I don’t know if Reagan ever used the word “Cadillac” in reference to welfare fraud; the original case, the term “welfare queen”, and details of Cadillacs, furs, and jewelry came from reports by the Chicago Tribune. Reagan stripped the account of the individual’s name, and made it part of his welfare reform speeches during the '76 campaign.
Ok.
It’s not a matter of trust, but pervasiveness. You can substantiate that black folks were stereotyped as driving Cadillacs they couldn’t afford, in your part of the South, in the '70s. I have no reason to believe you’re lying, but that doesn’t tell me if a reader in New Hampshire, or Illinois, or California, during the '70s would have made the same connection, is all. Substantiating that is likely beyond the abilities of this message board.
Yes, I knew about those. I was also aware of the stereotype of black men spending all their money on luxury goods, but not that specific term for it.
That was after the Voting Rights Act and in the midst of the Civil Rights movement. So suddenly, Democratic politicians were able to win in some areas without being racists, when before they had to be racist to win (because black people couldn’t vote). In addition, minds were changing.
There were differing degrees of racism, too - the whole gamut from enthusiastically participating in lynchings as a perceived civic duty, to feeling bad about it but accepting peer pressure from their fellow whites not to do anything about it. That included being able to accept being part of a political coalition to help their party and their progressive candidates win elections. The Democrats were schizophrenic about race from their very founding right up into the 1960’s, remember.
Well, it’s more like the racists started losing and the non-racists started winning. A bunch of former racists didn’t suddenly declare “I’m not racist anymore, black people, so vote for me!”
All the welfare kings and queens have not come close to costing the taxpayers what one banker cost us. And yet banking reform only came when the entire world was about to be set afire, and then it was so tepid that we’ll likely have similar problems within 20 years. Where is the GOP in trying to reform banking?
According to the NYT piece I linked to, Linda Taylor “became known in the headlines as the ‘welfare queen’”. Her story was evidently well-covered in the Tribune, and casually referred to in the NYT. If Reagan didn’t specify her ethnicity, it could be because it was already known from the Tribune coverage (I have been unable to locate the original story, so I don’t know if they included a picture or described Taylor’s ethnicity), or because he didn’t think it was relevant. Or, a sinister attempt to lead the audiences he was speaking to that she was black.
Eliminating the former two options takes a lot of decoding and drawing inferences, to the point that it’s hard to be sure of any firm conclusion.
[QUOTE=ElvisL1ves]
It wasn’t primarily about welfare fraud, was it? The reference was to lazy, shiftless (you still hear that term, too) … inferior humans.
Once again, it wasn’t *about *fighting welfare fraud.
[/quote]
Well, yes and no. It’d help if I knew what you were contending, exactly, as Reagan’s true motives.
[QUOTE=ElvisL1ves]
You had already rebutted your second sentence with your first. Yes, the stereotype still exists, and, shamefully, many young blacks who don’t know their past indulge in it, while calling each other the n-word and so forth as well.
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I never knew it as a general stereotype about all black men, just the young millionaires.
(bolding mine)
Do you mean that most of the stories he told were true, or do you mean that the stories he told were “mostly” true?
You’re wrong. You’re ignorant and wrong. Several people have tried to explain common phrases and perceptions from the 1960s-1980s regarding this to you, but you just continue to deny their claims. Go watch a Dolomite movie. Or come up with some cites that contradict what you’re being told by those of us who lived during those times.
I can’t give you the episode numbers or anything, but I seem to recall that this type of thing was a source of perpetual jokes, situations, etc. on many of Norman Lear’s shows, such as All In The Family, The Jefferson, Sanford & Son, Good Times, and so forth. Heck, the entire premise of [The Jeffersons is how white people are surprised that this black guy is actually well-off and not just faking it with fancy suits and a car and stuff.
There absolutely and definitely was (and possibly still is) a stereotypical association between blacks and Cadillacs. No doubt.
But that said, I would argue that it went mostly one way. Meaning that you said Black+luxury car and that conjured up an image of a Cadillac. But referring to a Cadillac would not conjure up an image of a Black person.
At that time, the Cadillac was in general the stereotypical luxury car in the US (it still is today, but to a much lesser extent, e.g. the ACA “Cadillac tax”). If you meant to conjure up an image of any “poor person” living the high life, Black or White, you might say Cadillac.
IOW, if you’re predisposed to see coded racism, and you already believe there’s hidden racism all over the place waiting for you to find it, it’s there for you. If that’s not what you’re looking for, then not necessarily.
How much? The NYT piece doesn’t mention any special effort, and says Taylor was “well known in the headlines”.
I fully agree, as I articulated in post 75. In this case, there was an element of exaggerating a few anecdotes into a full-blown crisis, and an element of the legitimate need for welfare reform (which had to wait till after Reagan left office to actually happen).
Just relating my personal experience with stereotypes here, as others have.
Hard to say, there are examples of both. Per Slate, Reagan correctly conveyed the details of the Linda Taylor case. The NYT story from 1976, though, covers some exaggerations and distortions. For example, Reagan described a new housing projects where subsidized luxury apartments could be had for $113.20, when the actual figure was around $300.
Whoa, there, where did I deny their claims? First, I asked for a cite, as I knew the Cadillac as an old white man’s car. Then, several posters stated that there was, indeed, a stereotypical association between Cadillacs and black folks. I asked if there was a way to substantiate this, and particularly the pervasiveness of it, but that’s not a denial.
That’s what I’d been driving at, that just “Cadillac” evokes old white man. ElvisL1ves pointed out that, in conjunction with “welfare queen”, it’d serve as racist code, evoking a spendthrift black moocher, and that’s plausible enough on its face, I suppose.
