Guns and Butter: The Welfare State, the Carceral State, and the Politics of Exclusion in the Postwar United States

Item Type Journal Article Author Julilly Kohler-Hausmann URL https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jav239 Volume 102 Issue 1 Pages 87-99 Publication Journal of American History ISSN 0021-8723 Date 2015-06-01 Journal Abbr Journal of American History DOI 10.1093/jahist/jav239 Accessed 2022-04-08 18:23:53 Library Catalog Silverchair Abstract In 1970 a man wrote to California governor Ronald Reagan in support of disfranchising welfare recipients. “I believe this would be one of the most important pieces of legislation that could be enacted,” he explained. The writer asserted that people receiving state benefits forfeited their citizenship rights: “They are, in my opinion, no more than second rate citizens and because they continually draw welfare, I do not believe they should have the right to have a say in our government or how our tax money is spent.” While denying welfare recipients the right to vote was a marginal (and constitutionally dubious) proposition during the 1970s, opposition to granting full rights to suspect populations saturated political discourse on social and criminal policy. Americans persistently articulated a profound frustration with how recent legal and political reforms distributed resources and political voice to “undeserving” groups. As one police officer wrote to New York governor Nelson Rockefeller in 1973: “It seems like the law abiding citizens have no rights whatsoever, except the responsibility and obligation ‘to work in order to support and care for the parasites of society, the common and habitual criminal.’” Another woman expressed similar frustrations to Rockefeller after her home was robbed, describing herself as “a law abiding citizen who feels she is discriminated against in favor of dope addicts and welfare cheats.”1 Short Title Guns and Butter