American Anti-Welfare Right-Wing Populism: The Case of Bucktown

Is there support for voluntary sterilization incentives in the U.S.? Nine semi-structured interviews were conducted with a snowball sample of four families spanning three generations in Bucktown, a 95% white, middle-class neighborhood which sent David Duke, former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, to the Louisiana House of Representatives in 1989. Interviews explain support and opposition to current Louisiana State Representative John LaBruzzo's policy suggestion to "end generational welfare" by offering citizens $1000 in exchange for having their fallopian tubes tied or receiving vasectomies. Most respondents expressed that the sterilization proposal was targeted at low-income blacks. Although work ethic deficiency was used to frame poverty and welfare-dependency, support and opposition for the proposal was ultimately divided along racial ideological lines. Although Bucktonians have disassociated themselves from Duke and are upwardly mobile socio-economically, right-wing populist ideology remains salient.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.A.

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Sociology

Year

2009

Author dc:creator

• Landry, Matt S.

Contributors dc:contributor

• Baxter, Vern K.
• Mann, Susan A.
• Jenkins, Pamela

• right-wing populism
• producerism
• racial ideology
• welfare attitudes
• Bucktown

Repository record dc:identifier

https://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/980

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:scholarworks.uno.edu:td-1961