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@deservedness
A privileged person's guide to dismantling their own biases, stigma, and othering of people experiencing homelessness
(A work in progress) Everyone is a human being Everyone has human rights Everyone deserves to have access to basic human needs and that includes shelter There are many reasons people are experiencing homelessness I do not know these reasons I cannot tell if someone is homeless just by looking at them I will do my best not to look down on anyone I will not ignore or dismiss people because they happen to be homeless I will treat people experiencing homelessness like I would any other person I will do my best not to place blame or make value judgments When I place blame or make value judgments, I will challenge myself I will challenge my own biases and assumptions I will challenge myself when I think of people experiencing homelessness as an "Other" I will ask myself why I think these things I will ask myself how I can think differently We are all human We all deserve a better world I am a part of this process
Did you know:
Montreal tickets people experiencing homelessness for things like "loitering, spitting, dropping cigarette ends, lying on a public bench, being drunk in public, and jaywalking. However, the homeless population, by definition, has no other option but to use public spaces to carry out private functions." Toronto tickets many people for similar "crimes" under the Safe Streets Act.
People experiencing homelessness find it difficult to pay these fines and end up in jail.
Between 2000-2010 the number of people panhandling and squeegeeing have decreased, but during the same period, there has been a 2147% increase in tickets given out through the Safe Streets Act in Toronto.
Between 2000-2010 only $8,086.56 worth of these fines were paid while just the policing alone cost taxpayers close to a million dollars.
Laws are used to criminalize the experience of being homeless.
These laws also send a message about who deserves the protection of the law, who deserves to use public space, and who deserves a private place to do the things they need to in order to live. If you're experiencing homeless, apparently you're undeserving of all these things.
Some thoughts and ponderings on the connections between Othering and deservedness
1) Ingram and Schneider talk about how deservedness and Otherness operate together to create and maintain the boundary between who belongs in society and who doesn't. Ingram and Schneider define "deservedness" as a social construction, and argue that the groups a society defines as Other are also the groups societies understand to be undeserving. Deservedness is a tool to control the boundary between the dominant group and other groups. I've also been thinking about the how this process of Othering and deservedness works together. Here's what I've got so far:
When one group is defined as undeserving and as Other, then another group (the group that does the defining) is defined as deserving and dominant. These groups are defined simultaneously, since defining one group as deserving automatically defines the other group as undeserving.
The group that is able to define another group as undeserving probably has the power to marginalize or withhold resources from that group.
These processes not only create distinctions between groups, but construct one group to be superior over another group.
These process creates and maintains hierarchies. The group in power uses this process not only to define themselves as powerful, but to make sure they stay powerful through the Othering of other groups.
Extrapolating from this, it becomes possible to understand how and why people experiencing homelessness come to be understood as undeserving Others. This label is not their own choice, but is forced onto them by another, more powerful group. Plus, this act of labeling of people experiencing homelessness as undeserving is itself a form of marginalization, for once labeled, resources are further withheld. Moreover, more powerful and wealthy groups come to be understood as superior and deserving against the group experiencing homelessness. This binary relation is used to legitimize the position groups: one group as deserving, the other as not.
2) Ingram and Schneider discuss ways social policy and deservedness intersect. Here are some of the things they mention:
Social policy can be used to construct groups as deserving or undeserving. This can be done in ways the shore up the power of certain groups, but it can also be done in ways to challenge the power of dominant groups (for instance, challenging racial segregation and offering social security to disabled people). However, the authors point out that social policy is more often used to maintain power structures than challenge them.
The social construction of deservedness is not "permanent". It can be challenged and it can shift. This allows for new understandings, which can have implications for social policy. For instance, post 9/11 Arab American were constructed in a negative light leading to discriminatory policies. They became "undeserving". On the other hand, the last few decades have brought positive shifts in how persons with HIV/AIDS are understood. They have become increasingly understood as "deserving".
I know that social policy has been used to create groups of people experiencing homelessness. By this, I don't just mean that social policy created the label of homelessness. I'm referring to the structural causes of homelessness, which have a lot to do with social policy decisions. Anyway, I like this recognition that the construction of deservedness isn't permanent, because it's a nice reminder that social policy can be used to challenge homelessness and the way we think of people experiencing homelessness as undeserving.
3) I also think this is really interesting because what Ingram and Schneider are arguing is that it's easier to think of people as undeserving when they're understood as Other. I tend to think of oppression, privilege and deservedness as separate things that only sometimes intersect. Now I'm thinking that maybe that should change. Groups that are understood as Other are often denied resources in society. This suggests that deservedness and oppression are deeply entwined, and that deservedness is connected to racism, classism, sexism, cisgenderism, ableism, etc. If ideas about deservedness impact oppression, then they must also impact privilege. Thus, if it's easier to think of people are undeserving if they're oppressed, it must be easier to think of people as deserving when they're privileged. Do ideas of deservedness shape the way oppressions and privileges operate? Do we absorb ideas about deservedness at the same time we absorb ideas about oppression and privilege? Do we absorb ideas about oppression and privilege at the same time we absorb ideas about deservedness? Can we separate these things? What happens when we consider intersectionality? In what ways and in what contexts are we understood as deserving and undeserving? People can experience privilege and oppression simultaneously. Can we experience being deserving and undeserving at the same time?
4)
Re: oppression and deservedness
I've been thinking about oppression and deservedness in connection with the way marginalized groups in society are treated. In particular, I've been pondering the way agencies cater to certain groups of people, yet exclude other groups of people. For example, it has been pointed out that many disabled people have trouble even accessing many agencies, including homeless shelters, because agencies weren't designed taking disability into account. They may lack staff or even the infrastructure that allows them to be accessible in the first place. In this case, I see multiple layers of deservedness and oppression. An ableist world tells us that disabled people are undeserving in general. This understanding of undeservedness is reinforced when disabled people aren't even considered when agencies are designed. Thinking about it this way, it's like undeservedness is used to create further undeservedness. Undeservedness reinforces itself, recreates itself and spreads. This furthers the oppression experienced, and further silences and marginalizes.
Sources: what I linked above, "Five faces of oppression" by I. Young & "Contradictory tensions in anti oppression practice in feminist social services" by L. Barnoff and K. Moffatt
So this isn't a question but just wanted to let you know that people care and are reading this and this blog is awesome, so by extension you are awesome!
Thank you!
I don't actually have a question for you, but I just wanted to tell you that I've enjoyed reading your posts. I think you're speaking about a problem that needs to be talked about much more. Much, much more. I'm looking forward to reading your future posts! Regards from Tennessee, U.S. (:
Thank you so much for your kind words and support! :)
Your message is intended to shame people on welfare and to spread the message that people on welfare are undeserving of the money they receive. Not only is this unfair, the idea that welfare is a "career opportunity" is a blatant lie.
Elites in 1834: Make social supports as shitty as possible so the people on them will be miserable and will be forced to work for us for shitty wages!
Elites in 2012: Make social supports as shitty as possible so the people on them will be miserable and will be forced to work for us for shitty wages!
The Legacy of the Poor Laws
Here are some of the ways the Poor Law legacy influences the way we think: - The Poor Laws established the notion that there are categories of deserving and undeserving people. They not only argued that it was possible, but that it was necessary to separate people into one of these two categories. This taught us that it's necessary to judge the poor. - The Poor Laws taught us that there are things that the poor have to do to prove that they are deserving. You're only deserving if you're really desperate and unable to work for what is deemed to be legitimate reasons. - White British middle-class identity is very much tied up into the ideas we have about deservedness. Whiteness is understood as more deserving than any other racial identity. Middle-class British values are understood as more deserving that any other values. This influences which perspectives and issues are recognized as legitimate. - Principles like less-eligibility and means-testing, which are still alive and well in many of our social policies, influence us to think that we should always be connected to the labour market. We are told over and over again that working the shittiest job is preferable to receiving income supports. These ideas create a stigma against people who aren't working. Basically, if you're not working, you're not considered deserving. - Structural causes of poverty aren't addressed. It wasn't really until the Great Depression and the widespread unemployment that came with it that lots of people realized that there were other things besides people's choices and morality that caused poverty. Even today, we're so preoccupied with scrutinizing the poor that we don't recognise structural causes. Just like in 1834, poverty is still very much thought of as something the poor are responsible for. - The wants and needs of employers and elites are valued over the wants and needs of the people experiencing poverty. The idea of less-eligibility came from what elites wanted, not from the wants of people who actually experience poverty. This tells us that it's the elites who deserve to be heard. - These ideas justify the scrutiny and surveillance of the poor. In order to receive welfare, your means have to be tested and your assets scrutinized. Moreover, you're scrutinized over and over again to make sure you continually meet requirements. Gatekeepers to supports, like social workers, have the ability to go through very personal information, like bank account information. This is very invasive and wouldn't be tolerated for any other population but the poor. Our system assumes all people in poverty are undeserving until proven otherwise. If you're in poverty, you're thought of as guilty until proven innocent. These centuries-old ideas inherited from the Poor Laws not only influence social workers and politicians, but they teach all of us to judge people in poverty. These ideas shape how we think about deservedness and "welfare fraud". They teach us that it's okay to judge the poor and they inform how we judge the poor. We think that only people who are suffering with very little to their name are deserving of social supports. We activity look for cheats, for fraud, and for any and all assets someone might have that could make undeserving. We means-test each other. We are part of the process of judgement and surveillance. In a previous post, I challenged someone who argued that people on welfare shouldn't be allowed to own an iPhone or an iPod. The assumption made was that if someone is poor, they shouldn't be allowed to have anything of monetary value because that makes them a "cheat". This is means-testing. This is an example of judging a stranger because we think that because they own something of value, they must not be legitimately poor. This is us judging someone as undeserving because we've been taught to think that poor people don't deserve to have anything but the bare essentials. These kinds of arguments are directly informed by the Poor Law legacy. When we judge the poor like this, we're regurgitating centuries-old ideology that's premised on giving people in poverty as little as possible and forcing them into the workforce. The Poor Law legacy remains with us. It informs how we're able to think about caring for people in poverty and about who we think is deserving of that care. I think it's important to know about the legacy of the Poor Laws. It reminds us that the ideas we have about poverty are not innate. The Poor Laws emerge out of a certain context. We treat many of these ideas like they're a given, but they're not. We haven't always thought about poverty this way and not everyone thinks about poverty this way. This gives me hope that we don't always have to think about poverty this way -- that we can unlearn this legacy and create a world where we don't judge people experiencing poverty -- a world where we assume everyone is deserving. Sources: "Changing Politics of Canadian Social Policy" by James J. Rice and Michael J. Prince, "Surveillance and government of the the welfare recipient" by Ken Moffat, "Working their way out of poverty? Gendered employment in three welfare states" by M. Baker, "If you're in my way, I'm walking: the assault on working people since 1970" by Tom Workman, "An outrage to common decency: Historical perspectives on child neglect" by K. Swift, the SWP302 lecture at Ryerson University on September, 17th, 2012, & the Social Assistance Statistical Report: 2008.
"Citizen Consumers"
The Individualization of Responsibility
People benefit from this. For instance, the 1% who benefit from the economic system that creates the climate where it's difficult to get a decent job continue to benefit from this system. And this system continues to exist and make it increasingly difficult for others to get decent jobs. 6) Because solutions should be about individual actions, any kind of collective action becomes unthinkable. If we think problems are caused by the way people act and solutions involve changing the way people act, then it becomes really hard to think about joining together with other people to make change. Change is reduced to something individuals do on their own, not something groups of individuals do together. For example: Because the problem has been narrowly defined as an individual's refusal to work, we see no reason to work together to fight against the structural causes of poverty and barriers to employment. We're also less likely to join movements that tackle the structural causes, like Occupy, because we're unable to consider the larger connections. 7) When we blame individuals and ignore structural causes, it's easier to understand people as undeserving. Maniates didn't write about this, but I'm adding it because I think it's intimately related. I've noticed that when we think that social problems are caused by the way people act, it's easier to think of people as undeserving. It's easier to think: if they got themselves into this mess, they can get themselves out. Moreover, since we learn to think of people as incompetent, it's also easier to think: we shouldn't give people resources because they only know how to misuse them. For example: Because we think this person is simply unwilling to work, we think the problem is with them, and this makes it easier to think of them as undeserving of any social supports, even if those things are basic human rights. And because we look down on them and consider them undeserving, we're also hesitant to give them resources because we think they'll "waste" them. To sum up... The individualization of responsibility represents certain narrow ways we've been trained to think about social problems and their solutions. I believe that knowing how the individualization of responsibility works is important because it allows us to notice this ideology and challenge it, even in our own minds. It also allows us to look for and acknowledge structural causes of social problems, which enables us to undermine the individualization of responsibility. This lets us figure out who benefits from the status quo and why it's probably in their best interest to keep us confused and blaming each other. I think that acknowledging these things is the first step towards figuring out what real change looks like. I think making sense of the individualization of responsibility is also very important because exposing the way this ideology works allows us to cut through ideas about who is deserving and undeserving. When we're able to notice that structural causes are being ignored and that individuals are being blamed for things out of their control, it's easier to see the process through which some people are being constructed as undeserving. There is nothing natural about this process. It involves training us to think in ways that undermine our compassion and humanity. I believe that we can and should unlearn this training. Here's the full citation of the Maniates article if you're interested in looking it up: Maniates, M. (2002). Individualization: Plant a Tree, Buy a Bike, Save the World? In. T. Princen, M. Maniates & Conca, K. (Eds.) Confronting consumption (pp. 43-66). Cambridge: The MIT Press.
"We don't have any money!"
Sources: The Blueprint To End Homelessness In Toronto, the lecture Michael Shapcott from the Wellesley Institute gave to my INT908 class on September 19, 2012, ye old Budget Speech, "Changing Politics of Canadian Social Policy" by James J. Rice and Michael J. Prince, "If you're in my way, I'm walking: the assault on working people since 1970" by Tom Workman, and "A Brief History of Neoliberalism" by David Harvey
ONLY RICH PEOPLE DESERVE NICE THINGS. IT DOESN’T MATTER HOW YOU THINK YOU GOT THAT iGADGET. YOU MUST HAVE CHEATED. BECAUSE THERE’S NO WAY ANYONE WHO IS POOR DESERVES TO HAVE NICE THINGS. YOU’RE NOT ALLOWED. YOU HEAR ME? YOU’RE NOT ALLOWED. NICE THINGS ARE FOR RICH PEOPLE ONLY.
STAY OUT OF OUR CLUBHOUSE!
I’m sorry, but I can’t understand this.
If the latest iPhone or iPad is necessary in your life for whatever reason, then get it.
But if you are in need of financial aid and you are using your money on an unnecessary luxury…I can’t understand that. Maybe it’s how I was raised. That’s a lesson I was always taught. Sometimes, the nice things have to be ignored in contrast to the necessary things. You don’t have to have a “nice thing”, especially if you’re hurting on money (and there are much nicer things out there in my opinion that can take the place of an expensive piece of technology). And if you are using money that you didn’t earn on something unnecessary…I just…I can’t understand it.
Someone explain this to me so that I’m not just being ignorant here.
People can save up for things they really want, including iphones and ipads. There’s also Christmas and birthday gifts, finding bargains and sales, etc. It all feeds into this idea that if you are poor, if you posses one luxury item, no matter what or how, it invalidates your poverty forever and ever because you have something that isn’t bread, beans and rice and came from Goodwill. It also grossly skews our idea of poverty and low income. Yeah, a poor person buys an iphone. But that may also be the one nice thing they get for themselves all year. We’re still, as a culture, stuck on this idea that you’re not REALLY poor - and thus deserving of our pity/help - unless you’re living with the absolute bare and utter minimum of what is required to not be homeless.
Reblogging this again for the commentary above. (I added the bolding for emphasis.)
ONLY RICH PEOPLE DESERVE NICE THINGS. IT DOESN'T MATTER HOW YOU THINK YOU GOT THAT iGADGET. YOU MUST HAVE CHEATED. BECAUSE THERE'S NO WAY ANYONE WHO IS POOR DESERVES TO HAVE NICE THINGS. YOU'RE NOT ALLOWED. YOU HEAR ME? YOU'RE NOT ALLOWED. NICE THINGS ARE FOR RICH PEOPLE ONLY.
STAY OUT OF OUR CLUBHOUSE!