Hacker News Reader

> habitual villainization of single mothers by Republicans

This is the first I'm hearing of this. I know the right is against "leeches," but I've yet to see them single out single mothers.

Unless you're referring to undertones in their (Republicans') way of conduct. If so, then I wouldn't expect single mothers to be able to recognize the subtlety.

View on HN

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_queen

That kind of language, in various forms, has been a dogwhistle of the right since Reagan started saying it at campaign rallies.

I wasn't able to find a way to calculate the prevalence of "welfare queen," but off-hand that phrase doesn't come up too often in the mainstream.

Here's a Google Trends link: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=welfare%...

That was going to be my go-to, but I remembered that search popularity != usage.

Though, I am surprised that the term is hovering around 25%.

Here's ngram -- a measure of use in books: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=%22welfare+que...

"Could your comment possibly be any more obtuse and offensive?" asks this single mother with a PhD.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com