A series of tweet I had come across a while ago, which I thought I had saved a link to, because I wanted to reproduce it since they were excellent…but discovered I hadn’t. I tried locating them but failed and ended up kicking myself.
And then, I came across it today on Facebook and here it is…the reproduction!
Enjoy! I did!
References (added after the publication of the blog)
Politico Magazine (Dec. 2017) Does the White Working Class Really Vote Against Its Own Interests? Trump’s first year in office revived an age-old debate about why some people choose race over class—and how far they will go to protect the system. [Added on Jan. 1, 2018.]
CNBC (Nov. 15, 2018). These charts show how Democrats represent the growing modern economy – and how Republicans are left behind. [Added on Nov. 16, 2018.]
Huffpost (Nov. 27, 2018). Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Unveils The Ugly Truth About Being Poor In America. “More, Scarry was demonstrating the prejudice and bigotry typically directed at poor people. Poverty puts people at a disadvantage in obvious ways: When you don’t have money, you can’t pay for housing, food, transportation and other basic necessities. But poverty and people who live in it are also stigmatized. The poor are targets of bigotry and hatred ― and that prejudice against the poor then serves to justify their poverty and the gaping economic inequalities that make it possible.
“The stigmatization of poverty in the United States is hardly new. The U.S. is heavily invested in the myth of meritocracy: the idea that if you are virtuous, you will be successful (read: rich). Therefore, if you are successful, it must be because you are virtuous and deserving. The corollary to this dearly held and demonstrably false belief is that those who are not wealthy are not virtuous, and thus deserve their poverty.” […]
“It seems like a contradiction to simultaneously shame the poor for being too poor and to shame them for not being poor enough. But as critic and author Julia Serano has explained, this kind of paradox is part of how stigma works. Serano argues that marginalized people, or people who are the victims of prejudice, are marked. Someone who is marked is singled out as being different, wrong or flawed. And once someone is marked, everything they do is subject to enhanced scrutiny and censure.”[…]
“Stigma, in short, creates double standards that in turn serve as a justification for stigma. Double standards directed at the poor are used, first of all, to force poor people out of the public sphere and delegitimize their own testimony about their lives and needs.”[Added on Nov. 29, 2018.]
Vox (Nov. 16, 2018). The real reason conservative critics love talking about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s clothes. “The message implied here is twofold: Not only is Ocasio-Cortez lying about her working-class background, but she’s living large while espousing democratic socialist policies. By painting Ocasio-Cortez as a hypocrite, Scarry and other critics are suggesting that when she talks about wealth redistribution, she’s really talking about enriching herself with other people’s money.” […]
“This isn’t just about Ocasio-Cortez. The underlying message here is that if working people own anything beyond the bare minimum, then they’re not really struggling. (Remember the 2011 Fox News report about how 99 percent of poor families have refrigerators, and 54 percent own cell phones?) It points to a culture in which people who can’t afford things like health care or housing are blamed for their inability to do so, instead of the blame falling on the policies, and politicians, that make health care and housing so expensive in the first place.” […]
“The stigma and prejudice attached to poverty create the assumption that poor people can’t be smart, so anyone who is smart can’t be poor. It’s a perfect circle that ensures that no poor person who talks about their experience is seen as credible.” […]
“If working-class people are fully human and fully able to govern themselves, then the political sway of the wealthy and their contempt for those with less is hard to justify. Money is power, but that power is sustained by ideology. The attacks on Ocasio-Cortez are an unusually blatant reminder that inequality is perpetuated by prejudice. If we didn’t hate the poor, the poor wouldn’t exist.” [Added on Nov. 29, 2018.]
