No Shame in My Game: The Economic Sociology of Poverty

Introduction: Mythology and Stigma Surrounding Poverty

Poverty in America is such a politicized topic that it can be difficult for even the most neutral observers to discuss. Part of the reason poverty is so political is that most Americans hold a romanticized notion of the free-market system and believe that the American dream is easily achieved with sufficient hard work. However, the reality is that while America may be a free-market economy, it is also an economy where the wealthy have far greater access to politicians than the average individual, and where much of the socioeconomic political structure has been developed to preserve wealth for the upper class. Another reason poverty is such a political issue is that it is so closely linked to race in America. Many people reject the notion that the disproportionate number of minorities trapped in poverty is connected to the history of slavery and other forms of racial oppression in the United States. Yet if one considers that people are likely to die as members of the same socioeconomic class into which they were born, the link between race and poverty becomes difficult to deny. These two realities remain deeply uncomfortable for many Americans. As a result, a mythology has developed around the impoverished — one that supports the idea that the poor are somehow subhuman and deserving of their condition.

When one examines images of the impoverished in popular media, the picture that emerges is of people who are morally and emotionally destitute, as well as financially poor. The poor are frequently portrayed as criminals engaged in a wide variety of offenses — drug use, gang involvement, prostitution, drug dealing, and theft. They are depicted as valuing human life less than others, with the suggestion that life is cheap in urban environments. They are portrayed as lacking family values, with men and women alike willing to abandon their children. Many portrayals show extended family members raising children whose parents' whereabouts are unknown. The poor are shown as dependent on government handouts, with housing, food, clothing, utilities, and medical care all provided through government subsidies. Frequently, they are portrayed as sexually indiscriminate — having children by multiple partners, with little desire to marry or remain married.

This portrait of the poor, however, is profoundly inaccurate. While there are certainly individuals among the impoverished who seem to confirm these stereotypes, they do not speak for the whole of America's lower socioeconomic class. The mythology surrounding poverty is not a neutral cultural artifact — it actively shapes policy and public attitudes in ways that make it harder for impoverished communities to rise.

Katherine Newman's No Shame in My Game: Challenging Stereotypes

Katherine Newman's book No Shame in My Game, which explores the working poor in Harlem — a notoriously poor, historically Black community — dismantles many of these myths surrounding poverty. It directly challenges the idea that the poor are lazy or unmotivated, and instead presents many of the poor as hard workers. It refutes the notion that the poor are without pride, and even examines how pride itself can play a role in perpetuating economic oppression. The book also shatters the stereotype that the poor lack family values by demonstrating the central role that family plays in these communities. Furthermore, it shows that the impoverished do form communities and can play vital roles within them. Many people view the poor as impotent victims of circumstance, powerless to change their situation due to a lack of financial resources. While Newman does not deny that money is interrelated with power, she demonstrates that poverty is not the equivalent of powerlessness.

Newman describes being inspired by a cab ride through Harlem that challenged the idea of the neighborhood as an urban wasteland. Two assumptions are frequently made about lower-class neighborhoods: first, that the people in them do not work; and second, that these neighborhoods lack the social institutions that hold communities together. Newman, however, recounts seeing residents anxiously trying to get to their jobs (Newman, p. x). And Harlem, like many poor neighborhoods, has churches, schools, and stores that unify it — just as in neighborhoods populated by those of higher socioeconomic status. These observations led her to question the assumptions people commonly make about the poor, and to arrive at conclusions very different from what she initially expected. Rather than focusing on the jobless poor, who have dominated so much prior research, Newman chose to examine the working poor and their contributions to the community.

Newman introduces the reader to Jamal, a young man with a common-law wife who is struggling to survive as a member of the working poor. Most readers would make unfavorable assumptions about Jamal on first impression. He does not hold a full-time job, which many would attribute to laziness. However, Jamal has worked a series of jobs in the fast-food industry and expresses a desire to work full shifts whenever possible. The problem is that in entry-level positions, obtaining full shifts can be difficult. Newman discusses at length the impact that these low-wage positions have on workers. Jamal is twenty-two years old, barely at the start of his adult life, yet he has already begun to view his future as a series of low-pay, low-value positions, and expresses a sense of hopelessness about ever escaping poverty. This hopelessness is a recurring theme in the book, as Newman examines the depression that accompanies poverty and the ways in which that depression helps perpetuate its cycle.

The Racialization of Poverty and the Working Poor

It is not by coincidence that Newman's first discussion of a member of the working poor centers on a Black man, because poverty has become deeply racialized. In the era immediately following the Great Depression, when large numbers of people remained in poverty, those considered working poor tended to be white. There was some public sympathy for them — the prevailing notion being that these were unfortunate victims of difficult financial circumstances rather than people who deserved their condition. Today, poverty carries a far heavier stigma. As Newman writes, "Even though the majority of the poor are still white and working — as they were in the 1930s and thereafter — the public impression is quite clearly the reverse: poverty wears a black face and is presumed to follow from unwillingness to enter the labor force" (Newman, p. 39). This perception shapes how the poor are treated politically. Racist assumptions inform proposed solutions to poverty in ways that have prevented any policy from lifting entire communities out of deprivation. Instead, the fact that some individuals manage to escape poverty is used as a cudgel to condemn those who cannot.

The misconception that all poor people are subsidized by the government causes additional harm. While the non-working poor may have access to government resources that shield them from the worst effects of poverty — such as homelessness and hunger — the working poor often lack access to those same resources. The working poor are people living below the poverty line, many of them minimum-wage workers, but with incomes frequently just high enough to disqualify them from many forms of government assistance. Paradoxically, this means that working can cause a real decline in overall household wealth for some families — a scenario that does nothing to encourage self-sufficiency. Because the working poor are employed and earning what has been deemed a legal minimum wage, they are not perceived by most people as impoverished. This renders an entire group of people invisible, even though, ironically, it is a group with whom most Americans interact on a daily basis. The working poor perform service jobs for middle- and upper-class consumers — staffing fast-food restaurants and other minimum-wage workplaces. Details such as uniforms help obscure the income gap between these workers and the customers they serve, and the availability of many such jobs outside poverty-stricken areas makes it even easier for consumers to ignore economic disparity.

Works Cited

Newman, Katherine. No Shame in My Game: The Working Poor in the Inner City. New York: Knopf and Russell Sage Foundation, 1999. Ebrary. Web. 5 Apr. 2010.