NBC's recent story on how 80 percent of Americans will be living at or near the poverty level in their lifetimes was accompanied by the above photo of a "poor white family".
Images that feature human beings "work" in communicating political and social meaning because of how the viewer "reads" them. As such, there are stated and unstated assumptions which the person who is "seeing" applies to the "object" of their gaze.
For example, the White Gaze views a photo of a young black man wearing a hoodie and whose pants are sagging and sees a person who exists in a state of criminality, and is a social predator.
A photo of a white man wearing a suit and walking down Wall Street in New York will be seen by the White Gaze as representing a "respectable" person and a "hard worker" living the "American Dream."
In reality, the former may be on the way to his 3rd job, has never been in prison or arrested, and takes care of his aged parents and siblings. The latter could be a child-molesting murderer and rapist, who is also embezzling millions of dollars from his clients.
White and male--and Whiteness more generally--views itself as benign and harmless. Black and male--and Blackness more generally--is viewed by White American society as dangerous and pathological. The power of images is how they harness and channel assumptions about how various types of personhood find representation in, and are configured by, a broader system of dominance, subordination, privilege, inclusion, exclusion, and hierarchy.
NBC.com's photo is an example of those processes at work. There we "see" two overweight white women with a young child, and thus make social and political assumptions about gender and class. We see a small home and generalize from that visual about how "poor people" live, and more importantly, "what type of people" they are.
Images also give the viewer permission to empathize or to condemn the subject. Are these "good" people or "bad people?" What is my sense of obligation to them? Does my sense of community extend to people like them?
Stereotypes serve as cognitive short cuts which the viewer, and we as a society, use to categorize and evaluate the relative worth of whole groups of people. The way that images of white, "poor", female, "overweight", "unattractive", bodies are processed by the viewer is a reflection of how we as a society think about race, class, and gender. These concepts exist individually while also having meaning in relation to one another.
Moreover, in America, because of the Calvinist-Horatio Alger-Myth of Individualism and Upward Mobility, claims on poverty necessarily involve moral judgments.
The black single mother is a "welfare queen" who is "lazy" and has "bad morals". The poor white person is a "redneck" or a "hillbilly" with all of the stereotypes and assumptions implicit in such language.
Consequently, poor white people are one of the few groups which can me made fun and mocked in American culture without consequence or public sanction.
White elites and opinion leaders do not want to talk about poor white people because that would expose the defects of capitalism. These same elites also avoid discussing white poverty because it would undermine how they have historically been able to mine white supremacy to mask inter-class conflict and exploitation among whites in the United States.
"Race is how class is lived in America." Consequently, the leaders in the black and brown community care about poverty as a general issue because it disproportionately impacts people of color.
White privilege extends to all white people in America. Black and brown folks have to deal with both the colorline and other types of inequalities in American society. Attending to our needs, while doing so with a respect for the struggles of all people necessitates a practical focusing of energy where the white poor are viewed as an interest group that should be attended to by the white community.
Moreover--and I do believe black and brown elites are more correct than not in this choice and instinct--there is a deep belief, one hard taught by American history, that poor and working class whites will consistently choose to serve the interests of rich white people because of the psychic wages that are paid to them by Whiteness. As such, why focus the limited political capital of the black and brown community in a time of crisis on solving a "white" problem?
Poor and working class whites may have much in common with poor and working class people of color. But, their greatest allegiance is doing the work of white racism against their own immediate class interests. From Bacon's Rebellion forward, with some notable deviations, this has been one of the key themes in American history.
However, the new white poor are not the stereotypes drawn from the exploitative TV show Honey Boo Boo.
They are the former middle class and non-college educated whites who worked in the skilled trades or as low-level municipal and public functionaries. Many of them are invisible as they couch surf with friends, or move back in with their aging parents or other relatives. The new white poor lost their homes and are living in motels (if they are lucky). Other members of the new white poor are sleeping in their cars, one of the last possessions that marked them as "middle class", after their IRA's and 401k's are drained, the credit cards maxed out many months ago.
The new white poor are the students in some of my classes who share with me how they are using their student loans to support their parents; thus they must pass their courses or the whole family will be homeless. The new white poor are those college students that universities are having to accommodate with showers, lockers, dorms, and other supports because many of them quite literally have no where to go when the school day is over, and when the academic year has ended.
The new white poor are not toothless rural folks sitting around smoking meth and making moonshine as they are depicted in the American popular imagination. They are your neighbors, in the suburbs, rural areas, and our cities, that are right next door, and trying to get by while maintaining their dignity.
The type of white poverty stereotyped by the lede photo on NBC's news item is a caricature that is easy to mock and deride. Those poor white people are an alien Other. "Respectable" white folks (and others) mock them, because poor whites represent a basement below which the white middle class imagines they cannot fall beneath.
It is much harder to minimize and ignore the now poor white folks who are the former members of the middle and working class that shop at Trader Joe's or Target with their SNAP cards and pittance of remaining unemployment monies, praying that no one they know sees them, and then get back into their paid off SUV and drive to a parking lot to sleep for the night with their kids, and who then wake up early the next day to wash up in the McDonald's bathroom.
The mainstream news media will likely not show you a picture of failed white suburban domesticity in the Age of Austerity and the Great Recession. The Fourth Estate are not truth tellers. They support the status quo and the powerful.
As such, a meaningful discussion of white poverty in the Age of Austerity is not an approved topic for the public discourse even while "we the people" are suffering everyday.
12 comments:
I suspect the "psychic wages" for Whiteness also has something to do with why such bad times have not resulted in much higher levels of social unrest. US unrest was Occupy, which was -- for practical purposes -- outlawed through ordnances used to suppress the homeless and the Tea Party which rallied for the cause of making things even more desperate.
You are right. When will the breaking point come though? And who will it be against?
Here's one quote: "There is the real possibility that white alienation will increase if steps are not taken to highlight and address inequality on a broad front..." This lags a bit in that there is already increased white alienation, and it went as a kind of misguided revenge movement to afflict the already very afflicted. I don't think there's any way to predict a breaking point in the US -- our economic system and national mythology would shape it and these are uniquely American. But I would say there's a fifty-fifty chance that any second "popular" uprising could be even more to the right and violently opposed to bettering conditions. How do you game, or conduct a thought exercise, on what might happen if GOP extremism got its way and destroyed food stamps or brought about a constitutional crisis that forced the government to suspend its social safety net spending, even for a short time? I have no idea. The possibility of something so utterly disastrous happening may not seem high to many but there is no way anyone can say it is zero.
I had to share this post with you after reading this! On Up With Chris Hayes there's a satire piece about "White Culture of Crime" there's an attendant article too on gawker.
http://gawker.com/watch-cord-jefferson-discuss-the-white-culture-of-viole-975400723
Well, I don't see how you come to the conclusion in those last two paragraphs. Google's news aggregator is brimming with stories of suburban poverty, both from local news outlets and national ones like TIME and CBS News. Many of them are illustrated with photos of white families, the better to bring home to the majority of how dire things are.
For once, I think I will say something optimistic. You are correct about how the media deals with white poverty, but based on folks in my family, the anger is finally being directed in the right direction. I grew up lower-middle class, but my mom was raised working class, and my dad lower working class/poor. They benefited from the post-New Deal social state (but don't admit it, of course) and rose in class status, but many family members of my generation are being pushed down the social ladder. Some of them, however, have responded to this by rejecting the conservatism of their parents. Or we can just look at the numbers: poorer whites voted for Barack Obama at a much higher percentage than more affluent whites.
While whites who are lower on the social scale have historically defended the color line with violence (as you point out), in my experience they also tend to be much more sympathetic and personally connected to people of color than their social betters. Those higher on the scale are further from the color line, so they get to castigate poor whites as the "racists" because they themselves aren't having their privileged positions threatened. If so, their true colors would be exposed. It is the biggest cop out in American society going today.
I actually think the two of us talked about this years ago back in Chicago, and you still might think me over-optimistic, as you did then. I think the divide and conquer strategy, where poor whites are pitted against people of color, will be less effective as time goes on. There will still be plenty of disadvantaged whites ready to collect the wages of whiteness, but more and more are going to reject this devil's bargain, I think. I just hope it reaches critical mass.
I would like to think they read my White in America series and liked or some of my (and others) white crime in America pieces. Either way both were great. Thanks for sharing.
PBS did something too. But as a consistent lede and topic to overcome the assumption that poor equals black and brown, esp. as a force in driving white voters, esp. on the Right, I remain unconvinced.
The story is complicated as you point out. Instead of creating a sense of intraclass alliances across the color line I just see this fueling white racial anxiety and animus--esp. among those "white working class" voters who feel they are losing.
I hope you are right brother and that generational replacement solves some of these problems.
I've given this more thought today, and my normal pessimistic side came out again because I got to thinking about the white middle class folks who are terrified of losing their status. With the threat of falling into poverty increased, these types become more dangerous. Lots of folks I know back home who are still middle class have gone nutso with the Tea Party and "47%" crap. Those who have been knocked down the ladder might turn against the system, but those clinging to the rungs are already kicking as hard as they can to crush the fingers of those trying to climb up. So yeah, you're right about the potential for some really awful stuff to happen.
This is probably only tangentially related, but I offer it anyway.
When I look at the above picture, I am reminded of my mother, actually.
My mother worked very hard all her life, was a nurse, married a black man, had me, and is now living as an elderly, southern, white, disabled lady in Florida.
Demographically speaking, people must assume a lot of bizarre shit about her. They assume she votes Republican, is afraid of brown people.
Mom is used to assumptions. Most people wouldn't guess she was gay... after all, elderly people aren't supposed to have sexual orientations, right? Being fat doesn't help on the whole assumptions thing, either, even if she was strong enough to lift other human beings and still manage to be gentle back in the day, all other people will see is a fat white lady.
And, if someone was to sit down with my awesome mom, they might hear about how she lost all her molars from decay much too young due to poor diet, or the tattered clothing she wore back then, or all the hurtful things people have said to her about poor white trash that simply isn't true or kind.
I look at my parents and I know that the most disparate communities are united by love and by blood. We are literally related.
There's an old saying in my family: Shake anyone's family tree and a negro will fall out. I have a corollary: Shake most people's trees in America, and I'm sure you'll find white trash. Even, and especially, the rich white folks.
The new white poor aren't all that new. They just forget really quickly, is all.
Powerful truth-telling! Don't ever stop and that is from the child of a janitor and private duty nurse. Draw strength from your roots as I am sure you do.
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