Transcript Insisting on Equity: Uncovering Classism and Racism in

The Pitiable Poor:
Classism and Racism in Ruby
Payne’s Framework
by Paul C. Gorski
at the White Privilege Conference
2006
I. Introduction and Agenda


Who is present?
Who am I?
The Pitiable Poor - WPC 2006
A. Agenda
1.
2.
3.
4.
Setting the Context
Introduction of Ruby Payne’s framework
Introduction of the lens for critical reflection
Critical Reflection 1: Conservative frame of
reference
The Pitiable Poor - WPC 2006
A. Agenda (cont’d)
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
Critical Reflection 2: Failure to acknowledge
systemic classism and racism
Critical Reflection 3: Deficit perspective
Additional points for reflection
An authentic framework for understanding
poverty and eradicating classism
Discussion
The Pitiable Poor - WPC 2006
Part II:
Setting the Context
II. Setting the Context:
My Intentions
A.
B.
C.
Focus on Payne’s work and positionality in
relation to that work, not on Payne, the
individual person
Assume positive intentions in Payne’s work,
but don’t assume that positive intentions
lead to positive impact
Raise sometimes-difficult questions in the
pursuit of deeper understanding and the
elimination classism and racism from
schools and society
The Pitiable Poor - WPC 2006
II. Setting the Context:
Starting with What We Know
A.
B.
C.
D.
Decades of documentation on systemic class and
race inequities in and out of schools
Growing concern over Ruby Payne’s work among
activists and educators (many people engaging in
this critique)
Increasingly conservative education system – highstakes testing, standards movement, prescribed
curricula, NCLB, growing cost of higher education;
socioenomically disadvantaged students and
students of color are most adversely affected
Increasingly conservative public policy, cutting
programs for socioeconomically disadvantaged
families
The Pitiable Poor - WPC 2006
II. Setting the Context:
Starting with What We Know, Pt. II
“Poor children bear the brunt of almost
every imaginable social ill. In
disproportionate numbers, they suffer
hunger and homelessness; untreated
sickness…; lead poisoning and other
forms of environmental pollution…
The Pitiable Poor - WPC 2006
II. Setting the Context:
Starting with What We Know, Pt. III
“… These same children are assigned, again in
skewed numbers, to the nation’s worst
public schools—schools in the worst states
of disrepair and with the lowest levels of
per-pupil funding. Not surprisingly,
therefore, poor children as a group lag far
behind others in educational achievement”
(Books, 2004).
The Pitiable Poor - WPC 2006
Part III:
Payne’s Framework
III. Introducing Payne’s Framework:
The Hidden Rules
“Economic realities create ‘hidden rules,’ unspoken
cueing mechanisms that reflect agreed upon tacit
understandings, which the group uses to negotiate
reality” (Payne, 2002, p. 1).
Payne establishes her understanding of these
hidden rules as they pertain to various values and
relationships for people in poverty, the middle class,
and the upper class.
The Pitiable Poor - WPC 2006
III. Introducing Payne’s Framework:
The Purpose of the Framework
(1)
(2)
to help educators better understand the
culture that students from families in
poverty carry into school with them, and
to instruct educators on the importance of
and techniques for teaching students in
poverty the hidden rules of the middle
class—values upon which the public school
system is built.
The Pitiable Poor - WPC 2006
Part IV:
Lens for Critical Reflection
IV. Lens for Critical Reflection:
Critical Social Theory



Situated in historical and political context (as
everything is)
Challenges theories and practices that
simplify complexities, ignore systemic
oppression, and as a result, fail to uncover
the power and privilege dynamics of social
conditions
Addresses both content and context of work,
including the source’s positionality
The Pitiable Poor - WPC 2006
Part V:
Conservative Frame
V. Conservative Frame:
Conceptualizing “Conservative”



Aimed at conserving status quo rather
than facilitating substantial shifts in
consciousness or policy
Inconsistent with philosophies of education
equity, multicultural education, etc.
Consistent with and supportive of a variety
of other conservative social and
educational policies (NCLB, high-stakes
testing, assimilation)
The Pitiable Poor - WPC 2006
V. Conservative Frame:
The Critical Context, Pt. 1
Ruby Payne has written in uncritical
support of No Child Left Behind.
 Four-part series for Instructional Leader


From part 1: “Do We Really Need the Legislation
No Child Left Behind? ... The short answer is yes”
(2003, p. 3).
This, despite living in Texas, where NCLB’s
precursors led were devastating to
socioeconomically disadvantaged students
and students of color
The Pitiable Poor - WPC 2006
V. Conservative Frame:
The Critical Context, Pt. 2
Ruby Payne cites extreme right-wing
sources in her work.
 Staying with NCLB series, she cites:



Thomas Sowell (who she also identifies as her
“hero”), fellow of the right-wing Hoover Institution
and a leading conservative critic of any
progressive school reform
Hernando de Soto, right-wing economist
Hannity and Colmes of Fox News
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V. Conservative Frame:
The Critical Context, Pt. 3
Follow the money. Payne has contributed
thousands of dollars to the Bush/Cheney
campaigns.
 This, despite the fact that Bush’s policies
have been at best negligent toward
socioeconomically disadvantaged people
 A tool: Federal Election Commission Web site
(web)
 Note: Not a judgment of intent, but an attempt
to understand Payne’s work in context
The Pitiable Poor - WPC 2006
V. Conservative Frame:
The Reframing of Poverty, Pt. 1
Conservative Reframing 1: Blaming poverty
on what are outcomes of and not reasons
for poverty:
“Poverty is caused by interrelated factors:
parental employment status and earnings,
family structure, and parental education”
(2001, p. 12)
 These don’t cause poverty. They reflect the
impact of poverty (Rank, 2004).
The Pitiable Poor - WPC 2006
V. Conservative Frame:
The Reframing of Poverty, Pt. 2
Conservative Reframing 2: “Culture” or “mindset”
of poverty
 But, “Research has repeatedly demonstrated that
those who fall below the poverty line…hold the
same fundamental aspirations, beliefs, and hopes”
(Rank, 2005, p. 48) as wealthy or middle class
people.
 In other words, research shows that the “mindset” or
“culture” of poverty DOES NOT EXIST.
 Such a focus diverts attention from classism.
The Pitiable Poor - WPC 2006
Part VI:
Failure to Address Classism
“The principal subject of poverty research…ought
to be the forces, processes, agents, and
institutions…that decide a proportion of the
population will end up poor.” (Gans)
VI. Ignoring Systemic Classism:
The Data
Compared with low-poverty schools, high-poverty
schools have:
 More teachers teaching in areas outside their
certification;
 More serious teacher turnover problems;
 More teacher vacancies;
 Larger numbers of substitute teachers;
 More limited access to computers and the Internet;
 Inadequate facilities (such as science labs);
The Pitiable Poor - WPC 2006
VI. Ignoring Systemic Classism:
The Data (cont’d)
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
More dirty or inoperative bathrooms;
More evidence of vermin such as cockroaches and
rats;
Insufficient classroom materials
Less rigorous curricula;
Fewer experienced teachers;
Lower teacher salaries;
Larger class sizes; and
Less funding.
The Pitiable Poor - WPC 2006
VI. Ignoring Systemic Classism:
The Data (References)
Barton, P.E. (2004). Why does the gap persist? Educational Leadership
62(3), 8-13.
Barton, P.E. (2003). Parsing the achievement gap: Baselines for
tracking progress. Princeton, NJ: Educational Testing Service.
Carey, K. (2005). The funding gap 2004: Many states still shortchange
low-income and minority students. Washington, D.C.: The Education
Trust.
National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future (2004). Fifty
years after Brown v. Board of Education: A two-tiered education
system. Washington, D.C.: Author.
Rank, M.R. (2004). One nation, underprivileged: Why American poverty
affects us all. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
The Pitiable Poor - WPC 2006
VI. Ignoring Systemic Classism:
The Question
Ruby Payne doesn’t mention a single one of
these “savage inequalities” in A Framework
for Understanding Poverty.
Can we understand the relationship between
poverty and education without considering
the ways in which the education system
contributes to classism and the cycle of
poverty?
The Pitiable Poor - WPC 2006
VI. Ignoring Systemic Classism:
The Other Question
What is the problem?:
a)
That students don’t know the “culture” of the
middle class; or
b)
That the education system is designed to
privilege middle class and wealthy students
at the expense of socioeconomically
disadvantaged students?

From the critical social theory perspective,
addressing the former without addressing
the latter is an expression of privilege.
The Pitiable Poor - WPC 2006
VI. Ignoring Systemic Classism:
No “Power and Privilege” Context

Avoids discussion of class power and
privilege as they relate to:

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High-stakes testing
Tracking
Re-segregation of schools
Curriculum
Expectations
All issues that uphold classist power and
privilege structure in schools
The Pitiable Poor - WPC 2006
VI. Ignoring Systemic Classism:
Agents of Assimilation?
What does it mean that Ruby Payne is asking
teachers, most of whom are white and middle
class, to teach socioeconomically
disadvantaged students the “culture” of the
middle class?
By not addressing systemic classism, is she
asking us to assimilate students into the very
system that oppresses them?
The Pitiable Poor - WPC 2006
VI. Ignoring Systemic Classism:
Band-Aid Reform?
Payne provides a couple useful short-term
strategies and add-ons that help students
acculturate to a hostile system (see pp. 9496).
But the question left unaddressed: How can we
transform policies and practices so that these
short-term strategies won’t be necessary?
The Pitiable Poor - WPC 2006
VI. Ignoring Systemic Classism:
Summarizing
Without…attention to relations of domination and
subordination as they reside in economic class, the
attention to ‘cultural backgrounds’ of students is
inadequate on two counts: First, culture is
importantly influenced by economic class in
contemporary society, and second, school cultures
devalue the knowledge and practices of the working
and poverty classes while privileging the knowledge
and practices of the propertied classes. (Tozer,
2000, p. 156)
The Pitiable Poor - WPC 2006
VI. Ignoring Systemic Classism:
Summarizing Pt. 2
Most scholars do not conjecture about the class
structure, recent intensification of social class
distinctions, or proliferation of tools designed
to solidify and reify distinctions. They do
spend time trying to explain the classcorrelated differential educational outcomes
in ways that are not attributed to their own
desires or actions. (Brantlinger, 2003, p. 21)
The Pitiable Poor - WPC 2006
VI. Ignoring Systemic Classism:
The Effect


Allows people from middle and upper
classes—people privileged by the education
system—to avoid responsibility for classism
Can never effectively serve the needs of
socioeconomically disadvantaged without
understanding systemic classism

The “Taco Night” effect
The Pitiable Poor - WPC 2006
Part VII:
The Deficit Perspective
VII. The Deficit Perspective:
What Is It?


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
Explains discrepancies in achievement by
pointing to “deficient” cultures and behaviors
in a group of people
Draws on stereotypes—usually those
already socially established
So, we address poverty by “fixing” poor
people instead of fixing the conditions that
maintain poverty
Justifies continued oppression
The Pitiable Poor - WPC 2006
VII. The Deficit Perspective:
Exemplified in Payne’s Framework
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The root of her framework—that poverty
persists because people in poverty don’t
know the rules of the middle class
Drawing on racist and classist stereotypes
Invisibility of the “average” socioeconomically
disadvantaged students or families
The Pitiable Poor - WPC 2006
VII. The Deficit Perspective:
Stereotype 1
“The typical pattern in
poverty for discipline
is
to
verbally
People in poverty are
chastise
the
child,
or
bad parents:
physically beat the
child, then forgive
and feed him/her”
(p. 37).
The Pitiable Poor - WPC 2006
VII. The Deficit Perspective:
Stereotype 2
“Also, individuals in
poverty are seldom
going
to
call
the
People in poverty are
police,
for
two
criminals:
reasons: First, the
police may be
looking for them…”
(pp. 37-38)
The Pitiable Poor - WPC 2006
VII. The Deficit Perspective:
Stereotype 3
People in poverty are “Allegiances may
disloyal:
change overnight;
favoritism is a way
of life” (p. 74).
The Pitiable Poor - WPC 2006
VII. The Deficit Perspective:
Stereotype 4
“If students from
poverty don’t know
People in poverty are
how to fight
violent and “on the
physically, they are
streets”:
going to be in
danger on the
streets” (p. 100).
The Pitiable Poor - WPC 2006
VII. The Deficit Perspective:
Stereotype 5
“And for some [people
in poverty],
People in poverty are
alcoholism, laziness,
unmotivated
lack of motivation,
addicts:
drug addiction, etc., in
effect make the
choices for the
individual” (p. 148).
The Pitiable Poor - WPC 2006
VII. The Deficit Perspective:
The Invisible Reality
Most people in poverty are responsible, hard-working,
drug- and alcohol-free, and not “on the streets.”
(Also, a majority live in rural communities and are
white.)
Where are these people in A Framework for
Understanding Poverty?
Critical consideration: How do we conceptualize
“violent”?
The Pitiable Poor - WPC 2006
VII. The Deficit Perspective:
The Scenarios
Most egregious examples of stereotyping and
deficit thinking found in Payne’s Scenarios.
The Pitiable Poor - WPC 2006
VII. The Deficit Perspective:
First Scenario
Features John, an 8-year old white boy with an
alcoholic single mother.
The Pitiable Poor - WPC 2006
VII. The Deficit Perspective:
Second Scenario
Involves Vangie, an African American woman
who dropped out of school, had a kid at 14,
three more by the age of 18, and now collects
welfare. Her boyfriend has been arrested for
assault. Her sister is being beaten by her
boyfriend. She just “beat the fool out of” her
son, Otis, because he was misbehaving at
school.
The Pitiable Poor - WPC 2006
VII. The Deficit Perspective:
Third Scenario
Oprah, another African American woman,
leaves her daughter, Opie, in the care of
Opie’s “senile” grandmother and unemployed
uncle. Oprah is 32 and has 5 children.
The Pitiable Poor - WPC 2006
VII. The Deficit Perspective:
Fourth Scenario
Noemi, a Latina who left school after
sixth grade, married at 16, then had five
kids in eleven years. Neither she nor
her husband, who works sporadically, is
familiar with the term “encyclopedia.”
She doesn’t speak English.
The Pitiable Poor - WPC 2006
VII. The Deficit Perspective:
Sixth Scenario
Ramón, a 25-year-old Latino drug dealer
and gang leader, cares for his nephew,
Juan, whose father was killed by a rival
gang. Juan’s mother is in jail for gangrelated activities. Ramón can’t go to a
parent-teacher conference because
he’s hiding from police.
The Pitiable Poor - WPC 2006
VII. The Deficit Perspective:
Seventh Scenario
SueAnn has been married and divorced
twice. She’s 33 and a high school dropout. Her older daughter is pregnant (she
had this daughter in high school). Her third
husband is unemployed and irresponsible,
not wanting to take care of the kids. He
was just arrested for driving while
intoxicated.
The Pitiable Poor - WPC 2006
VII. The Deficit Perspective:
Summarizing the Scenarios
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Do these scenarios represent most people in
poverty?
Why are 5 out of the 7 scenarios about
families of color when most people in poverty
are white?
How do these scenarios play into the
stereotypes people already have about
people in poverty and People of Color?
The Pitiable Poor - WPC 2006
VII. The Deficit Perspective:
Linguistic Deficit

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
Language of students seen as the reason for
achievement level
Mocking “discourse pattern”: “beat[ing]
around the bush”; “circling the mulberry
bush”; “meander[ing] almost endlessly
through a topic” (pp. 43 & 45)
Underlying assumption of linguistic
superiority—racist overtones
The Pitiable Poor - WPC 2006
VII. The Deficit Perspective:
Linguistics: The Reality
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
All language varieties contain formal and
informal registers—Payne connects these to
specific classes
Language varieties should be seen in light of
resilience—the maintenance of cultural ties
despite generations of oppression
Payne’s simplistic analysis of language
registers ignores enormous diversity among
people of different classes
The Pitiable Poor - WPC 2006
VII. The Deficit Perspective:
Other Examples

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Students need “classroom survival
skills” (p. 96)
Recommends “training” for parents (p.
95)
“Spiritual” poverty
The Pitiable Poor - WPC 2006
VII. The Deficit Perspective:
Implications

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
Reinforces middle- and upper-class notions
of “undeserving poor” (Rank, 2004)—as
morally deficient
Deterioration of public support for effective
and systemic anti-poverty social and
educational policy
Relieves middle- and upper-class individuals’
of responsibility for dealing with their own
classism
The Pitiable Poor - WPC 2006
VII. The Deficit Perspective:
Implications (Cont’d)
... American policy will continue to be the
present subsistence level, which seeks to
keep the undeserving poor functioning at the
subsistence level, although that policy may
start deteriorating to a survival mode, in
which help to the poor is supplied only at the
level that avoids politically embarrassing
increases in extreme misery … among
them... (Rank, 2004, p. 103)
The Pitiable Poor - WPC 2006
VII. The Deficit Perspective:
Implications (Cont’d)
“… it is all too easy to assign the primary onus
of responsibility to parents in [high-poverty]
neighborhoods… In a nation in which fairness
was respected, children of the poorest and
least educated mothers would receive the
most extensive and most costly preschool
preparation, not the least and cheapest…”
(Kozol, 2006, p. 54)
The Pitiable Poor - WPC 2006
Part VIII:
Other Points for Reflection
VIII. Other Points for Reflection



Failure to connect poverty and racism
Christian-centrism
Shift from Kozol to Payne
The Pitiable Poor - WPC 2006
VIII. Other Points for Reflection
“There is something deeply hypocritical in a
society that holds an inner-city child only
eight years old ‘accountable’ for her
performance on a high-stakes standardized
exam but does not hold the high officials of
our government accountable for robbing her
of what they gave their own kids six or seven
years before” (Kozol, 2006, pp. 53-54)
The Pitiable Poor - WPC 2006
Part IX:
Authentic Framework for
Understanding Poverty and
Eliminating Classism
IX. Authentic Framework:
Key Principles
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Based on understanding of classism in the context
of a society hostile toward people in poverty
Based on understanding of power and privilege
Based on understanding of intersections of
oppressions (racism, sexism, etc.)
Critical of the “war against the poor”
Shift of policy and consciousness as well as practice
The Pitiable Poor - WPC 2006
IX. Authentic Framework:
In Practice
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Know your classism
Never make assumptions about students or
their parents
Address invisibility of the poor and working
class and their concerns in the curriculum
Make parent involvement affordable and
convenient
The Pitiable Poor - WPC 2006
IX. Authentic Framework:
In “Bigger Picture” Practice
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Eliminate structural inequities
De-track
Challenge NCLB
Eliminate high-stakes testing
Challenge consumer culture
Fight vouchers and choice programs that
further privilege the privileged
The Pitiable Poor - WPC 2006
Part X:
Discussion
Paul C. Gorski
[email protected]
http://www.EdChange.org