Thread by @GeeDee215

NEW EP: In 1974, a prolific scammer from Chicago was dubbed the "welfare queen" by the press — and thus, a pernicious stereotype was born. But while her case was used to gut aid for the poor, her story proved messier — and darker — than anyone imagined

n.pr/2Zc6kHx

She inspired this antiblack trope, buuuut was Linda Taylor even Black? She switched races as often as often as she switched identities — whatever her crimes and scams required.

One paper said: “Her skin is sallow — like a medium yellow — and she has no features that make her peculiar to any racial background. So she passes as a Filipino. She puts on a black wig and becomes a Negro, and with other makeup and wigs, she passes for white.”

But as the homie @josh_levin points out here, Taylor's white fam came up from the South to testify in a case that she was definitely a liar and definitely not Black, no sir!

nyti.ms/2ETYFGl

@josh_levin Her family story was tragic. But Linda Taylor was a monster. There were the child kidnappings — *plural.*

In an infamous Chicago case, a three-day-old baby went missing from a hospital there and was never seen again. He was taken by a nurse who was never seen again.

(At the time of that child's disappearance, one of Linda Taylor's scams had her posing as a nurse in the neighborhood.)

And there were the people she murd-...I mean, the people around her who kept dying under mysterious circumstances.
Like, not long after they made her the beneficiary of their estates. 🤔

Her victims tended to be Black folks on the South Side, which made them even more vulnerable targets.

as Josh points out, none of THESE crimes against Black people prompted much interest from the police or made the news. But her stealing welfare benefits? THAT became a -national- story when it went...whatever the 1974 equivalent of "viral" was.

When a newspaper in Rochester ran a wire story about Taylor, its headline read simply: "Welfare Queen Arrested."

And that was the genesis of that term.

And Taylor became a staple in the campaign speeches of Ronald Reagan, the Republican former governor of California, who was making a bid for the White House.

Reagan said she stole $150k in welfare money and "...used 127 names — so far — posed as a mother of 14 children at one time, seven at another, signed up twice with the same caseworker in four days, and once while on welfare, posed as an open-heart surgeon, complete with office."

The "welfare queen" trope — the racist stereotype of a lazy, Black single mother caking off on luxury goods w/ taxpayer $$ — would live a long lif, far beyond Taylor.

Years later, Reagan became president, and used the "welfare queen" to call for cuts to aid to the poor.

In 1996, 20 years after Reagan first invoked the "welfare queen," this was a cover story in The New Republic. It...was not subtle.

That same year, Bill Clinton fulfilled his campaign promise to "end welfare as we know it" and signed into law welfare reform. It put all sorts of new restrictions on welfare, made it temporary, and put lifetime cap on how many years a person could receive benefits from it.

aside: as Clinton signed that bill — a bill Joe Biden voted for —  he was flanked by a Black woman from Arkansas, a single mom who said his welfare reform in AR had gotten her into the labor force. Her story, too, was much more complicated than that:

bit.ly/2EVyLBZ

I bring her up bc Black women — Linda Taylor and Clinton's "pal" Lillie Harden — figure prominently into the stories told abt welfare, when ironically, the program we call "welfare" wasn't even available for many Black women for most of its early decades.

the face of welfare at its beginning was poor white widows. As Black mothers gained greater access to welfare in the 1960s — and organized for better treatment for recipients and a universal basic income (!) — they became its new face.

nyti.ms/2ERr7Zy

So when Linda Taylor pops up in the news in 1974, with her brand new Cadillac and four houses and furs and her leather-gloves?

White people were very here for that story about her grift and profligacy.

ANYWAY!

we get into this in our latest episode of @NPRCodeSwitch.

But it is the subject of a four-part podcast series hosted by @josh_levin called "The Queen," based on his book that came out last month of the same name.

You should listen!

bit.ly/2EVAAPl