Full Circle

From the Grapes of Wrath to the seminal TV documentary Harvest of Shame, Americans in the 20th century initially were conditioned to connect poverty and associated family disorders with white sharecroppers. These were the 'poor working families' laboring within the most abundant and prosperous nation on Earth. Most who watched were touched; overall, few cared enough to act. In any case, we understood that the poor and suffering came from the coal mines of Appalachia and the barren fields of Oklahoma.

By the 70's, poverty literally had taken on a new face--a black one.

The crowning achievement of this transformation was Ronald Reagan's adoption of the 'welfare queen' as a staple of his 1976 presidential campaign. Not only had white become black, but in the process pity turned to scorn.

His mythical foil was a woman on the southside of Chicago who invented 80 aliases, 30 addresses and 12 Social Security cards to bilk the government out of $150,000. (In actuality, the person to whom he apparently referred used two aliases to collect $8,000. No matter--the impression congealed). The algebra of the stereotype was settled: poor=black=lazy=waster of your tax dollars. This perfect recipe for a 'southern strategy' would help award Reagan two terms in the White House, and leave conservative politicians wondering, 'how could it get any better than this?'

Well actually, there was one more tasty ingredient to add--sexual promiscuity. As the enemy 'welfare queen' became 'welfare mother', there were even more to resent--not just the single mothers, but all of their 'illegitimate' children, as well.

Now, I interrupt myself to state that there clearly is a problem with unwed mothers, with fathers who desert their families, and how both conspire against children left with a woefully insufficient family structure. And yes, some of these people are black. If not, black fathers as diverse as Bill Cosby and Barack Obama would not be challenging all their counterparts to do their parts.

Unfortunately, no matter how accurate, these criticisms also helped perpetuate the stereotype. 'Poor' and all its associated depictions remained so radioactive that even the Democrats decided to excise the word from their convention vocabulary. 'Middle class' sounds so much safer. And so, all seemed happy in Conservativeville.

But when an earthquake approaches, sooner or later you're going to feel the temblors beneath your feet.

First, it was that damn Bill Clinton--of all people!--pushing welfare reform through Congress. Republicans howled that he 'stole their issue!' In reality, he just reduced the equation. Now that most of those 'poor' people could be proven to be working, 'lazy' and 'welfare' had to be removed. No matter, 'black' and 'promiscuous' still remained--a potent brew if there ever was one! On any summer night, at a million suburban barbecues across America, you could find the already satisfied further satisfying themselves that, as I've heard more than once, 'those people will keep just keep churning out kids--there's nothing you can do!'

Occasionally, a voice would suggest that yes, actually, there were things that might be done. Alas, by that time the church ladies of the far right had crashed the GOP party, tut-tutting that the one thing they would not put up with was abortion. It mattered not whether the 'problem' of unwed motherhood might be reversed by a simple surgical procedure--no dice. We want those babies to be born. Oh yeah, by the way, no contraceptives either. God decides when pregnancy occurs!

By then, the social conservatives had tied themselves in a rhetorical knot--you don't want to 'pay for all those black welfare babies', but at the same time you're refusing to take any steps to prevent them. Unquestionably, a fig leaf (figuratively and metaphorically) was required. And so they invented one called 'abstinence'.

And that became the call of the not-so-wild. They shall pledge to stay chaste, and we will work to use abstinence not only to augment, but in some cases even replace actual knowledge of human reproduction being taught in our schools. Our girls will be saved (at least the white ones from 'good' families escorted by their fathers to creepy 'purity balls'). This must be God's compromise.

And then the results started pouring in. First, 16-year-old Jamie Lynn Spears announces she's preggers--and looks pretty darned happy about it. Then news comes of the 'pregnancy club' among 17-year-olds in Gloucester, Mass.--a suburb that's 97% white. The latest statistics show that teen births have jumped 3%, the first increase in 14 years, and that births to unmarried women of any age are at a record high. Wherefore art thou, abstinence?

And now, finally, the national celebration of the pregnancy of unmarried, 17-year-old Bristol Palin. No one dare call that child-to-be 'illegitimate'! Suddenly, 'unwed mothers' aren't all black. They embody problems that 'affect all families'. And they aren't necessarily the result of 'broken homes'--unless you expand the definition to include mothers whose governor's mansion is 800 miles away from where her teen aged daughters live.

When sexual promiscuity involves our daughters, no longer is it wasteful, wanton, or even black. Welcome to the new world of 'moral depravity, of 'spiritual poverty'. Guess what--it's white, too!

We have come full circle.