The ‘welfare queen’ that wasn’t
A new book asks: ‘Who was Linda Taylor, really?’
You probably don’t know Linda Taylor’s name or who she was. But chances are you have heard the derogatory moniker that was widely applied to her by the press and politicians alike: Linda Taylor was the infamous “welfare queen.”
She’s the subject of “The Queen: The Forgotten Life Behind an American Myth,” a new book by Josh Levin, that while mainly a biography of Taylor, also blends in political analysis and American welfare policy history.
After Taylor’s highly publicized scams and arrest in 1974, she was the “woman in Chicago” Ronald Reagan frequently referred to in campaign appearances and speeches as having “used 80 names, 30 addresses, 15 telephone numbers,” highlighting her story as a symbol of lazy welfare layabouts taking advantage of hardworking, tax-paying Americans.
Decades later, debates around public assistance in America — and who is perceived to be deserving or undeserving of our aid — continue to be haunted by Taylor’s Cadillac-driving ghost.
“For those Americans inclined to believe that high-living good-fornothings lurked in every grocery store and car dealership, the welfare queens of past and present were less spectacular outliers than representative case studies,” Levin writes.
His book outlines at length how Taylor committed a considerable amount of welfare fraud but emphasizes it was probably among the least of her crimes. He makes a strong case she was also a kidnapper who likely murdered several individuals, though she was never convicted of any of those crimes. Not only was she not charged or convicted for her other wrongdoing, but also she didn’t gain national notoriety for those kidnappings or killings — it was the welfare fraud that stuck, grabbing the attention of the press, the public and prosecutors.
“Taylor’s mere existence gave credence to a slew of pernicious stereotypes about poor people and black women,” Levin writes, seeking to explain why her fraudulent receipt of public assistance drew the attention of a particular prosecutor who went on to head up a unit targeting public assistance fraud. “If one welfare queen walked the earth, then surely others did too.”
Levin’s work succeeds at untangling a complex life, both the actual facts of it — no easy task for a woman with dozens of aliases — and what she ultimately came to represent.
The book’s narrative is highly readable. Interwoven with Taylor’s tale in the first portion of the book are two of the main characters involved in uncovering and publicizing her crimes — a tenacious police detective and an oldschool Chicago newspaperman. Levin, editorial director at Slate, traces Taylor’s life back to where it began in the South, explains the circumstances around her birth that led her to want to escape her true identity, and tells the story of her life before, during and after her notoriety. He also teases out how much of what the press and politicians, such as Reagan, said about her was fact and how much was exaggeration.
The presidential candidate “didn’t treat [Taylor] as an outlier,” Levin writes. “Instead, Reagan implied that Taylor was a stand-in for a whole class of people who were getting something they didn’t deserve.”
The program Taylor repeatedly took advantage of, Aid to Families with Dependent Children, no longer exists. It was replaced with the smaller, time-limited Temporary Assistance to Needy Families under President Bill Clinton’s welfare reform.
Taylor essentially was forgotten by the media after being sent to prison for her welfare crimes, although she continued to commit fraud and numerous other crimes after her release. There are so many swindles, attempted swindles, aliases and unrelenting fabrications that they are at times hard to keep straight.
While Levin explains the difficult circumstances Taylor faced as a child and within her own family as a result of the circumstances of her birth, he is clear-eyed about her numerous crimes — both against the broader public and numerous individuals, including her own children. He doesn’t attempt to make Taylor a sympathetic figure.
“Linda Taylor did horrifying things. Horrifying things were also done in Linda Taylor’s name,” Levin writes. “No one’s life lends itself to simple lessons and easy answers, and Taylor’s was more complicated than most.”
“THE QUEEN: THE FORGOTTEN LIFE BEHIND AN AMERICAN MYTH” By Josh Levin Little Brown $29