Parasites of Government

Racial Antistatism and Representations of Public Employees amid the Great Recession

Bibliographic Data

ID2954047
AuthorsDaniel Martinez Hosang, Daniel Hosang (0000-0003-0436-471X), Joseph Lowndes
Year2016
Volume68
Issue4
Pages931-954
Publication date2016-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAmerican Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0003-0678 • E-ISSN: 1080-6490
PublisherProject MUSE (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1353/aq.2016.0073
OpenAlexW2566037072
LanguageEN
Citations received6
References cited18

This essay examines cultural representations of race and “parasitism” deployed in attacks against public employees during the Great Recession. Beginning in 2009, a chorus of critics charged that unionized public employees were becoming, in the words of Rush Limbaugh, “parasites of government,” dependent subjects that consumed tax dollars and productive labor to subsidize a profligate lifestyle. Such narratives of parasitism have long been racialized and gendered; subjects marked as “welfare queens” and “illegal aliens,” among others, have been similarly condemned as freeloaders who feed off the labor of hardworking (white) taxpayers

Art · Economics · Government (linguistics · Narrative · Political science · Race (biology · Recession · Sociology · Subsidy · Welfare · White (mutation · Gender Studies · Law · Race, History, and American Society

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