I posted this the other day on my Instagram account as an Instagram essay. The original (corrected) Instagram version is followed by the text of the essay.
The verb “to breed” has several different meanings. The Oxford English Dictionary lists its primary meaning this way: “(of animals) mate and then produce offspring,” with the following example sentence: “toads are said to return to the pond of their birth to breed.” It then offers five primary uses, the first two re-enforcing this animal connection: “[with object] Cause (an animal) to produce offspring, especially in a controlled and organized way” and “[with object] Develop (a variety of animal or plant) for a particular purpose or quality.” Other meanings — to rear and train, to produce or lead to an outcome (“success had bred a certain arrogance”) — expand the word’s use beyond the animal kingdom, but they are more colloquial, and their meanings remain dubious.
The notion of breeding in humans is usually used in two ways, both of which are focused on creating division among us and creating a human hierarchy. When the wealthy or upper classes — or even the professional classes in our meritocratic society — talk about breeding, they do so to claim exceptional genetic material or to point to the elite opportunities they’ve received that set them apart from the rest of us. While it is growing more common for us to think this way — the expectation that DNA research will allow us to choose traits in our children — our fascination shares some common elements with the eugenics movement and its goal of creating a better breed of human. Historically, this has been a race-based desire, though one that makes its claim without talking specifically about race.
When we use it as this decal does, it flips the elitism script and turns the focus onto so-called lower classes and the social safety net. But it does not do this innocently. Most of us do not describe our parents or ourselves as breeders, do not say “we’re allowed to breed kids because we can feed them.” But we — in the middle class — do not have to subject ourselves to this thinking — either due to our racial privileges, or because we’re not asking the government for help. We do expect help, of course, through tax policy and other goodies that favor whites and the middle-class, but we’ve classed them as something else. This allows us to say we are better or more evolved. We’re Americans, but welfare mothers are something else; they are “breeders,” the equivalent of horses or sheep, the decal and the the thinking behind it implies. That welfare mothers, in the popular imagination, are believed to be a) black and/or Hispanic, and b) abusing the system by popping out babies purely to increase the size of their welfare checks, is left unstated but ties directly into the word’s various meanings. These “animalistic” women, the decal implies, are “produc(ing) offspring … in a controlled and organized way” to achieve “a particular purpose.” The decal also is being produced for “a particular purpose” — to play on and foster racist stereotypes, to dehumanized and ultimately to gut the social safety net. It is racist in its intent, if not specifically in its language.
I don’t know the guy who owns the truck, but he’s sending everyone a message about who he is.
Hank Kalet is a poet and freelance journalist. He is the economic needs reporter for NJ Spotlight, teaches journalism at Rutgers University and writing at Middlesex County College and Brookdale Community College. He writes a semi-monthly column for the Progressive Populist. He is a lifelong fan of the New York Mets and New York Knicks, drinks too much coffee and attends as many Bruce Springsteen concerts as his meager finances will allow. He lives in South Brunswick with his wife Annie.
View all posts by hankkalet
Hank Kalet 