I've got this beautiful 3 year old daughter who is in love with Dr. Seuss. Her favorite character is Horton, which makes me very happy. Mind you, I had never read a Horton book before 2016 but now I can quote all of his who-hearing and egg-hatching adventures almost word-for-word.
And as we were reading through the aviary based tome, I came across an interesting thought.
And it is, weirdly, about my grandmother.
My paternal grandmother, like most of her 6 kids, is conservative. My dad alone seems to be the liberal mountain man of the group, which probably doesn't make sense to most people, but I'm not trying to tell our family history here. Suffice it to say I was raised by 2 liberals in conservative state (that used to be blue) only to be confronted with a family from up north living essentially the opposite existence.
When discussing the then-upcoming 2016 presidential election, my grandmother made use of terms more common among the right to far-right, like "welfare queen", which was something I'd only heard of briefly (probably because I avoid media from a perspective I can't fully understand) and had trouble wrapping my head around.
The fact is that the cost of living is higher today than it was twenty years ago in the US, and the pay at minimum wage jobs has not increased to match this. The assumption I am prone to make is that the same people who hired my Caucasian grandmother (about sixty years ago)when she was a teenager with several mouths to feed would be less likely to hire a woman of a different skin color to do the same job then or now, but even if they did, the money made wouldn't go nearly as far.
So this image of some destitute whore popping out babies so she can stay home living on barely-enough-to-eat is something I can't really imagine. Maybe that's me not being imaginative enough, but we lived in the ghetto (ghetto adjacent, really) and even if it was only for a few years, I don't remember anyone being excited to be on food stamps or anyone saying their parents refused to work so they could live off of the government instead.
Then again, I was 6. People don't tell 6-year-old children stories like that. Not when everyone's poor.
So I was reading my kid the story, and that lazy bird begs a passing elephant to sit on her egg so that she can take a break, only to have that break take most of the rest of the book because she would rather be relaxing in Palm Springs than doing her job as a mom. Instead, Horton (who is obviously a Hufflepuff) sits on the egg and keeps it safe and warm for 51 weeks through many hardships including treacherous weather, public mockery, hunters with guns, and becoming a side-show attraction.
And I think that lazy bird very much fits the idea of the "welfare queen" in that she does not take responsibility for her actions or job and wants only to relax at the expense of others.
I find that a more honest portrayal of the current head of the government than I do of an impoverished person. Poor people have problems, some self-made and many thrust upon them, but the vast majority, it seems to me at least, are more screwed over than lazy.
I know I'm lucky and privileged. Neither of my parents were ever in jail or deported. My dad's job paid for the necessities plus plenty of perks in addition to supplying us with medical insurance for our young lives. My mom is hard-working, still, trying to make things function when they otherwise would not. We didn't grow up in a mansion, but we always had food and water and electricity. There was no question of us going to school and getting jobs. We had examples of people who made stuff work. We were told that we were smart and capable and raised in a supportive household.
I've come to realize, the more people I meet in the world, that not everyone had that. There were difficulties for us, too, of course, but there's a lot worse off you can be (and survive better and more capable for it) than we ever were.
So, while I now can almost understand the idea behind the "welfare queen" characterization, I still believe it is unlikely to hold much truth. That said, I'm not a social worker nor a government employee in charge of investigating such things. Just a mom with a heart and a brain.
And just enough experience and empathy to deduce this.
But hey, it's just my two cents.
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