{"id":1484,"date":"2010-02-22T15:27:37","date_gmt":"2010-02-22T21:27:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/crawler\/?p=1484"},"modified":"2010-02-23T00:01:57","modified_gmt":"2010-02-23T06:01:57","slug":"struggling-americans-blame-those-with-less","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/2010\/02\/22\/struggling-americans-blame-those-with-less\/","title":{"rendered":"struggling Americans blame those with less"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Philadelphia Inquirer<\/a> recently examined Americans’ tendency to turn on the poorest members of their society\u00a0during hard economic times:<\/p>\n

Last month, Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer of South Carolina said that when the government helps the poor, it’s like people feeding stray animals that continually “breed.”<\/p>\n

And just last week, Colorado state legislator Spencer Swalm said poor people in single-family homes are “dysfunctional.”<\/p>\n

Both statements riled some Americans from the Piedmont to the Rockies and underscored a widely held belief: In tough times, people are tough on the poor.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s not just politicians playing the blame game, either:<\/p>\n

In an April 2009 poll by the Pew Research Center in Washington, 72 percent agreed with the statement that “poor people have become too dependent on government assistance programs.” That’s up from 69 percent in 2007.<\/p>\n

“The economic downturn has made the middle class less generous toward others,” said Guy Molyneux, a partner at Hart Research Associates, a Washington firm that researches attitudes toward the poor. “People are less supportive of the government helping the poor, because they feel they’re not getting enough help themselves.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Inquirer also featured sociological commentary on the phenomenon:<\/p>\n

Matt Wray, a sociologist at Temple University, agreed: “Hatred of the poor is fueled by the middle class’s fear of falling during hard times.”<\/p>\n

Americans don’t understand how the poor are victimized by a lack of jobs, inefficient schools, and unsafe neighborhoods, experts say.<\/p>\n

“People ignore the structural issues – jobs leaving, industry becoming more mechanized,” said Yale sociologist Elijah Anderson, renowned for his study of the Philadelphia poor. “Then they point to the poor and ask, ‘Why aren’t you making it?’<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Philadelphia Inquirer recently examined Americans’ tendency to turn on the poorest members of their society\u00a0during hard economic times: Last month, Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer of South Carolina said that when the government helps the poor, it’s like people feeding stray animals that continually “breed.” And just last week, Colorado state legislator Spencer Swalm said […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":336,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39074],"tags":[29,131,39110,119,117,151],"class_list":["post-1484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sightings","tag-class","tag-economy","tag-inequality","tag-poverty","tag-trends","tag-welfare"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/336"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1484"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1484\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1487,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1484\/revisions\/1487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}