Date of Award
8-2009
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
M.A.
Degree Program
Sociology
Department
Sociology
Major Professor
Baxter, Vern K.
Second Advisor
Mann, Susan A.
Third Advisor
Jenkins, Pamela
Abstract
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.
Recommended Citation
Landry, Matt S., "American Anti-Welfare Right-Wing Populism: The Case of Bucktown" (2009). University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations. 980.
https://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/980
Rights
The University of New Orleans and its agents retain the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible this dissertation or thesis in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. The author retains all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis or dissertation.