The politics of injustice rhetoric and poverty in Reagan's America

Abstract

During the Reagan years the poverty rate in America rose dramatically. Simultaneously, the rich got richer at the expense of the working and middle classes. Despite this trend towards greater economic inequality, the public expressed its sympathy for the Reagan administration and the conservative political agenda in a variety of ways. The question therefore arises: Why was there no widespread public resistance against Reagan’s policies which took away from the poor and gave to the rich? Three key themes of the American political culture, viz. equality defined in terms of equality before the law, materialistic individualism and racism attribute wealth and poverty to innate personal characteristics rather than to structural causes. Reagan’s rhetoric successfully reinvigorated these themes, defining poverty in terms of individual ineptitude and portraying the poor as undeserving. Thus, the Reagan administration’s policies which took away from the poor and gave to the rich could be enacted without facing broad resistance, in most cases even with support, from the American people.