Poverty In The United States: Article Analysis
The Faces of Poverty “Don’t look down on a man if you can’t help pick him up” –Ms. Bailey.
Poverty in the United States tends to conjure up images of homeless people living under bridges, people with signs begging street corners, and soup kitchens and homeless shelters. Throughout history, poverty has been a pervasive issue in the United States; it is an issue that has managed to survive despite government’s the countless efforts to eradicate it. As a result, it has spread and affects a wide array of people in the United States. Regardless of poverty’s wide reach, many people still imagine it as only affecting certain minorities or people who refuse to work and live off government assistance. This negative perception of poverty in the United States has increased throughout the years. Regretfully, this stereotype of people in poverty has profound negative effects on impoverished people and demonstrates the need for society to learn the true diversity of poverty in order to better empathize and help the nation’s poor. In order to debunk the negative stereotype associated with poverty, it is necessary to present relevant information to fully demonstrate the complexity of poverty. First, research will be …show more content…
presented to demonstrate the professionals’ findings of the effects of stereotyping on those in poverty. Secondly, data will be presented to help reinforce the diversity of poverty and help break down the statistics of it in the United States. Next, an ethnography will be shown to present the point of view of a person who has lived and experienced poverty for the majority of her life. Lastly, all the previous components will be analyzed and presented to clearly demonstrate the negative stereotype of poverty and its detrimental effects towards people. In Marc Elrich’s article, “The Stereotype Within,” he presents his experience as a middle school teacher and the effects he saw poverty had on his students.
In his article, he recounts his shock at hearing one of his African-American students blatantly say, “Everyone knows that black people are bad. That’s the way we are” (Elrich 12). His shock was furthered as he realized that his student’s statements were widely accepted by his class as a whole as they all agreed that minorities were inferior to their white counterparts and that was just how things were. As a result, his classroom helped elucidate on the innate racial undertones of poverty; as it tends to disproportionately target minorities compared to the white majority in the United States (Elrich,
12-15). In “Revisiting the Contact Hypothesis: The Case of Public Exposure to Homelessness,” this experiment and research were published in the American Sociological review. This experiment’s purpose was to prove or disprove the contact hypothesis that states that contact “between members of an in-group and an out-group is expected to improve the attitudes of the former toward the latter by replacing in-group ignorance with first-hand knowledge that dis-confirms stereotypes”(Lee 40). The out-group chosen for the experiment was the homeless. This experiment wanted to see if perceptions about the homeless would improve if people, who themselves were not in poverty, had different contacts and exposures with a homeless person. At the end of the experiment, it was concluded that the contact hypothesis was true and that “respondents experiencing greater exposure are more likely to attribute homelessness to structural causes and less likely to believe in individual causes…exposure encourages development of positive emotions and empathy” (Lee 50) In "Struggling with Poverty: Implications for Theory and Policy of Increasing Research on Social Class-Based Stigma" by Wendy Williams, Williams investigates and elucidates on the origins on the stigmas associated with poverty and the role researchers have in either helping erase or exacerbating the poverty stigma. One common stereotype of poverty is “viewed as a moral failing by the public because it indicates that individuals have not worked hard enough” (Williams 40). Williams advocates for correct and thorough research about social class and its implications as many “people do not understand that relatively little mobility exists at the societal level and that there are also significant structural barriers…Americans work exceedingly hard but remain unable to pull themselves out of poverty. At the same time, most express a strong belief in the American Dream” (Williams 41). It is the researcher’s job to correctly identify those in poverty and use the appropriate term to identify them, as many other terms like “welfare recipient” tend to conjure up negative connotations. In “Deciding to Discipline: Race, Choice, and Punishment at the Frontlines of Welfare Reform,” the authors describe the welfare sanctions on individuals and how more sanctions are likely to placed on an individual that is a minority. In order to prove the biases behind sanctioning, which “became far more important under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program because national welfare reform legislation in 1996 specified stricter work requirements…and gave states more options in designing penalties” (Schram 400), the authors present the surveys and experiments performed to showcase the innate biases behind the sanctions. They provided similar cases to a white and a minority counterpart and presented them to welfare administration. Their experiments showed that “case narratives elicit a stable pattern of responses from case managers, regardless of discrediting attributes, when clients are white. Minority clients enjoy no such immunity: their odds of being sanctioned rise in the presence of discrediting markers, even when the details of their case do not change a bit” (Schram 414).
Through the research, data and the ethnography, it is clear that the stigma associated with impoverished people prevents meaningful action from happening from the government and those in influential positions. Too often, people who have never found themselves in a position of need tend to quickly judge a person in need and blame their situation on their character. And even though that individual may have character traits that do not help their situation, their circumstances were formed a long time before they were born. For example, in “The House We Live in: Race-- The Power of Illusion”, the documentary showcases the disadvantage minorities have and how the government has helped perpetuate that disadvantage and caused minorities to be more susceptible to poverty. In particular, the documentary looks at the racist history of the housing market after World War II when the GI Bill allowed loans to be given to veterans to buy the newly constructed suburban homes that were being built. Yet, the government also introduced the concept of redlining, which allowed the government to deny a loan based off of race. Racial discrimination has contributed a lot to the poverty stigma. Unfortunately, poverty tends to be associated with minorities, people who live off welfare, and people who consume drugs and alcohol on a daily basis. Therefore, many minorities, in particular, are victims of this stereotype. As seen in “The Stereotype Within,” the children of color in the classroom believed the societal discrimination that they were poor because it was in their nature to not be upstanding citizens. Because of this social stigma, children of color begin to feel defeated as they begin to believe that they deserve to be poor because society perceives them as so. In "Struggling with Poverty: Implications for Theory and Policy of Increasing Research on Social Class-Based Stigma,” Williams demonstrates the need for social class stigma to be incorporated into research by psychologists so that they can better teach policymakers to help them decrease the effects of poverty (Williams 37). Policymakers need to be aware of the innate biases associated with poverty in order to be able to look for helpful solutions. In particular, the journal article “Deciding to Discipline: Race, Choice, and Punishment at the Frontlines of Welfare Reform” highlights the racial discrimination seen in welfare. The journal highlights an experiment that demonstrates that minorities in poverty are more likely to receive sanctions for their actions than their white counterparts. These minorities are considered “less deserving” by the government system. The concept of being less “deserving” stems from neo-liberalism tradition that I learned in my Poverty and Wealth in Politics class came to be around the twentieth century in the United States. This way of governance essentially wanted to, in theory, help an individual for only a certain amount for a limited time so that that individual would become independent and have the funds to live without government assistance. Even though it sounds good in theory, these “means-tested” programs tend to have a lot of requirements that, in the end, do not provide much drastic help and only help for a very limited amount of time. For example, during my interview, Ms. Bailey commented how she tried to apply for food stamps, but was denied because her income was three dollars more than the maximum income allowed by the government. These strict requirements and time limitations (food stamps can be given over a range of six months to three years) demonstrate how the government treats those in poverty as if it is their individual fault that they are in their current plight of poverty. As a result, since the government treats its impoverished citizens as being “less deserving” of help, this mentality has cascaded to the general public and allowed for the development of a very negative perception of the poor. Yet, the stereotype that the poor consist of mostly minorities who live off of welfare and who consistently make erroneous choices is simply not true. Looking at table 1, even though whites have a lower percentage of poverty, they have a greater number of people in poverty than any individual minority. Also in table 2, it shows that children have the highest percentage of poverty than the other age groups. This demonstrates the cyclical nature of impoverishment in the United States and shows that many people are being born into poverty because of circumstances created by the government and stigmas that judge and prevent barriers from being broken. Even though there have been people who have been able to get out of poverty, it is not easy and “when social class boundaries are perceived as permeable, individuals are less likely to view their disadvantage as unjust and to engage in action to ameliorate negative treatment” (Williams 41). Working hard is not enough. Current government assistance is not enough. The government system of welfare needs radical change to help that will not blame the individual but will look deeper to fix the deep-rooted issues that have led to the current circumstances of the poor. The issue of poverty is a deep and very convoluted one. Over the years, negative stereotypes reinforced by the media and government programs have led to biases against those living under the poverty line. Living in poverty is hard enough and negative stereotypes only function to add tinder to that already billowing fire. If those stereotypes can be eliminated, better opportunities can be presented to people struggling to make ends meet. As proven in “Revisiting the Contact Hypothesis: The Case of Public Exposure to Homelessness,” simple exposure to a person in poverty can definitely improve the public’s perception of their situation. This occurred during my interview with Ms. Bailey as well. In our talk, I was able to see how Ms. Bailey has worked so hard to provide for her two sons, and even though she herself struggles to make ends meet, she works hard to make a difference and help others like her because she knows that she is not defined by her situation because, “it’s not where you live, it’s how you live”.
Poverty in the United States tends to conjure up images of homeless people living under bridges, people with signs begging street corners, and soup kitchens and homeless shelters. Throughout history, poverty has been a pervasive issue in the United States; it is an issue that has managed to survive despite government’s the countless efforts to eradicate it. As a result, it has spread and affects a wide array of people in the United States. Regardless of poverty’s wide reach, many people still imagine it as only affecting certain minorities or people who refuse to work and live off government assistance. This negative perception of poverty in the United States has increased throughout the years. Regretfully, this stereotype of people in poverty has profound negative effects on impoverished people and demonstrates the need for society to learn the true diversity of poverty in order to better empathize and help the nation’s poor. In order to debunk the negative stereotype associated with poverty, it is necessary to present relevant information to fully demonstrate the complexity of poverty. First, research will be …show more content…
presented to demonstrate the professionals’ findings of the effects of stereotyping on those in poverty. Secondly, data will be presented to help reinforce the diversity of poverty and help break down the statistics of it in the United States. Next, an ethnography will be shown to present the point of view of a person who has lived and experienced poverty for the majority of her life. Lastly, all the previous components will be analyzed and presented to clearly demonstrate the negative stereotype of poverty and its detrimental effects towards people. In Marc Elrich’s article, “The Stereotype Within,” he presents his experience as a middle school teacher and the effects he saw poverty had on his students.
In his article, he recounts his shock at hearing one of his African-American students blatantly say, “Everyone knows that black people are bad. That’s the way we are” (Elrich 12). His shock was furthered as he realized that his student’s statements were widely accepted by his class as a whole as they all agreed that minorities were inferior to their white counterparts and that was just how things were. As a result, his classroom helped elucidate on the innate racial undertones of poverty; as it tends to disproportionately target minorities compared to the white majority in the United States (Elrich,
12-15). In “Revisiting the Contact Hypothesis: The Case of Public Exposure to Homelessness,” this experiment and research were published in the American Sociological review. This experiment’s purpose was to prove or disprove the contact hypothesis that states that contact “between members of an in-group and an out-group is expected to improve the attitudes of the former toward the latter by replacing in-group ignorance with first-hand knowledge that dis-confirms stereotypes”(Lee 40). The out-group chosen for the experiment was the homeless. This experiment wanted to see if perceptions about the homeless would improve if people, who themselves were not in poverty, had different contacts and exposures with a homeless person. At the end of the experiment, it was concluded that the contact hypothesis was true and that “respondents experiencing greater exposure are more likely to attribute homelessness to structural causes and less likely to believe in individual causes…exposure encourages development of positive emotions and empathy” (Lee 50) In "Struggling with Poverty: Implications for Theory and Policy of Increasing Research on Social Class-Based Stigma" by Wendy Williams, Williams investigates and elucidates on the origins on the stigmas associated with poverty and the role researchers have in either helping erase or exacerbating the poverty stigma. One common stereotype of poverty is “viewed as a moral failing by the public because it indicates that individuals have not worked hard enough” (Williams 40). Williams advocates for correct and thorough research about social class and its implications as many “people do not understand that relatively little mobility exists at the societal level and that there are also significant structural barriers…Americans work exceedingly hard but remain unable to pull themselves out of poverty. At the same time, most express a strong belief in the American Dream” (Williams 41). It is the researcher’s job to correctly identify those in poverty and use the appropriate term to identify them, as many other terms like “welfare recipient” tend to conjure up negative connotations. In “Deciding to Discipline: Race, Choice, and Punishment at the Frontlines of Welfare Reform,” the authors describe the welfare sanctions on individuals and how more sanctions are likely to placed on an individual that is a minority. In order to prove the biases behind sanctioning, which “became far more important under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program because national welfare reform legislation in 1996 specified stricter work requirements…and gave states more options in designing penalties” (Schram 400), the authors present the surveys and experiments performed to showcase the innate biases behind the sanctions. They provided similar cases to a white and a minority counterpart and presented them to welfare administration. Their experiments showed that “case narratives elicit a stable pattern of responses from case managers, regardless of discrediting attributes, when clients are white. Minority clients enjoy no such immunity: their odds of being sanctioned rise in the presence of discrediting markers, even when the details of their case do not change a bit” (Schram 414).
Through the research, data and the ethnography, it is clear that the stigma associated with impoverished people prevents meaningful action from happening from the government and those in influential positions. Too often, people who have never found themselves in a position of need tend to quickly judge a person in need and blame their situation on their character. And even though that individual may have character traits that do not help their situation, their circumstances were formed a long time before they were born. For example, in “The House We Live in: Race-- The Power of Illusion”, the documentary showcases the disadvantage minorities have and how the government has helped perpetuate that disadvantage and caused minorities to be more susceptible to poverty. In particular, the documentary looks at the racist history of the housing market after World War II when the GI Bill allowed loans to be given to veterans to buy the newly constructed suburban homes that were being built. Yet, the government also introduced the concept of redlining, which allowed the government to deny a loan based off of race. Racial discrimination has contributed a lot to the poverty stigma. Unfortunately, poverty tends to be associated with minorities, people who live off welfare, and people who consume drugs and alcohol on a daily basis. Therefore, many minorities, in particular, are victims of this stereotype. As seen in “The Stereotype Within,” the children of color in the classroom believed the societal discrimination that they were poor because it was in their nature to not be upstanding citizens. Because of this social stigma, children of color begin to feel defeated as they begin to believe that they deserve to be poor because society perceives them as so. In "Struggling with Poverty: Implications for Theory and Policy of Increasing Research on Social Class-Based Stigma,” Williams demonstrates the need for social class stigma to be incorporated into research by psychologists so that they can better teach policymakers to help them decrease the effects of poverty (Williams 37). Policymakers need to be aware of the innate biases associated with poverty in order to be able to look for helpful solutions. In particular, the journal article “Deciding to Discipline: Race, Choice, and Punishment at the Frontlines of Welfare Reform” highlights the racial discrimination seen in welfare. The journal highlights an experiment that demonstrates that minorities in poverty are more likely to receive sanctions for their actions than their white counterparts. These minorities are considered “less deserving” by the government system. The concept of being less “deserving” stems from neo-liberalism tradition that I learned in my Poverty and Wealth in Politics class came to be around the twentieth century in the United States. This way of governance essentially wanted to, in theory, help an individual for only a certain amount for a limited time so that that individual would become independent and have the funds to live without government assistance. Even though it sounds good in theory, these “means-tested” programs tend to have a lot of requirements that, in the end, do not provide much drastic help and only help for a very limited amount of time. For example, during my interview, Ms. Bailey commented how she tried to apply for food stamps, but was denied because her income was three dollars more than the maximum income allowed by the government. These strict requirements and time limitations (food stamps can be given over a range of six months to three years) demonstrate how the government treats those in poverty as if it is their individual fault that they are in their current plight of poverty. As a result, since the government treats its impoverished citizens as being “less deserving” of help, this mentality has cascaded to the general public and allowed for the development of a very negative perception of the poor. Yet, the stereotype that the poor consist of mostly minorities who live off of welfare and who consistently make erroneous choices is simply not true. Looking at table 1, even though whites have a lower percentage of poverty, they have a greater number of people in poverty than any individual minority. Also in table 2, it shows that children have the highest percentage of poverty than the other age groups. This demonstrates the cyclical nature of impoverishment in the United States and shows that many people are being born into poverty because of circumstances created by the government and stigmas that judge and prevent barriers from being broken. Even though there have been people who have been able to get out of poverty, it is not easy and “when social class boundaries are perceived as permeable, individuals are less likely to view their disadvantage as unjust and to engage in action to ameliorate negative treatment” (Williams 41). Working hard is not enough. Current government assistance is not enough. The government system of welfare needs radical change to help that will not blame the individual but will look deeper to fix the deep-rooted issues that have led to the current circumstances of the poor. The issue of poverty is a deep and very convoluted one. Over the years, negative stereotypes reinforced by the media and government programs have led to biases against those living under the poverty line. Living in poverty is hard enough and negative stereotypes only function to add tinder to that already billowing fire. If those stereotypes can be eliminated, better opportunities can be presented to people struggling to make ends meet. As proven in “Revisiting the Contact Hypothesis: The Case of Public Exposure to Homelessness,” simple exposure to a person in poverty can definitely improve the public’s perception of their situation. This occurred during my interview with Ms. Bailey as well. In our talk, I was able to see how Ms. Bailey has worked so hard to provide for her two sons, and even though she herself struggles to make ends meet, she works hard to make a difference and help others like her because she knows that she is not defined by her situation because, “it’s not where you live, it’s how you live”.