Disconnected, Disenfranchised, and Poor: Addressing Digital Inequality in America

Reports that 79% of Americans now use the internet should not obscure the needs and problems of those lacking internet access or computer literacy.  In today’s information-based economy, internet access and computer literacy are crucial to economic growth at all levels, including global.  Businesses are attracted to computer-literate communities and hesitate to do business with those that are not, and that can limit economic opportunities for everyone in the community. This is why we should all care about low levels of internet access and computer literacy within our communities.

Research conducted by the Pew Research Center indicates that those with limited income and education are most likely to not use the internet or even understand how to use a computer. Internet use is clearly tied to economic status and education.  While 95% of upper- income households use the Internet, 37% of lower-income households do not.  And while 4 % of college graduates do not use the internet, 48 % of those without a high school diploma do not. About half of non-users identify cost and lack of computer skills as the primary barriers.

Poor people most often go to public libraries when they do not have internet access at home or through a job or school. Nearly 19 million people living in poverty use public library computers to access the internet for health, education, and employment information and to read the news. Unfortunately, state and local cuts in library funding have led many libraries to cut hours, staff, and spending on computers. Reducing some people’s only access to the internet deepens the digital divide—when more and more information is most readily available online. These reductions also make it harder for those with limited access to gain computer literacy, and that contributes to the growing economic gap between the rich and poor.

That gap is not just about job skills.  Lack of computer literacy and internet access also prevent people from fully participating in society.  This disenfranchises some people and, in effect, makes them second-class citizens. People who lack internet access and who are not computer literate cannot obtain, communicate, and use information for their benefit as quickly as those who can use the internet effectively. Consider how reliable internet access helps people apply for jobs quickly or take swift political action. As the Social Science Research Council suggests, lack of computer access and literacy are now mechanisms of social and economic exclusion. When the adverse effects of this exclusion (e.g. poverty) are transferred to subsequent generations, groups may be disadvantaged well into the future.

It’s not just disparity in mere access to the internet or the ability to turn on a computer that characterizes digital inequality. Quality of internet access also matters, as do freedom to use the internet without time  and equipment constraints and opportunities to develop information-seeking skills. In her study of American youth, Laura Robinson found that digital inequality exacted a heavy toll on low-income students who competed to obtain internet access at school or the public library.  Lacking internet access at home, the students recounted the stress of skipping lunch, not going to the bathroom, and waiting in long lines in order to use the internet in these settings. A thirty-minute time limit on terminal use in some libraries also caused the students emotional stress. Limited access led low-income students to spend less time surfing the internet for information than their higher-income counterparts who had internet access at home, and it created stresses that probably made their internet use less effective. Group differences in time spent online led to group disparities in the development of information-seeking skills, which placed lower-income students at a disadvantage in school and the labor market.

No group should be denied internet access and the benefits derived from its use because of low income, place of residence, disability, gender, or race-ethnicity. To bring about true digital equality in America, a holistic approach must be implemented. Under this approach, high-speed internet would be installed in underserved communities. Computers would be designed so that the disabled could affordably use them and go online. Subsidies would be provided to impoverished households that could not afford internet connection. The functionally illiterate would receive the literacy and computer skills they need in order to access the internet. Additional computer technology centers would be built, and existing ones, staffed at higher levels. Internet access at public libraries would be upgraded and increased. Child care assistance would be given to low-income parents to take computer classes so that they might qualify for better jobs. More would be done to help poor inner-city youth attain a high school diploma and post-secondary education. Such changes might help poor people improve their chances to secure jobs with livable wages, so they could afford internet access at home. Under a holistic approach to digital inequality, the goal would be to empower all groups to participate fully in our information society, so that fewer are left behind— now or in the future.

Denise Narcisse, Center for Working-Class Studies

What Workers Really Need This Labor Day

For some, Labor Day marks the end of summer, one of the few remaining days to have a cook-out, and the time of year when public-school children return to school from summer vacation. For others, Labor Day is when retailers sell items at summer clearance prices and, before “winter white” clothing became fashionable, the last day to wear white shoes.  But, officially, Labor Day honors the contributions of working men and women to the growth and prosperity of our nation. This Labor Day, we should be especially proud of the dedication and hard work of American workers who are expected to do more with less as organizations continue to eliminate jobs and lay off workers.

• According to a labor market survey by the Society for Human Resources Management , job market conditions have improved since last year, but large-scale hiring has yet to occur.  About one-third of the surveyed human resources professionals in public-and-private sector expressed some level of pessimism about job growth in America during the second quarter of 2010. They reported that companies were increasing the workloads of their current staff rather than hiring new workers and predicted that 73% of hourly service workers and manual laborers would be affected by layoffs planned for the second quarter of 2010.  The good news is that fewer of these workers were laid off than had been predicted (about 59% versus the predicted 73%). The bad news is that job growth has been miniscule.  Staffing levels at most companies remain flat, and most economists expect the national unemployment rate to remain near 10% throughout  2010.

• In a different survey, 93% of workers who performed additional work on the job said they had not been paid for the additional work they performed. Two serious implications of this report are that workers perceive that employers are exploiting them, and many workers are suffering from a level of work overload that puts their health and safety (and that of consumers) at risk.

• Research also indicates that the working class continues to be more vulnerable to job loss and wage theft than higher-income groups. While even senior executives may be found in unemployment lines these days (see Ulrich Beck’s The Brave New World of Work), research indicates that manual laborers and low-waged service workers are most likely to be found in unemployment lines.  Not surprisingly, 6 out of 10 Americans feel less secure about their jobs compared to a year ago.

• Wage growth is at a stand-still.  In fact, earnings have actually decreased for many workers who have managed to keep their jobs or find new jobs during the current Great Recession.  A recent report by the Economic Policy Institute indicates that the annual household income of the typical working family has declined by more than $2,000, despite the increased productivity of American workers.  Additionally, income and wealth inequality has increased over the last decade, according to the EPI report.  Between 2000 and 2007, more than half of the income increases went to the wealthiest 1% of U.S. households.

The collapse in wage growth, tremendous income and wealth inequality, and dramatic job loss has meant that the typical American worker now lives a lower standard of living, which may extend well into the future.  Confronted with such grim facts, who needs a rainstorm (or a Hurricane Earl) to feel uneasy this Labor Day weekend?

With mid-term elections in November, rain or shine, public officials are likely to keep their scheduled Labor Day appearances.  We should demand that candidates answer a few key questions:

• What are you doing to create new jobs? How about an increased investment in job restoration and job creation? How about re-opening closed schools and rehiring downsized teachers? Any plans to re-open closed libraries, restore library hours, and return laid-off library personnel to work?  Wouldn’t schools and libraries that are adequately staffed and funded be needed to produce those 8 million more college graduates that the Obama administration says we need in order to compete successfully in the global economy in 2020? Where are those “green jobs” you promised American workers during your last political campaign?

• What are you doing to institute livable wages?  What about an increase in the minimum wage? Both these things would decrease the number of working poor in America, don’t you think?   What incentives have you given employers to provide child care assistance, especially to low-waged, single mothers? You talked about making the world safe for democracy.  Could you add making the workplace safe for workers to the national agenda?

What workers really need this Labor Day are straightforward answers to these questions.  Instead of lip service about the importance of their concerns, our leaders should pursue more genuine efforts to resolve the serious issues many face.

Denise Narcisse, Center for Working-Class Studies

“Greening Up” Urban Communities and Displacing the Poor

The drive up South Halsted Street to the campus of my alma mater, the University of Illinois at Chicago, reveals how much this section of the Near West side of Chicago has changed in the last 10 years.  Once a blighted area of vacant storefronts, ramshackle houses, and trash-strewn lots, the area now called University Village is, today, an upper-middle income neighborhood of luxury condos, $700,000 townhomes, lush lawns, trees, and upscale retail shops.  The neighborhood offers a ten minute drive to downtown Chicago and the Museum Campus, a bike trail, a huge medical district to its south, and easy access to expressways, public transportation, and UIC’s outdoor running track. It took a while but, beginning with the razing of several dilapidated and “notorious” housing projects nearby, the neighborhood has been redeveloped into a cleaner, “greener,” safer community.   The question is, for whom?

Do all groups benefit equally from the “greening up” of urban communities?  What has “greening up” meant for the urban poor and low-income groups in University Village, and in urban communities in other cities? And how might answers to these questions serve to inform the planning and re-development of urban communities in the future?

• Research finds that lower-income groups are often forced out of a community when higher-income groups move in. When this happens, ”gentrification with displacement” is said to occur.  Property values often increase in gentrified communities, but so do taxes and other expenses.  In what became University Village, many poor and working class residents moved out of the area because they could not afford the increased rent, property taxes, assessment fees, and othercosts.

• Partly because of the correlation between income, race-ethnicity, and residential patterns, many of the people moving out of gentrified communities in inner-cities are African American or Latino. Confronted with a shortage of affordable housing in the city, minorities and low-income groups may move to areas outside the city, where housing is cheaper. The Brookings Institute reports, in fact, that a majority of all racial and ethnic groups in large metropolitan areas now live in suburbs, and the number of poor people living in suburbs is increasing five times as fast as the number of poor people living in cities.

• In Chicago, some suburban communities are experiencing problems traditionally associated with inner-city communities (e.g. housing shortages, concentrated poverty, and drugs).  Thus, another potential adverse side-effect of “greening” may be the displacement of urban problems to other communities rather than the resolution of such problems.  If the ultimate goal of “greening up” communities is to improve the quality of life for everyone, including those of future generations, then simply transferring problems elsewhere defeats the purpose of “greening” in the first place, doesn’t it?  And how does transferring poor folk and problems that disproportionately affect them (such as a diminished ability to control where they live) advance “environmental justice?”  It doesn’t.

No one group should have to shoulder more environmental burdens (such as  pollution) than any other group). Group disparity in exposure to environmental hazards is one factor that led to the development of the environmental justice movement.  Most of the 450,000 abandoned waste sites (brownfields) in America are located in or near low- income, working-class, and minority communities.  The poorest of the poor often live within one mile of a brownfield. Most African Americans (71%) live in counties that violate federal air pollution standards. Asthma attacks send African Americans to the emergency room three times as often as whites, and that blacks die twice as often from asthma as do whites.

To work against the potential adverse effects of “greening- up” urban communities, we need to avoid simple, quick, short-term solutions.  Research suggests that urban renewal programs that focus on a single factor (such as tearing down or refurbishing dilapidated housing) simply do not work.  Providing affordable housing does not help much if people lack the income and the education or training that would allow them to maintain a dwelling.  Thus, we must not only increase the availability of affordable housing but also create more jobs at a livable wage, increase access to health care, and fund job training and education at higher levels.  Improving the quality of life for lower-income families is a monumental task, but a more comprehensive approach can ensure that all groups live healthier, longer, and more productive lives.   And it is this promise that gives some sweetness to what might otherwise be an entirely bitter visit to University Village.

Denise Narcisse, Center for Working-Class Studies

No Crystal Staircase: Working-Class Lives under The Recession

Three weeks ago, I flew to Charlotte, North Carolina to participate in a conference of social and behavioral scientists. Because employment and the economy are topics that many within this group study, I expected to discuss research on employment and the economy at the conference.  Like others, I worry that the media and the government’s focus on the economic hardships of the middle class will decrease discussions of and concern for the plight of lower-income groups.  What I did not expect during this trip was the casual conversation that led me to consider these issues shortly after landing in Charlotte.

The only passenger aboard the bus that picked me up from the Charlotte airport, I asked the driver if he was Greg— the driver that I had spoken with a week earlier about getting to and from the hotel where my conference was being held.

“No, I’m Dan,” the driver replied. “Greg no longer works for the hotel.  He quit last week.”

“He quit?” I asked.  “Well, I just spoke with him last Sunday, and he said he could drive me to the Hilton in the mornings for  my conference.”

“I can take you to the Hilton in the mornings,” Dan said.  “Greg is an airplane pilot who worked as a driver for us after the airline he was working for laid him off.  A different carrier offered him a job last week, so, naturally, he accepted it and quit his job with us. Greg shouldn’t have been working as a driver in the first place—not a man with his education and skills.”

In the past, economic recessions have primarily affected blue collar and low-level retail jobs, but as Greg’s story reveals, the current economic recession has affected many professional and skilled white-collar jobs as well. Yet, as troubling as they are, stories like Greg’s pale against the stories of many working-class and poor people who are struggling to survive after losing jobs under the so- called jobless economic recovery. Though clearly underemployed as a hotel bus driver, Greg is among the luckier workers today; at least he had secured a job—any job—after being laid off. But what about the 40% of unemployed people who suffer from long-term joblessness of six months or longer? According to data published by the Economic Policy Institute, people suffering from long-term joblessness are disproportionately blue-collar workers. And the current unemployment rate for blue-collar workers (17.4%) is more than two and half times higher than the rate for white-collar workers (6.5%).

How are unemployed blue-collar workers and low-level retail workers faring under the so-called jobless recovery? Based upon what some of my students tell me about their situations, the answer to this question appears to be “not well.”

Take the single male student who lost his low-waged job and lived out of his car for several weeks after his landlord lost his apartment building to foreclosure.  “I had to make several trips to the welfare office to apply for general assistance. Then my car broke down. It cost me $95.00 to get it repaired, which took all the money I had. Then it broke down again,” he said. A first generation college student who had been an “A” student in a former class of mine, this student struggled to pass the midterm exam in a class he is taking with me this semester.  Not surprisingly, given his economic problems, this student says it has been difficult for him to attend early morning classes and to focus on his school work.

Or consider the student who once drove for UPS. After losing his job, this man, his wife, and two children lost their home, moved in with relatives, and almost had their car repossessed. Disclosing that he had forgone back surgery and was now utilizing food pantries because of his limited income, this student asked me after class one day how people “kept from getting depressed over the social problems we had been discussing in class” (e.g., joblessness, hunger, and poverty).

Or the divorced mother of grown children who is doing well in class, but who worries about how she will survive, keep her house, and remain in school when her already extended unemployment benefits expire at the end of April.   And then there are the students who indicate that they and/or relatives have descended from working class to poor to destitute following long-term layoffs from  the General Motors plant in Lordstown, Ohio.  And most recently, the daughter of one of my students, herself a divorced mother,  attempted suicide, in part because of  family stress resulting from joblessness and economic hardship.

For these largely working-class students and their families, life under the current recession has “been no crystal staircase.” And some policy analysts state that the potential side effects of their (and others’) long-term joblessness , including  poverty, mental illness, social disengagement, and diminished educational opportunities,  will affect all of us well into the future. For these students, their families, and for many of us who have been waiting for the current administration to make good on the campaign promise of more higher paying, long-term jobs, the “beginning of the turn in jobs” that President Obama announced before workers in Charlotte, North Carolina on April 2 cannot come soon enough, and hopefully it has not come too late.

Denise Narcisse, Center for Working-Class Studies

Beyond Precious: Real Change for the Urban Poor

Last month, I received an email inviting me to vote for films nominated to receive an NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) image award. The email stated the film Precious had been nominated for a NAACP image award in several categories, including best picture, best actress, best supporting actress, and best director. “Image, advancement of a people; advancement, image; image, advancement,” I thought.

Like many, I have questions about the film.  Does Precious further the advancement of “colored” people–or better yet—the advancement of all people, regardless of color? Or does the film merely shock viewers, while leaving existing social, economic, and political arrangements unquestioned, unchallenged, and thus intact? What images of a past, present, or future does the film present that might inspire people to work for social changes that will advance not just “colored” people,” not just poor people, but all of us?

Through their endorsement of the film, the film’s producers—billionaire talk-show host Oprah Winfrey and multi-millionaire actor, writer, producer Tyler Perry—imply that the film enlightens and thus uplifts many.  But I am not fully convinced of this. Indeed, I am troubled by many of the images projected in the film:

• Images of Precious (a 16 –year- old girl living in poverty-stricken Harlem in the 1980s) being brutally attacked by her mother, repeatedly raped by her father, and impregnated twice by him

• Images of Precious giving birth to her daughter, who is actually her half-sister, on her mother’s apartment floor— a child whom Precious calls “Mongo,” which is short for Mongoloid or someone with Downs’ Syndrome

• The image of Precious stealing and then eating a bucket of chicken all at one time, without sufficient exploration of  how feelings of desperation and deprivation generated by poverty and others’ indifference to its effects would drive some people to gorge food to the point of making themselves sick

• Precious’s deferred dreams seem to “just sag like a heavy load,” as Langston Hughes wrote,   even as she receives an “A-” in English when she can barely recite the alphabet – a story line that gestures toward but doesn’t fully explore how the school has arguably perpetuated Precious’s illiteracy.

Most troubling for me is the film’s underlying message of “individualism,” which is conveyed through the omission of certain historical events, such as the loss of manufacturing jobs in poor urban communities in the 1970 s and 1980s. How could a film covering life in poverty- stricken Harlem in the 1980s fail to cover such things? The loss of manufacturing jobs under de-industrialization had a devastating effect on employment, family structure, neighborhood resources, and neighborhood cohesion within these communities, as William Julius Wilson has documented so well. Without this historical information, viewers are left with only Precious’s individual characteristics to focus on —her abuse, illiteracy, obesity, family dysfunction, self-loathing, self-isolation, and personal blame and guilt. These conditions, devastating as they are, reflect social problems, not just personal ones.

My fear is that such intense individualism will encourage the idea that the best thing others can do to help  people like Precious is to leave them alone to resolve their personal problems on their own. Such beliefs uphold the status quo and overlook systemic factors that continue to limit the life chances of the urban poor. Consider how our understanding of Precious’s story would be different if the film acknowledged these systemic factors:

• Substandard housing and a lack of jobs, which have been linked to increased student transiency, disrupted student learning, and lower student achievement.

• The loss of supermarkets, which has been linked to the urban poor’s declining health
• Transportation constraints that make it difficult for the urban poor to travel to and from school, the doctor’s office, and to jobs located in suburban or rural areas.

To move beyond the shock and discomfort that many said they felt when viewing Precious, to feel empowered and provide empowerment, we must eliminate these and other systemic constraints within America’s poor urban communities.  And then, in subsequent years, we may collectively receive an award for best performance, and maybe one for best image. But awards that come at the expense of the dignity and advancement of America’s urban poor do not represent a fair or ethical trade and should be seen as what they are: empty platitudes.

Denise Narcisse, Center for Working-Class Studies

Bad Girls: Social Class, Gender, Race, and the World’s Oldest Profession

Recently, I spent a weekend reviewing music videos that would help bring Sociology to life for my students. Reflecting upon what my life had been like as a college student, I remembered the music that was popular my freshman year. Disco was in vogue when I was a freshman, and the “Queen of Disco” was Donna Summer. Even “hard-core wall-flowers” would start to dance when Summer’s “Bad Girls” was played. “Bad Girls” was released in 1979 and immediately became a mega-hit, remaining at the top of pop charts for six weeks.  Hard core-and erotic, “Bad Girls” seemed to signal the sexual liberation of all women—including those “bad girl” prostitutes Donna sang about. It would take my girlfriends and me several years to understand fully the social class, gender, and race dimensions of prostitution.  But eventually we would come to believe that Dona’s “bad girls” were not empowered but oppressed.

Sexual liberation implies release from oppressive people, conditions, and beliefs that control a person’s sexuality. It implies a level of freedom, autonomy, and human agency, which most literature on prostitution indicates prostitutes do not have. Rather, research shows that prostitution dominates, degrades, and exploits people fundamentally because they are women in precarious social-class positions, and even more so if they are African-American.

• Research indicates that prostitution is largely defined, organized, and regulated on the basis of gender. Most prostitutes are women.  And most of the people who manage or buy sex from prostitutes (“pimps” and Johns”, respectively) are men. About a half- million women in the United States work as prostitutes each year, and 40 million women work as prostitutes annually worldwide.   Within this context, female gender seems to increase vulnerability to prostitution.  Being female also seems to increase the likelihood of prostitution arrest: About 2/3 of the people arrested for prostitution in the United States in 2005, for instance, were women (Federal Bureau of Investigation 2005) Research finds that female prostitutes are regulated more than their male customers, and prostitution laws are more strictly enforced against the women who sell sex  than the men who buy it .

• Revealing a connection between social class and prostitution, most women say they prostitute for financial reasons. While a few highly-paid call girls say that the work allows them a  lavish lifestyle and others do it to pay for crack cocaine and other drugs, the vast majority of prostitutes simply seek economic survival. Studies reveal that environmental and social-class- constraints—poverty, unemployment, limited educational opportunities, limited transportation, and the presence of strip-joints, “crack-houses”, sleazy bars, and cheap motels in low-income neighborhoods— “push” poor women into prostitution. Can we reasonably argue that these  environments provide women with real alternatives to prostitution for survival?  Social class also influences who gets arrested for prostitution: about 90 % of women arrested for prostitution are streetwalkers of lower social-class origins, and not the high-end call girls who “serve” the rich and famous.

• Race also plays into this story.  Economic precariousness and stereotypes that define them as sexually promiscuous and immoral by nature, make Black females especially vulnerable to sexual exploitation and prostitution .  Arrest rates for prostitution also correlate with race: the advocacy group COYOTE reports that although  most prostitutes are white, most of those arrested are African American.   

• Regardless of prostitution venue (e.g., brothels, massage parlors, escort service, or the street) all women in prostitution are subject to harm. (See Melissa Farley’s “Prostitution and the Invisibility of Harm”).  All women “in the life” may experience violence from customers, pimps, hotel managers, and/or the police. All must confront the threat of sexually transmitted disease. And, in effect, all are objectified and treated like commodities.

Stricter enforcement of laws against the men who solicit prostitution, and their public exposure, is a short term solution and is therefore insufficient.  The legalization of prostitution is also insufficient, because like stricter enforcement of laws against the solicitation of prostitution, this does not eliminate the institutionalized inequities that push some women and girls into prostitution.How long shall we attribute prostitution to people’s poor planning, immorality, laziness, and craziness?  How long will we fail to address the lack of jobs, low-wages, poor schools, classism, sexism, racism, ablest ideas, and other systemic problems that force some women into prostitution?  In the words of another disco song that was popular during my youth, shall we simply “throw our hands in the air like we just don’t care”?  As the song says, “Now somebody scream.”

Denise A. Narcisse

Exploiting My Sister to Dress on a Dime: Social Class Intersections within the Clothing Industry

It seems that high-end spending among America’s affluent class has gone underground in response to the current economic recession.  In particular, some wealthy women shoppers are asking cashiers at high-end stores to put their purchases in plain white paper bags so that store and clothing labels are hidden.  Other wealthy women want their expensive clothes shipped home so they can walk out of posh stores without any bags at all.  Still willing to drop $10,000 on a shopping spree, the women say covert spending is “the right thing to do” during a recession. Now isn’t this socially responsible spending and consumption?  Or is it?

Sarcasm aside, it’s too bad these women are thinking only of their own image, not the exploitation of those who make America’s clothes.  Consumer polls suggest that few Americans consciously seek to oppress women in low-wage jobs within the clothing industry.  And many Americans report they would pay more for clothing to ensure that garment workers are treated fairly and outside of sweatshop working conditions. On the other hand, there is the Harvard University study that found that concern over sweatshop labor flies out of the window if people desire a product strongly. (See “Sweatshop Labor is Wrong Unless the Jeans are Cute:  Motivated Moral Disengagement.”)  Thus, what people say versus what they do may differ.

Some people may not know or fully understand the ramifications of their purchasing decisions. This includes upper-middle class shoppers who flock to designer outlets stores, such as Saks Off Fifth, Nordstrom Rack, and Neiman’s Last Call. So, here are some things for us to consider the next time we head out the door in search of another great steal and perfect outfit:

§  Many of the 2 out of 5 women who work in low-wage jobs are employed as sales persons and cashiers in retail clothing stores. Earning $8.00 less per hour than the average worker in private industry earns, these women often live at or below poverty level, work inflexible or unpredictable work schedules, lack health insurance and retirement pensions, and have little opportunity for career advancement.

§  The cost to the consumer for low- wage employment in the retail industry is reportedly higher taxes for food stamps, Medicaid, and other poverty relief programs. Therefore, over the long run, we all “pay” the cost of low- wage employment in the retail clothing industry, and it would seem that few people realize true savings from purchasing clothes at bargain basement prices.  We might also consider how failing to demand better wages and working conditions for low-wage workers contributes to their exploitation. And because the “cost” of low-wage employment is passed to the consumer, we exploit ourselves when we exploit our “sisters.”

§  As many as 50% of all U.S. garment factories are reported to be “sweatshops” that violate labor laws and workers’ human rights. For example, in what has been described as “one of the worst sweatshops that [New York] state inspectors have visited in years,” workers routinely worked a 66 hour, six-day work week at $3.79 an hour, far below the states’ minimum hourly wage.” The factory, which produces clothing for Macy’s, Gap, Banana Republic, and Victoria’s Secret, did not pay for overtime and reportedly fired a worker for taking off one Sunday to see a doctor. This report mirrors documented reports of long work hours, mandatory (unpaid) overtime, starvation wages, constant pressure to meet high production orders, restricted bathroom breaks, verbal and physical abuse, and unsafe and unhealthy working conditions (e.g., poor ventilation and broken toilets) at other garment factories. Not surprisingly, given their sizeable immigrant populations, New York and California are notorious for sweatshop abuse.

§  About 90% of all sweatshop workers are women. Most of the women are young Hispanic and Asian immigrant women, who often do not speak English, which makes them vulnerable to exploitation. These are the women behind the labels of the clothes that we wear.  Their exploited labor allows us to “dress on a dime.”

At what point will we consider the moral dimension of our spending and consumption? And when will we address the systemic problems that lead to sweatshops and low-wage employment in the retail clothing industry? For example, the lack of a livable wage, the reduction in middle-class jobs, the unchallenged, unregulated consolidation of power among a few retailers in the global economy (oligopoly), gender subordination, and social class subordination/social class privilege. When?

Denise A. Narcisse

Examining Literacy: A Class Approach

In the suburban community of Poland, Ohio, students at one elementary school participated in a “word parade” in observance of “Read Across America Day.”  Dressed in clothing that conveyed the meanings of words, students learned new words through this event. News accounts of the parade suggest that it was a collaborative effort, involving students, parents, school officials, and community residents. Collaborations like this are common in Poland and the community’s demographics help explain this:

• Exceeding state and national averages, 1/3 of Poland’s residents possess a least a Bachelor’s degree, and nearly 2/3 of residents are employed. Average family income in Poland is about $63,000, and the median value of homes is about $145,000.

Because research finds that parental involvement at school is generally higher among middle-income, college-educated parents, one might expect parental involvement at school to be high in Poland. Families in this middle-class community have the resources that facilitate parental involvement at school.

Research also finds that increased parental involvement at school is associated with higher levels of reading proficiency, literacy, and student achievement (Ibid). The most recent “report card” for the Poland local school district seems to reflect this:

• Ninety-nine percent of students in Poland’s local school district graduated from high school in 2007. More than 98% of students in the district scored at or above the proficient level in reading, mathematics, and writing.  Satisfying all but one performance measure in 2007-2008, the Poland school district was rated “excellent” in performance last year.

Unfortunately, not all local school districts in Mahoning County can boast of an “excellent” performance rating. Like elsewhere, high performing schools, high levels of parent-school involvement, high income and high literacy are unevenly distributed in Mahoning County, and vary by social class. The Youngstown local school district was placed on “academic watch” last year.

But one can easily argue that Youngstown faces harsher conditions than surroundings suburbs like Poland face. Chronic job loss, population decline, poverty, high crime, and limited access to reliable transportation characterize many Youngstown neighborhoods. These problems tax family and community resources and operate as barriers to increased reading proficiency, literacy, and student achievement.

• Only 10% of Youngstown residents possess a Bachelor’s degree, and only about half are employed. Average family income in Youngstown is about $27,000, and the median value of homes is about $50,000.
• Mirroring what has sometimes been called a “national crisis in literacy”, an estimated 35% of Youngstown residents are functionally illiterate, which means they struggle with things like completing job applications, and reading medicine bottle, bus schedules, and maps.
• Children whose parents are functionally illiterate are twice as likely to be functionally illiterate themselves.

So, while family and community characteristics in middle-class communities seem to facilitate high literacy and student achievement, family and community characteristics in working-class and poor communities seem to impede such things.  Social inequality is reproduced and, for some groups, illiteracy is passed from one generation to the next.

For the illiterate, illiteracy often means humiliation, poverty, low-wage employment, and an inability to participate fully in society. For American businesses illiteracy has meant lower productivity, more on-the job accidents, and poor product quality, at a reported cost of $30 billion a year.

In an effort to promote increased literacy in Youngstown, the city and county library system recently opened its Newport library branch. The library offers an Early Literacy Center that addresses literacy at “the starting gate”. Complete with books, toys and literacy activities, the Center is designed to help babies learn pre-literacy skills and become successful readers. Located at an intersection that divides Youngstown from surrounding suburbs, the library also has the potential to bring people from Youngstown and surrounding suburbs together.

However, the fight against illiteracy must not end with the development of single early literacy center, or even with the development of two or three centers.  Steps must also be taken to eliminate the poverty, joblessness, crime, neighborhood segregation, the home-school disconnects, and other systemic factors that generate illiteracy in many poor and working-class neighborhoods through our nation.

Denise Narcisse

A Recipe for Hunger

With less than a month left before Christmas, those who can afford it have already begun to plan their holiday meals. But for a growing number of Americans, Christmas will be a day when they go without food or lack access to healthy, nutritious food. From Connecticut to California, Mississippi to Maine, New Jersey to New Mexico, Oklahoma to Ohio, millions in America suffer daily from “food insecurity.”  The government defines food insecurity as inadequate or uncertain access to healthy, nutritious food, due to lack of money and other resources.

Thirteen million U.S. households, totaling more than 36 million people, experienced food insecurity in 2007, according to a U.S. Department of Agriculture report. Similarly, the 2007 Hormel Foods Hunger Survey: A National Perspective and an Ohio Perspective found that more than one in 10 Ohioans had gone to bed hungry in the past month because they could not afford enough food.

Against a backdrop of stagnant wages, high unemployment, tight credit, and rising food costs in 2008, even some middle-income families now struggle to put food on the table.  Still, research reveals that lower-income families, the working poor, the unemployed, and the homeless—those with a thin safety net or none at all —are hit hardest by food insecurity.

• While the wealthiest U.S. households spend about 7% of their income on food and middle-income households about 13%, the poorest U.S. households spend a whopping 32 % of their income on food. So the poorest households run out of money sooner than do wealthier households, and they have no reserve funds to purchase additional food when the cupboards are bare.

• Almost 40% of all food insecure families in 2007 had a household income below the official poverty line, and in nearly half of these families, one or more members were employed . This suggests that low wages contribute to food insecurity among the working poor. Indeed, a report by the Children’s Defense Fund indicates that, in 2005, the monthly income of families with two, full-time minimum-wage earners was $625 less than the monthly cost of basic living expenses for a family of four. These income shortfalls help explain why 44% of the working poor in Youngstown, Ohio were forced to choose between purchasing food and paying utilities last year. Congressional hearings on food insecurity indicate that the working poor throughout the country make similar tradeoffs.

• The absence of supermarkets that sell fresh fruits and vegetables and an abundance of stores and fast food restaurants that sell high calorie, low-nutrition food in low-income neighborhoods compound the problems of the poor. A 1995 study of supermarkets in Philadelphia, for instance, found that there were 63.5% fewer supermarkets in Philadelphia’s lowest income neighborhoods than its highest income neighborhoods. Many people in Philadelphia’s poorest neighborhoods have very limited access to healthy foods (see “Not So Super Markets” at http://www.philadelphiaweekly.com.) Similarly, a 2005 study of supermarkets in Los Angeles County found that middle and upper-income communities had 2.3 times as many supermarkets as did low-income communities (see “Healthy Food, Healthy Communities: Improving Access and Opportunities through Retailing.” at http”//www.united wayla.org/getinformed/rr/research/basic/Pages/Page3611.aspx.) And a 2007 study of fast food found that Los Angeles County had nearly five times more fast food restaurants or convenience stores than it had grocery stores or produce stores. The residents of Los Angeles County had higher obesity rates and higher death rates than people in California’s most affluent counties.

Add to these difficulties a cultural ideology that attributes poverty to personal deficiencies, like laziness, stupidity, and/or craziness, and you have a recipe for hunger. You also have indifference to poverty, resentment of the poor, and people unable to feed their families and blaming themselves for their struggles.

You also have people like those who attended this year’s public Thanksgiving dinner at First Presbyterian Church of Youngstown: the little girl with corn-rolled braids with ribbons who wanted to know if she could have another slice of pumpkin pie; the shy, pint-size girl with long dark hair who searched my face for approval before she would eat; and the many “grownups” who asked me, “Are seconds allowed? May we have seconds?”  Poverty and hunger have a human face.

During his campaign, President-elect Obama committed to ending childhood hunger in 6 years, cutting poverty in half within 10 years, and creating more jobs that offer a livable wage.  The pursuit of these goals must remain a national priority.  Charitable donations to food pantries and food assistance programs are needed and appreciated. But let us also work together to address the systemic factors that underlie food insecurity. Let us all work together to raise minimum wages, create more jobs in the United States, and educate and train people to fulfill those jobs. Let us all work to increase funding for federal nutrition programs and to build more supermarkets that sell fresh fruits and vegetables in low-income neighborhoods. Let us all work against a cultural ideology that blames and punishes the poor for being poor.  By doing this, we will increase access to healthy food for all Americans.

–Denise Narcisse

Move That Bus!

One of the things that attracted me to the Center for Working-Class Studies at Youngstown State University is its focus on “bread and butter” issues. As a new faculty affiliate of the center, I now help spotlight and evaluate some of these issues. Take the issue of getting to and from work, for example. What could be more universally “bread and butter” than helping people to get to and from work so that they might be self-reliant, productive members of their household, community, city, state, and nation? I believe that few of us would want to undermine such core American values as a strong work ethic, self-reliance, productivity, ingenuity, and self-respect. But I fear that these values will be undermined if we fail, as a nation, to support improvements in public transportation, and those who depend most upon it to get to and from work, school, and other places.

Cities across the nation are grappling with rising oil prices, record-high inflation, staggering home foreclosure rates, and declining revenue for public services, such as local and regional bus transportation. This includes the city of Youngstown, Ohio. In November, the Western Reserve Transit Authority will ask people in Youngstown and surrounding communities to approve a 0.25 percent county sales tax that would help finance restoration and improvement in the region’s bus service. This is the second time that this proposal has been presented for voter approval. Fifty-six percent of area voters rejected the proposal in March 2008.

Here are a few research findings that people in Youngstown and surrounding communities (and people in your town) might consider before casting a vote on public transportation funding:

• A 2007 study by the Oil Price Information Service found that lower-income Americans spent about eight times more of their disposable income on gasoline than wealthier Americans did.

• One-third of public transit riders in year 2000 had yearly household incomes below the poverty level for a family of four. Most did not own cars, so public transportation usewas a necessity for them. Stated differently, the availability of public transportation, particularly bus transportation, is vital for people with limited income.

• About two-thirds of all public transportation passengers take public transportation to get to and from work or school, according to the Federal Transit Authority.

• Low-income women are more likely than are low-income men to require public transportation. And among women, Latina and low-income African American women are highly dependent on public transportation. Research suggests that, without access to public transportation, low-income African American women would have few, if any, means of getting to and fromjobs in retailing, personal services, and childcare, where many are employed. Walking to work is less of an option for the women because of the shortage of jobs in low-income, African American urban communities.

Recent poll results suggest that the current economic recession has begun to solidify public resistance against higher taxes for any purpose. (As an example, see the on-line comments from a July 2008 poll of Ohioans regarding higher taxes for improvements in bus service in Youngstown, Warren, and Columbiana, Ohio.) This “anti-tax sentiment” is making it difficult to mobilize massive public support for tax levies that would support improvements in public transportation in San Diego, Chicago, Youngstown, New York, and other places.

Do improvements in public transportation benefit even those who can afford their own vehicles and who, as a result, do not use public transportation? Should the issue of funding public transportation improvements matter even to those who, on the surface, appear not to be affected by the condition of public transportation in America (such as some upper-middle income suburban residents who commute in private vehicles)? Mounting evidence in scholarly journals, trade magazines, and the popular press suggest that the answer to these questions is “yes.”

Research finds that communities that invest in public transportation realize enhanced social economic development and prosperity. For example, a study by the American Public Transportation Association estimates that for every $1.00 invested in public transportation, there is a $3.00 increase in business sales. Communities that invest in public transportation are reported to attract more businesses, more visitors, and more shoppers. Property values tend to be higher in communities with good public transportation systems.

Absenteeism in the workplace and at school decreases when people who cannot afford private vehicles have reliable public transportation to get them to and from work and school. This decrease in absenteeism translates into higher productivity within the workplace, which potentially benefits everyone in a community, city, and region.

More business sales, more businesses, more visitors, more shoppers, higher property values, and increased productivity. Each of these benefits is an additional compelling reason for all to be concerned about the condition of public transportation in America, in my view. I submit that an investment in public transportation is an investment in a more promising future for people across the social-class spectrum, and particularly for members of the working class and the poor.

Denise Narcisse