Note: This is an adumbrated version of a paper that was published in the web edition of the Boston Review on January 13, 2011. (The full text can be found here.)
“Culture of Poverty’ Makes a Comeback.” So read the headline of Patricia Cohen’s front-page article in the October 17, 2010 edition of The New York Times. The article was prompted by a recent issue of the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science under the title, “Reconsidering Culture and Poverty.” In their introductory essay, the editors, Mario Luis Small, David J. Harding, and Michèle Lamont, strike a triumphant note:
Culture is back on the poverty research agenda. Over the past decade, sociologists, demographers, and even economists have begun asking questions about the role of culture in many aspects of poverty and even explicitly explaining the behavior of the low-income population in reference to cultural factors.
Cohen begins with a similar refrain:
For more than 40 years, social scientists investigating the causes of poverty have tended to treat cultural explanations like Lord Voldemort: That Which Must Not Be Named. The reticence was a legacy of the ugly battles that erupted after Daniel Patrick Moynihan, then an assistant labor secretary in the Johnson administration, introduced the idea of a ‘culture of poverty’ to the public in his 1965 report on ‘The Negro Family.’
Cohen uncritically accepts two myths woven by William Julius Wilson, the prominent Harvard sociologist, and repeated by his acolytes: first, Moynihan was clobbered for bringing to light compromising facts about black families, and second, that this torrent of criticism constrained a generation of social scientists from investigating the relation between culture and poverty, for fear that it would be pilloried for “blaming the victim.” Thus, a third, patently self-serving myth: thanks to some intrepid scholars who reject political correctness, it is now permissible to consider the role that culture plays in the production and reproduction of racial inequalities….
The problem from the beginning was not Moynihan’s publication of what were actually well-established facts, but rather his distorted interpretation of these facts. Moynihan made the fatal error of inverting cause and effect. Although he acknowledged that past racism and unemployment undermined black families, he held that the pathology in “the Negro American family” had not only assumed a life of its own, but was also the primary determinant of the litany of problems that beset lower-class blacks…. In other words, the imbroglio over the Moynihan report was never about whether culture matters, but about whether culture is or ever could be an independent and self-sustaining factor in the production and reproduction of poverty….
If Moynihan’s critics were unusually vociferous, this was because they understood what was at stake. Moynihan and his supporters contended that the poor were victims of their own vices, thus shifting attention away from powerful political and economic institutions that could make a difference in their lives. If those institutions were absolved of responsibility, the poor would be left on their own.
….If the cultural practices under examination are merely links in a chain of causation, and are ultimately rooted in poverty and joblessness, why are these not the object of inquiry? Why aren’t we talking about the calamity of another generation of black youth who, excluded from job markets, are left to languish on the margins, until they cross the line of legality and are swept up by the criminal justice system and consigned to unconscionable years in prison where, at last, they find work, for less than a dollar an hour, if paid at all? Upon release they are “marked men,” frequently unable to find employment or to assume such quotidian roles as those of husband or father.
….The new culturalists can bemoan the supposed erasure of culture from poverty research in the wake of the Moynihan Report, but far more troubling is that these four decades have witnessed the erasure of racism and poverty from political discourse, both inside and outside the academy….
Thus there is no thought of restoring the safety net. Or resurrecting affirmative action. Or once again constructing public housing as the housing of last resort. Or decriminalizing drugs and rescinding mandatory sentencing. Or enforcing anti-discrimination laws with the same vigor that police exercise in targeting black and Latino youth for marijuana possession. Or creating jobs programs for disconnected youth and for the chronically unemployed. Against this background, the ballyhooed “restoration” of culture to poverty discourse can only be one thing: an evasion of the persistent racial and economic inequalities that are a blot on American democracy.
Good question: Why now? My first answer is that “the retreat from racial justice in American thought and policy” (the subtitle of my 1995 book, Turning Back) has been going on for a very long time. As has “the cultural turn” in American sociology. So this is more of the same.
But as your question implies, this paradigm shift does not “just happen.” We have to consider “the machinery of hegemony,” including the role that foundations and government play in funding knowledge production–for example, the immense canon of research on social capital, concentrated poverty, and research that shifts the focus away from the structure of racism–for example, the massive discrimination in job markets and the dismantling of affirmative action policy–and focuses instead on how poor people cope, more or less, with the exigencies of being poor. Intentionally or not, the policy implication is that we can or should rehabilitate poor people instead of attacking the structures of racism and poverty.
Whoops, there is an indelible glitch in my last sentence. Strike the word “not.” So the sentence should read: Intentionally or not, the policy implication is that we can or should rehabilitate poor people instead of attacking the structures of racism and poverty.
Dr. Steinberg, I believe you had posted on this website some time back and if you’re the same person I’m thinking of, so glad you’ve made your way back around.
I have many thoughts on this, but will come back and comment. For now, legalize marijuana and our undocumented friends and family members, along with other things, and criminalize white collar crime(?)…I don’t even know if there is such thing any more…there used to be…at any rate–criminalize white collar crime. Reverse policies, such as those governing policing drugs, that are in place to push and keep people out on the margins–specifically targeting the poor and people of color, of whom disproportionately live in poverty, that serve to keep them in jails and prisons, from attaining things like subsidized housing, assistance, higher education, and so on. Drug laws are not enforced equally at all…yet even if they were, whites still have white privilege that’s in their favor automatically, of the higher SES–private defense, can bypass FAFSA and go on to college, can afford housing that doesn’t discriminate against their criminal history, can afford food and other basic needs so the conception of being told “because you did drugs, you can’t food. Or money to help make sure you have a roof over your head and are protected from the elements, etc.). Didn’t Paris Hilton have to do like 15 hours of community service for getting caught with cocaine for like the 150th time or something? There are many examples in Hollywood and the everyday world, including the world of higher education, such as in the dorms and so on. Hike up the taxes for people who make more–in fact, hike up everything for people who make more. Scale everything to income levels so people who make more, they pay more in gas, food, etc. also. They can make as much as they want of course, but they will pay more,and so on. Or put caps on all incomes.
Culture of poverty discourse…will come back for this.
A number of Steinberg’s points are spot on. It is the very subtle assumption in his conclusion that is shocking, possibly Un-American, which I will reproduce:
“Thus there is no thought of restoring the safety net. Or resurrecting affirmative action. Or once again constructing public housing as the housing of last resort. Or decriminalizing drugs and rescinding mandatory sentencing. Or enforcing anti-discrimination laws with the same vigor that police exercise in targeting black and Latino youth for marijuana possession. Or creating jobs programs for disconnected youth and for the chronically unemployed. Against this background, the ballyhooed “restoration” of culture to poverty discourse can only be one thing: an evasion of the persistent racial and economic inequalities that are a blot on American democracy.”
Is “restoration” of the safety net really the solution? In fact, this is simply short hand for government guided social welfare, which would replace the functions of the private sector. Anybody who lived in those times and actually had to pay taxes to support those programs knows that these social welfare programs did not grow unpopular in the 1960s and after because of race, although the academic elite of this country would prefer to have us view it in this way.
Although race was a minor political factor, countless studies have demonstrated that two factors were far more significant: 1) poor people are usually lazy. Without a forced incentive, they will choose to rely on welfare programs. Steinberg completely misses the role of prison. It isn’t designed to punish, although this is necessary; it is designed to rehabilitate. If poor people who went to prison would only accept this and actually work to improve themselves, they could use the wonderful resources that prisons provide their clientele.
The second reason why social welfare programs cannot work in the United States is because of the role that special interests play in exterpating the resources that go into public policy. Again, there are endless numberse of studies carried out by some of the leading experts that have confirmed this over and over again.
Let’s take one social welfare program and place it in historical context as an example. Astonishingly, after 78 years of utter failure, you view public housing as a solution. A number of studies have conclusively demonstrated that public housing was key in creating “the second ghetto.” Now why did that happen? 1) the residents were obviously lazy and had no incentive to move out and get real jobs. And 2), when real estate, building, other special interests and local politicians recognized the amount of money that they could make with the federal money coming in and dumping money into public housing projects, they began funneling as much of that money as they possibly could to themselves. The consequence was very trashy housing complexes, political corruption, and a very impoverished living environment with insufficient services or playgrounds.
So you claim that there is “no thought” of bringing back the American welfare state. It’s not that we have stopped thinking about it; it’s that we think about it and look at what it did in our history. As a taxpayer who is stopped being racist a few years back, I do not see how American government can work to improve the lives of the poor in this country because 1) poor people’s cultural values in general are lazy; and 2) the government is too corrupt. The only result will be for rich people getting richer and poor people getting a government sponsored ghetto, once again.
Although I disagree with all of you, this is probably the most important discussion that this country should be having, especially based on the recent economic trajectory.
Oh boy Rush Limbaugh’s Big Toe…I don’t know if I want to sprinkle Cayenne pepper all over you and put you back in Rush’s stinky, bacteria ridden sock or spray you with Tinactin. I suspect Rush doesn’t take good care of his toe nails either, so you’re probably suffering from an ingrown toe nail too….
At any rate, much of what you say parrots your owner. I’m curious though, how is it you just stopped being racist a couple of years ago?? What’s the magic key?? And aren’t you just a bit suspect of the data that “confirms” poor people are lazy, since they use rather “lazy” explanations and draw from lazy theories anyway?? How do you define “real work” or “real motivation” or “real drive”? Did the Wall Street folks earn every single penny they got and were they truly deserving of the bailout? If those folks can have a safety net at that level, why not the poor? Yet, I do see you point on how things that were meant to benefit the poor have been abused and made to rather benefit others…. From the perspective of the poor and oppressed, motives from those above when it comes to “helping” or “giving” must always be questioned–whose really benefiting? Why are they doing it? But considering we live in a capitalist society that is inherently racist and classist (see http://www.amazon.com/Texas-Tough-Americas-Prison-Empire/dp/0805080694 and http://www.amazon.com/New-Jim-Crow-Incarceration-Colorblindness/dp/1595581030/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1296500944&sr=1-1 for a couple of examples), beyond safety nets, which do even discriminate further and yes, agreed, some of them of corrupt…what do you propose as solutions on curing the problems of discrimination and poverty in this nation?
I have many more questions, but I how about those above? 🙂
Where did you go Rush Limbaugh’s Big Toe??? You won’t be turned into a voodoo doll of your owner and/or his acquaintances or anything like that…. Was hoping for answers to the couple of questions asked earlier and thought you would like to see this article–was curious what your thoughts on that too:
http://www.politicsdaily.com/2011/02/03/pentagon-admits-to-billions-of-dollars-in-contractor-fraud/?icid=maing|maing7|dl3|sec1_lnk2|41240