besides welfare scams but she has come to represent not her reprehensible self but an entire class of people. She served 3 years in prison, and died in 2002.