Poverty, Racism, and UnConsciousness in the U.S.

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Poverty, Racism, and (Un)Consciousness in the U.S.

• by Paul C. Gorski - gorski_at_EdChange.org

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Introductory StuffWho Said It?

• We have deluded ourselves into believing the
  myth that capitalism grew and prospered out of
  the Protestant ethic of hard work and sacrifices.
  Capitalism was built on the exploitation of black
  slaves and continues to thrive on the
  exploitation of the poor, both black and white,
  both here and abroad.

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Introductory StuffWho Said It?

• we commit ourselves toaddress creatively and
  courageously the complex causes of poverty.

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Introductory StuffWho We Are

• Whos in the room?
• My background and lens

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Introductory StuffStarting Assumptions

• Low-income people bear the brunt of almost every
  imaginable social ill in the U.S.
• All people, regardless of socioeconomic status,
  deserve access to basic human rights
• Inequities in the U.S. (and globally) mean that
  all people dont have this access

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Gross Inequities

• Compared with low-poverty U.S. schools,
  high-poverty U.S. schools have
• More teachers teaching in areas outside their
  certification subjects
• More serious teacher turnover problems
• More teacher vacancies
• Larger numbers of substitute teachers

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Gross Inequities (contd)

• More dirty or inoperative bathrooms
• More evidence of vermin such as cockroaches and
  rats
• Insufficient classroom materials
• Less rigorous curricula
• Fewer experienced teachers
• Lower teacher salaries
• Larger class sizes and
• Less funding.

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Gross Inequities

• Barton, P.E. (2004). Why does the gap persist?
  Educational Leadership 62(3), 8-13.
• Barton, P.E. (2003). Parsing the achievement gap
  Baselines for tracking progress. Princeton, NJ
  Educational Testing Service.
• Carey, K. (2005). The funding gap 2004 Many
  states still shortchange low-income and minority
  students. Washington, D.C. The Education Trust.
• National Commission on Teaching and Americas
  Future (2004). Fifty years after Brown v. Board
  of Education A two-tiered education system.
  Washington, D.C. Author.
• Rank, M.R. (2004). One nation, underprivileged
  Why American poverty affects us all. New York,
  NY Oxford University Press.

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Introductory Stuff The Agenda

• Introductory Stuff (in progress)
• The Big Picture Ten Chairs
• Key Information Concepts
• Where We Go Wrong
• Tenets of Race-Conscious Anti-Poverty Activism

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Part II

• The Big Picture
• Ten Chairs

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The Big Picture

• Point of Reflection
• What would you describe as your socioeconomic
  status?

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The Big Picture

• Point of Reflection
• Where does the notion of meritocracy come from,
  and has it ever been true?

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The Big Picture

• Point of Reflection
• Is poverty an individual experience or, like
  racism, a systemic condition?
• And what does this mean for how we tackle poverty
  and racism?

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Part III

• Informing Ourselves
• Key Information Concepts

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Key Information

• A majority of low-income people in the U.S. are
  white.
• However, African Americans, Native Americans,
  Latinas/os, and Asian Americans are much more
  likely to be low-income than white people.

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Key Information

• 3. A majority of low-income people live in rural,
  rather than urban, areas.
• 4. However, a growing number of low-income people
  are moving to suburban areas due to
  gentrification.

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Key Concepts

• The Culture of Poverty
• Deficit Theory
• The Undeserving Poor
• The process built on these concepts socializes us
  into complicity.

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Key ConceptCapitalist Hegemony

• Defining hegemony
• History of capitalist hegemony (and defining
  communism and socialism as the enemy)
• Importance of hegemony to understanding how we
  understand poverty
• Consumer culture, meritocracy

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Key ConceptThe Culture of Poverty

• What is it? (See hidden rules quizzes.)
• Who made it up?
• What the research says
• Why its dangerous

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Key ConceptThe Deficit Theory

• Two Components
• Example Welfare Mothers
• Why its dangerous
• Who, or what, needs to be fixed?

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Key ConceptThe Undeserving Poor

• Herbert Gans, The War Against the Poor
• Deterioration of support for policy
• Welfare Reform

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Socialized for Complicity

• Consumer Culture (shopping)
• Myth of Meritocracy
• Myth of American Dream
• Latter two most devastating to People of Color

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Part VI

• Where We Go Wrong

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Where We Go Wrong

• Confusing the mitigation of poverty with the
  elimination of poverty.
• - Clothing and housing the poor is necessary, but
  it is not analogous with ending poverty.

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Where We Go Wrong

• Trying to address poverty by fixing low-income
  people.
• - We dont fix racism by fixing People of
  Color, either!

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Where We Go Wrong

• Confusing charity with social change movement.
• - Ending poverty (like racism) requires systemic
  changes to an oppressive systemwe cannot end
  poverty or racism without battling that system.

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Where We Go Wrong

• Confusing charity with social change movement.
• - Ending poverty (like racism) requires systemic
  changes to an oppressive systemwe cannot end
  poverty or racism without battling that system.

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Where We Go Wrong

• Believing that education is the great
  equalizer.
• - White men with a graduate degree earn, on
  average, 80,000 per year. Native American women
  with a graduate degree earn, on average, 42,000
  per year.

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Where We Go Wrong

• Assuming it is our job to save low-income
  people or people of color or any other
  disenfranchised group.
• - One might ask, who, exactly, needs saving?

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Where We Go Wrong

• Attempting to understand poverty by studying poor
  people.
• - Poverty can be understood only by asking why
  poverty exists and to whose benefit poverty
  exists. (Can we understand racism without
  understanding systems of whiteness?)

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Part VII

• Tenets of Race-Conscious Anti-Poverty Action

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Tenets

• We cannot fight racism or poverty without
  fighting racism and poverty.
• Racism can be seen historically as economic
  exploitation

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Tenets

• Working class and poor white people often are
  socialized to believe that working class and poor
  People of Color, rather than an oppressive
  economic system, are the source of their
  hardships.
• Focusing only on white privilege wont work. Help
  them see how theyre exploited economically by
  the same power structure and how white privilege
  is their compensation for being the buffer.

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Tenets

• We cannot affect social change by employing the
  models that are used to socialize us into
  complicity.
• We must model a rejection of deficit ideology, of
  consumer culture, of the myth of meritocracy.

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Tenets

• Social justice requires us to work with
  disenfranchised communities.
• Avoid service programs (or any programs) that do
  not happen in collaboration with disenfranchised
  communities.
• Remember, the key to liberation is for people to
  decide for themselves their path to liberation.

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Tenets

• We cannot end oppression through cultural
  programming.
• Energies and resources set aside for anti-racism
  and anti-poverty initiatives never should be
  spent on celebrating diversity or learning
  about cultures programs.
• Taco Night is fun, but it has nothing to do with
  racism, except, perhaps, contributing to it.

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Final Thought

• Key to Fighting Poverty and Racism
• Consciousness

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• Paul C. Gorski
• gorski_at_edchange.org
• http//www.EdChange.org