8-23-98
...Stigma is an underestimated powerful and subtle force that affects people in different ways, say the researchers. The struggle to lead ordinary lives for working poor and welfare-dependent is hard enough, without facing negative attitudes even from professionals who are part of the support system.
Burton, Frank Avenilla and Tasha Snyder, graduate students at Penn State, Robin Jarrett of University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Judy Francis and Constance Williams of Brandeis University and James Quane of Harvard University presented their findings today (Aug. 23) at the American Sociological Association annual conference.
The researchers conducted interviews involving 220 welfare-dependent and working poor men and women in 21 focus groups held in Chicago, Boston and Baltimore. The participants included African Americans, White Americans, Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans and recent immigrants from the Dominican Republic and El Salvador.
In the focus groups, working poor and welfare-dependent individuals reinforced the stigma by citing examples of welfare system abusers, but they considered their own situation as distinctive and separate from undeserving people.
"There are mothers who get aid and change the stamps for cash because they like to drink...I've heard about it, I've seen it. I've been offered...And I don't. What they give for the benefit of the children, I spend it very well on my children," says one participant of a focus group....
<http://www.psu.edu/ur/NEWS/news/ASAwelfarereform.html> *****
The working class, employed or unemployed, have to drop the self-defeating habit of reinforcing "the stigma by citing examples of welfare system abusers" & presenting "their own situation as distinctive and separate from undeserving people." Or else they will get nowhere politically.
Yoshie