News Summary

• The trope of the “welfare queen” has seen an aggressive re-emergence in political conversation.
• A term popularized by Ronald Reagan and the Republican Party in the late 1970s, the welfare queen stereotype has never quite dropped from the minds of Americans.
• Claims of widespread abuse and fraud in federal benefit payments have existed as long as the welfare system has, but it wasn’t until after the civil rights movement that this behavior was pinned exclusively on Black women.
• Black women, typically those who were single mothers, were scapegoated and misconstrued by those who wanted to implement welfare reforms.