(NAME-MCE) Blaming the poor for their plight

[Paul C.Gorski]

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Blaming the poor for their plight 
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Amy Stuart Wells
Professor of sociology and education at Teachers College, Columbia
University

March 25, 2007

Starting the conversation

We asked a psychologist, a philosopher and a sociologist to tell us how they
would begin to think about the question of shifting some school aid from
wealthier to poorer districts. They will continue their discussion online,
and you-re invited to submit questions and comments for the discussion to
www.newsday .com/viewpoints by 8 p.m. tomorrow. 

For 30 years, some influential social scientists, pundits and policy-makers
in this country have spent a great deal of time trying to convince us that
the only people to blame for poverty and inequality in the United States are
the poor themselves. It is their lack of work ethic, their lame parenting
and their unwillingness to value education as much as those who are more
successful economically. In short, it is the poor people's culture of
poverty that has led to our current situation of record-breaking income and
wealth inequality. Thus, any effort on the part of the government to correct
this inequality - e.g., collecting more taxes from the rich or supporting
more programs for the poor - is seen as immoral and fundamentally unfair to
the hardworking middle-class.

Well, if global warming is an "inconvenient truth," as our former vice
president says, then this ideology of inequality is an extremely "convenient
lie." It allows those of us who have access to adequate housing, food,
clothing and - most important - good schools for our children to feel OK
about the fact that millions of people in this country do not. While there
are, no doubt, some lazy poor people, and not all poor parents are exemplary
- the same could be said of many affluent people I know. Nor is there any
evidence that poor families value education any less than middle class or
rich families - they are simply more frustrated about what kinds of schools
and curricula they able to access.

Indeed, what makes people poor is their lack of access to decent paying jobs
in a service economy that pays well-educated and well-connected
professionals extremely well and pays people with less formal education next
to nothing - not to mention their lack of benefits, most importantly health
care. What keeps people poor is the growing segregation between the rich or
well-off in terms of where people live and send their children to school. As
income gaps have grown and housing prices have exploded, people with money
have been able to move farther away from those without. The exclusivity of
these communities, protected by zoning ordinances, is the very factor that
sends their property values even higher, making their residents and public
schools wealthier still.

What the State of New York is trying to do this year with its public school
funding is but a small effort to re-adjust and correct this worsening
inequality - a scenario in which the rich really do get richer and the poor
either tread water or drown. We can ignore the facts that those of us who
are well-off became so with the aid of many government "programs" that have
allowed the economy and the housing market to develop this way. We can tell
ourselves that we are superior in our values and work ethic to the poor and
thus our children deserve a better education than poor children do. But such
an argument would not be grounded in truth or evidence and, if taken to its
logical conclusion and used as an excuse for ignoring the inequality in our
midst, will signal the demise of our democracy and the American Dream. 

Copyright (c) 2007, Newsday, Inc. 

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This article originally appeared at:
http://www.newsday.com/news/opinion/ny-vpwel245143648mar25,0,3641224.story?c
oll=ny-viewpoints-headlines 

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