ABSTRACT
Affirmative action was one of the legal reforms developed during the 1960s to address racism and sexism, and it's one of the reforms that has received the most sustained and virulent backlashes. The "welfare queen" stereotype of the 1980s became powerful enough to contribute to a massive drop in support for social services, part of the backlash against the civil rights movement and the recalibration of the Racism Machine. The backlash against the civil rights movement was so powerful because so many different yet complementary stereotypes fed into it. While for centuries, the census was used as a tool of white supremacy to police the borders of whiteness, the official position now focuses on the opposite purpose, that of "civil rights". President Barack Obama inherited a nation with a massive wealth gap between the rich and the poor. He also inherited a nation in backlash against the civil rights movement and social services.
