Racial Taxation by Camille Walsh

Author:Camille Walsh [Walsh, Camille]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Ethnic Studies, American, African American & Black Studies, Political Science, Public Policy, General, Education, Educational Policy & Reform
ISBN: 9781469638959
Google: ii1KDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Published: 2018-02-02T05:51:19+00:00

Welfare and Working-Class Backlash in the 1970s

After the turning point of 1968, including the election of Richard Nixon and the corresponding rightward turn in the administration’s attitude toward the War on Poverty, the court quickly began to step back from the high points of its jurisprudence on both protection for the poor and desegregation, exemplified by Harper and Alexander, respectively.34 Though a few decisions were rendered in the early 1970s in favor of welfare recipients, poverty was no longer discussed openly in opinions as a clear suspect class that automatically triggered constitutional attention.

Goldberg v. Kelly was an important Supreme Court case in 1970 that held that a welfare recipient was entitled to an evidentiary hearing prior to termination of welfare benefits.35 In the words of one scholar, the case reflected “a brief shining moment when it appeared thinkable that some version of a welfare state was not just a constitutional possibility, but a constitutional duty.”36 Justice William Brennan wrote the court’s opinion, arguing that welfare recipients were entitled to procedural due process and that “we have come to recognize that forces not within the control of the poor contribute to their poverty.”37 Ultimately, the majority held, the interest in protecting “public tax funds” did not outweigh the needs of the individual welfare recipient to maintain food, shelter, and basic necessities.

A Spokane man wrote to Brennan to express his gratitude on behalf of what he called “the ‘Silent Majority’ ” for his opinion in Goldberg, stating that, though he was not himself a welfare recipient, he did “understand the plight of these people.”38 He felt that welfare recipients were “ridiculed, kicked around,” and “degraded” because they provided good “kicking posts for politicians who scream ‘public assistance’ when the taxpayers demand an accounting of their tax money.” Indeed, one such politician, Arkansas representative Wilbur D. Mills, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee for many years, would often abandon his occasional reticence on nonbudgetary issues to argue, like President Johnson, for the need to transform people on welfare from “taxeaters” into “taxpayers.”39

A number of letters were sent to the court in response to their indigency jurisprudence, asserting taxpayer rights and making racialized comparisons and assumptions. After Goldberg v. Kelly, one writer complained that “our hard-earned tax dollars pay the salaries of the U.S. Supreme Court … but all I see and hear are giveaway anti-poverty programs, welfare for anyone who wants it.”40 Another letter complained that it was “us decent and loyal citizens that are being taxed to the hilt, so these crumbums, can live off the fat of the land.”41 Claiming that “many Negroes and Puerto Rican families are put up in luxurious hotels” and also given government food stamps, the author claimed that if “anybody should be entitled to get [such benefits] it should be us tax payers who are keeping those chislers [sic] on relief, and living off the fat of the land.” A Brooklyn woman was incensed at the Goldberg decision, claiming that “it is unfair and unjust to tax heavily those who do work.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.