SF: Basic Income for Poor Trans People… in Right Wing Media?

Is this even anti-trans propaganda?

by Evan Urquhart

a man sleeping on a sidewalk in America

I was really fascinated by the coverage in the National Review and Fox News of a small pilot program to give up to $1200/mo guaranteed income to 55 trans people in San Francisco. The program is focused on those who are homeless as well as people of color, and folks selected will also get free transition related health care, mental health care, and case management services. While conservative outlets are typically opposed to government help for poor people, what struck me about both the stories I read was that they seemed like straight reporting.

I’d like to be clear that I am not an expert in anti-social services propaganda, anti-basic income propaganda, or anti-poor propaganda. There’s room here for there to have been biased language in these articles which flew under my radar. However, I came away feeling like this was a great program in San Francisco that could drastically improve some people’s lives, and might also go on to serve as a model for addressing poverty in the rest of the country.

My suspicion, purely based on the outlets, is that the reporters for Fox and NR were not attempting to win their readers over to the benefits of basic income initiatives targeted to a minority populations with some of the greatest need. So, what gives?

It’s possible that the expectation from these writers is as follows: The view of trans people in their conservative readership is so overwhelmingly negative that any attempt to help homeless trans people get off the streets will be seen as a negative, and so there’s nead to editorialize and say why it’s a bad thing to help the homeless. I hope that’s not the case, but I have to admit I’m cynical enough to think it probably is. At any rate, I did attempt to reach out to one of the reporters, and if she’s willing, I’ll ask her directly what the thinking is behind this article. I hope she proves me wrong: I’d love to have been wrong about the thinking behind this one.

Evan Urquhart

Evan Urquhart is a journalist whose work has appeared in Slate, Vanity Fair, the Atlantic, and many other outlets. He’s also transgender, and the creator of Assigned Media.

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