A recently released report by Academy of American Actuaries finds that more elderly women (40%) than men (28%) depend on Social Security to survive their retired years. They are also receiving smaller payments than men due to a variety of gender differences in American work culture. The end result is dismal though - the Social Security disparity is just one more factor contributing to high rates of poverty amongst senior women.
The causes are legion and not all of them reflect poorly on America's gender divide. For example the fact that women tend to live longer after their retirement should come as a welcome sign of progress in women's health care. Yet this seemingly benign fact means women get hit twice in the income department: they have to depend on payments longer, and they are more likely than men to spend some of their retired years single.
Some of the factors are more troubling - women still aren't reporting as much earned income as men. That should be a surprise to no one. That women are still taking a great deal of temporary leave from the workplace is not inherently unsettling, but it should raise questions about why men are still not doing their share of child-rearing, and why there is not some formula to reward mothers for their work when it comes to claiming social security.
And really, that point - revising the formula - is the most salient priority to be gleaned from the report, which in itself simply reflects a great deal of what we already know about gender and work in America. I think advocates for work parity will be unsurprised by just about every factor highlighted in this article, and they will appropriately continue to fight for reform. What the report should tell the people working to dispense Social Security payments is that a gender-blind formula like the one we have know is simply inadequate. If women are inordinately performing the uncompensated labor of child-care and are still facing discrimination in salaries, then a formula for Social Security payouts ought to be cognizant of that fact. The American workplace is still not a place where women are equal to men. Until it is, our social services will only consign more elderly American women to poverty if they insist on conflating gender equity with gender neutrality.
Showing posts with label social policy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label social policy. Show all posts
Sunday, August 12, 2007
Thursday, August 9, 2007
Invisible and barely getting by
The rhetorical weight swung hardest in debates over socialized medicine is the ghastly number of Americans - over 40 million - who live without health insurance. Overlooked too frequently are the stories of Americans who can afford health insurance, but not comprehensive health insurance, who spend their entire lives fighting with their providers over plans, omissions, coverage gaps and reimbursements. They often find that themselves uncovered and unable to pay for crucial medical treatment and preventative care. What I found most powerful about Moore's SiCKO was not it's celebration of nationalized systems in Canada and Europe, but the haunting portraits of insured Americans for whom the system does not work.
Take for example, childhood immunizations. New reports indicate that children who are underinsured (as opposed to fully insured or uninsured) are the least likely to get vaccinations on time and at affordable rates. Working class families are left to choose: pay thousands for the injections, or let their kids go without critical preventative medicine. For families with good plans, the costs are covered - but many providers simply don't cover the vaccinations. And for those without any insurance, there's Medicaid and the FQHC system. As with so many other places in the American class system, its those who barely get by who feel the squeeze.
All the same, libertarians like John Stossel lambaste the type of government guidelines for providers that would close these coverage gaps:
Absent those "intrusions", however, the full cost of health care is passed on to the people who are not able to pay, but who all the same are not the listless hordes of welfare-state-dependents that libertarians like to deride (a blogger at KXMC seems convinced that anyone who can't afford to pay for every health expenditure is a "lay-about").
Free marketeers and fiscal conservatives don't like to discuss the working poor because they defy easy stereotyping: they don't have much money but are demonstrably hard working; they pay taxes but still need state assistance. They make visible the long spectrum between dependency and autonomy that rabid individualists can't seem to grasp as the fundamental quality of social life.
Take for example, childhood immunizations. New reports indicate that children who are underinsured (as opposed to fully insured or uninsured) are the least likely to get vaccinations on time and at affordable rates. Working class families are left to choose: pay thousands for the injections, or let their kids go without critical preventative medicine. For families with good plans, the costs are covered - but many providers simply don't cover the vaccinations. And for those without any insurance, there's Medicaid and the FQHC system. As with so many other places in the American class system, its those who barely get by who feel the squeeze.
All the same, libertarians like John Stossel lambaste the type of government guidelines for providers that would close these coverage gaps:
Does it never occur to the progressives that the legislature's intrusion into private contracts is one reason health care and health insurance are expensive now? The average annual health-insurance premium for a family in Wisconsin is $4,462 partly because Wisconsin imposes 29 mandates on health insurers: Every policy must cover chiropractors, dentists, genetic testing, etc.
Absent those "intrusions", however, the full cost of health care is passed on to the people who are not able to pay, but who all the same are not the listless hordes of welfare-state-dependents that libertarians like to deride (a blogger at KXMC seems convinced that anyone who can't afford to pay for every health expenditure is a "lay-about").
Free marketeers and fiscal conservatives don't like to discuss the working poor because they defy easy stereotyping: they don't have much money but are demonstrably hard working; they pay taxes but still need state assistance. They make visible the long spectrum between dependency and autonomy that rabid individualists can't seem to grasp as the fundamental quality of social life.
Welfare gets the NCLB treatment
Conservatives are finally learning how to use the welfare state. The first hint of a revelation came from their masterful coup under the guise of "welfare reform," where House Republicans led the charge in delivering work-or-starve ultimatums to thousands. Welfare-to-work programs showed that state assistance does not have to be used solely as a social support system - it can also be a powerful disciplinary apparatus, by which incentives and punishments are leveraged on the poor until they function at the desired level of productivity. The autonomy of the poor may diminish as they are forced to accept the first job they come across - fair compensation and capacity for family care be dammed - but that is the nature of a system that prioritizes economic efficiency over social freedom.
The federal government is still uninterested in the no-win scenarios that the unemployed poor often find themselves in. Where states do not meet strict quotas for welfare roll trims, they get hurt. Take Indiana for example:
The federal government is warning Indiana it faces a $10 million penalty for not moving enough welfare recipients into jobs and off of public rolls in 2005.
...
The last paragraph is definitely the kicker. We've learned that the Bush administration does not mind punishing poor students by removing what funding they do receive. And now Indiana will face a shortage of funds to pay for, among other things, job training because it has not trained enough people for jobs.
Rather than recognizing structural challenges and re-evaluating policies, the Bush administration rules with rigid mandates. And instead of providing services to the neediest parts of the country, they compound existing problems with harsh reprisals. It's a reinvention of the welfare state, not as a human service but as a more powerful tool to force compliance with an agenda that is at least as anti-poor as it is anti-poverty.
The federal government is still uninterested in the no-win scenarios that the unemployed poor often find themselves in. Where states do not meet strict quotas for welfare roll trims, they get hurt. Take Indiana for example:
The federal government is warning Indiana it faces a $10 million penalty for not moving enough welfare recipients into jobs and off of public rolls in 2005.
...
That office's director, Sidonie Squier, says Indiana fell short of its target for the rate of welfare households participating in job training. The target was 33.4%, but the rate was only 30.9%.
The penalty would mean the loss of approximately 5% of the state's federal block grant for Temporary Assistance to Needy Families. The grant pays for financial aid, job training, child care, child abuse prevention and other programs targeting Indiana's needy.
The last paragraph is definitely the kicker. We've learned that the Bush administration does not mind punishing poor students by removing what funding they do receive. And now Indiana will face a shortage of funds to pay for, among other things, job training because it has not trained enough people for jobs.
Rather than recognizing structural challenges and re-evaluating policies, the Bush administration rules with rigid mandates. And instead of providing services to the neediest parts of the country, they compound existing problems with harsh reprisals. It's a reinvention of the welfare state, not as a human service but as a more powerful tool to force compliance with an agenda that is at least as anti-poor as it is anti-poverty.
Wednesday, August 8, 2007
Give the kids the money
Most Americans realize that our public school system is in miserable health. The debate is over whether and how our schools can be brought back from the precipice of ruin. Some hold out hope that we can jolt the system back to life with some competition from voucher programs -call that the defibrillator: no big rescue attempted, but maybe worth a shot before one shuffles off the ol' mortal coil. In that analogy, a solution involving a more robust income tax would be the equivalent of, I dunno, stem cell research: probably the best chance at reversing the real damage, but the very notion seems to offend conservatives to the core. Basically, convincing Americans that the public school system needs reform is easy. Now get them to admit they might need to cowboy up for the bill, and watch the room clear out.
Stories like this give me some encouragement:
Illinois' scheme-as-described is pretty common, and it's too bad. America's poorest communities should not be anchored to it's poorest schools, nor should the least wealthy members of our society be footing high-proportion property taxes just so their kids can get an education that at least approximates what their wealthier counterparts can comfortably afford. And within those parameters there does not seem to be an alternative to redistributive taxation. But as these cool kids point out, an alternative is not needed. We know what will work. So why aren't we doing it?
By the by, I muddled through Illinois' mess of a public school system until I was 8. So, y'know, represent or whatever. I never thought too highly of my schools there, until I moved to Texas, where I learned that the good folks in the Land of Lincoln were amateurs when it came to devastating poor schools.
Stories like this give me some encouragement:
A small group of pupils from the Students for an Equitable Education, a new youth organization working to change Illinois' school funding system, joined the "Riding for Reform" bus tour. Pupils went to the state's capital to rally for change in education funding.
...
To hear these pupils' cries, Blagojevich sat down with SEE to discuss alternative routes to cover the costs of public school education. SEE members said they would like to see the state look at increasing income taxes instead of relying heavily on property taxes.If this were to happen, SEE members said school districts wouldn't be defined by the wealth of the communities they serve. Instead, they said, pupils across the state could receive a fair and equal public education.
The call for more money to balance out the rich and poor school districts is a common one. Illinois has a relatively low income tax, according to the Illinois State Board of Education. As a consequence, the state's share of funding kindergarten through 12th-grade public education is 37 percent, ranking it 48th in the nation. Illinois property taxes, on the other hand, are significantly greater than in other states.
Illinois' scheme-as-described is pretty common, and it's too bad. America's poorest communities should not be anchored to it's poorest schools, nor should the least wealthy members of our society be footing high-proportion property taxes just so their kids can get an education that at least approximates what their wealthier counterparts can comfortably afford. And within those parameters there does not seem to be an alternative to redistributive taxation. But as these cool kids point out, an alternative is not needed. We know what will work. So why aren't we doing it?
By the by, I muddled through Illinois' mess of a public school system until I was 8. So, y'know, represent or whatever. I never thought too highly of my schools there, until I moved to Texas, where I learned that the good folks in the Land of Lincoln were amateurs when it came to devastating poor schools.
Monday, August 6, 2007
Sharing the burdens
Child Care Tax Credit programs like the one being expanded by Bloomberg and Spitzer in New York City are just one of many examples of how entrenched the mentality of non-cooperation is in our country's political climate. I would absolutely rather have these programs than not have any public support available for Child Care. But like so much of our social service system, they recognize the need for assistance in fulfilling social roles as a deviation from the 'norm' of functional citizenship. This statement typifies the mentality:
What is objectionable in this is mainfestly not that it offers support to poor families. But I do find it troubling that the program only applies to poor families. Difficult decisions in balancing work and home lives affect all families. Certainly, their stakes are much higher for the poorest people in this country. But recognizing that raising the next generation is a crucially important endeavor to be taken up by asociety rather than by isolated units defined by their position in the housing market, we ought to be willing to extend the structures of social report to all caregivers. The status quo stigamtizes social assistance by associating it with a failure to meet responsibilites. That a caregiver has to turn to child care services is supposed to signify an inability to do the work that a responsible family unit could manage on its own. Programs like these show that we may be willing to forgive these breaches of social obligation when there is a good "excuse" - like poverty - but the general expectation is that most people can and should be doing this work on their own.
In Why Social Justice Matters Brian Barry extends a similar argument to disability payments. These allowances are made in recognition of the difficulties faced by people who must take on the challenges of social life despite mental or physical handicaps. That a person with an extraordinarily high income might still be better off in most ways than an "able" person of a lower class is immaterial. People should not be penalized for morally arbitrary qualities, society should support the offsetting of any hindrances to full participation. Any recognition of the relativele privileges of the upper-class disabled person would, in a just society, be recognized through her or his participation in a progressive tax regime, not by ommitting her or him from an important social service. I think the same should be true of child care credits. Having a child may not be morally arbitrary in the same way that being born with or later acquiring a disability is. But having children does hinder autonomy in career-paths, political participation and other time-intesive arenas of human life. And whether they are partnered or not, women invariably end up doing most of the work of childcare. A great and overlooked source of de facto sex discrimination is the expectation that when a family must make sacrifices in personal freedom and lifestyle to do the work of child raising, those sacrifices tend to be asked of women, who have been socialized to accept those burdens. The more socialized child care becomes, the more it would be possible - whether by taxation or other means - to demand that men carry a proportionate amount of child care's burden.
In any event, the credit should recognize the value and difficulty of the work being done not the relative capacity of the person to perform the task. This frame certainly takes amore cooperative tact to family life than most Americans are willing to recognize, and indeed to morality generally by moving towards a system in which the only obligations which we can confer upon others are those which we are willing toadopt mutually. The family has, in many respects, come to be portrayed as a self-sustaining social atom. There are so many romanticized depictions of families struggling through adversity that we tend to expect that a dedicated and loving family can do just that, regardless of the support structures in place. In the end its a fiction as deceptive and politically specious as the "by-the-bootstraps" blustering of social conservatives. Our policies should not be in the business of reinforcing fiction, rather they should be carefully designed to reflect the day to day struggles of people working hard across the country to provide care where it is needed.
"Access to quality childcare in New York City has become cost prohibitive for
far too many families," said Governor Spitzer. "The Child Care Tax Credit will
support struggling low-income families who are currently forced to trade off
child care costs against other important priorities such as the chance to work,
put food on the table and pay health care costs. At the same time, this law
addresses the needs of young children in these families by helping them gain
access to the quality care and early learning needed to succeed. "
What is objectionable in this is mainfestly not that it offers support to poor families. But I do find it troubling that the program only applies to poor families. Difficult decisions in balancing work and home lives affect all families. Certainly, their stakes are much higher for the poorest people in this country. But recognizing that raising the next generation is a crucially important endeavor to be taken up by asociety rather than by isolated units defined by their position in the housing market, we ought to be willing to extend the structures of social report to all caregivers. The status quo stigamtizes social assistance by associating it with a failure to meet responsibilites. That a caregiver has to turn to child care services is supposed to signify an inability to do the work that a responsible family unit could manage on its own. Programs like these show that we may be willing to forgive these breaches of social obligation when there is a good "excuse" - like poverty - but the general expectation is that most people can and should be doing this work on their own.
In Why Social Justice Matters Brian Barry extends a similar argument to disability payments. These allowances are made in recognition of the difficulties faced by people who must take on the challenges of social life despite mental or physical handicaps. That a person with an extraordinarily high income might still be better off in most ways than an "able" person of a lower class is immaterial. People should not be penalized for morally arbitrary qualities, society should support the offsetting of any hindrances to full participation. Any recognition of the relativele privileges of the upper-class disabled person would, in a just society, be recognized through her or his participation in a progressive tax regime, not by ommitting her or him from an important social service. I think the same should be true of child care credits. Having a child may not be morally arbitrary in the same way that being born with or later acquiring a disability is. But having children does hinder autonomy in career-paths, political participation and other time-intesive arenas of human life. And whether they are partnered or not, women invariably end up doing most of the work of childcare. A great and overlooked source of de facto sex discrimination is the expectation that when a family must make sacrifices in personal freedom and lifestyle to do the work of child raising, those sacrifices tend to be asked of women, who have been socialized to accept those burdens. The more socialized child care becomes, the more it would be possible - whether by taxation or other means - to demand that men carry a proportionate amount of child care's burden.
In any event, the credit should recognize the value and difficulty of the work being done not the relative capacity of the person to perform the task. This frame certainly takes amore cooperative tact to family life than most Americans are willing to recognize, and indeed to morality generally by moving towards a system in which the only obligations which we can confer upon others are those which we are willing toadopt mutually. The family has, in many respects, come to be portrayed as a self-sustaining social atom. There are so many romanticized depictions of families struggling through adversity that we tend to expect that a dedicated and loving family can do just that, regardless of the support structures in place. In the end its a fiction as deceptive and politically specious as the "by-the-bootstraps" blustering of social conservatives. Our policies should not be in the business of reinforcing fiction, rather they should be carefully designed to reflect the day to day struggles of people working hard across the country to provide care where it is needed.
Monday, July 30, 2007
Is Richistan seceding?
"Richistan" has all the trappings of a new blogging buzzword. It's snarky, a bit cloying, contrived and unabashedly neologistic. Like many bits of the blogger lexicon, "Richistan" is the title of a book. It's a dependable marketing strategy because as any circulation of the word is free press for the book. And, there it is - blogging, though vaunted as an alternative to the mainstream media, is structured at the very level of vocabulary by the big publishing houses and the corporate media that does much of the pushing in the market. But this article isn't about "Richistan" the newly minted catchphrase. It's about Richistan the place.
The use of a geographic metaphor is apt. In summarizing the lifestyles of the multi-millionaire second estate documented in Robert Frank's book, Paul Harris of the Observer writes:
If we compared the schedules of rich, poor and middle-class in the US, we'd certainly find spacial differentials along the lines of: hours spent inside a social service, hours spent at a public health centers, number of trips to restaurants and grocery stores (and which ones?), and certainly many others.
And this leads to a question that has always puzzled me - why aren't social conservatives more concerned about class issues? I don't accept the answer that most conservatives, or even a substantial of conservatives, just "don't believe" in what they say. But once we grant the reality of their convictions one would have to note that the emerging American caste system leaves few avenues for social participation for the poor, and almost no avenues for cross-class mingling. Anyone who takes a serious concern to the moral character of the country should be wondering how we can expect to find common values amongst people who never eat together, work together or live together. People whose radically different experiences and day-to-day schedules leave them with few shared frames of reference, figures of speech or experientially tested principles - the very informal social cues, lore and vernacular from which more cognizable political and moral values emerge.
Throughout this piece I've compared the US class structure to apartheid, secessionism and the caste system. Some would object that these are too extreme, but I invite them to reflect on the specific manner in which those divisive classificatory sociopolitical practices impede conversation, and even mutual comprehensibility, between citizens. The idea that equal opportunity could ever be enough to hold a society so stratified together seems naive when consider the profound impacts of spatial separation on less tangible social codes. The separatist leanings of "Richistan" further demonstrates the impossibility of reconciling unity with inequality.
The use of a geographic metaphor is apt. In summarizing the lifestyles of the multi-millionaire second estate documented in Robert Frank's book, Paul Harris of the Observer writes:
And I would ad to that that they work separate jobs and tend to socialize with people of similar income. The wealthiest members of our society, for large portions of their lives, occupy spacially distinct social compartments that serve to reinforce class separation by ensuring that the rich and poor have few avenues by which to bond. Suburban secessionists pull their families and funds away from flagging inner cities and class apartheid is normalized through educational districting and zoning laws. We can all probably think of a few places - restaurants, schools, neighborhoods - that we think of being predominantly used by (or available only to) people of a certain class.
a huge bubble of multi- millionaires lives almost in a parallel world of private education, private health care and gated mansions. They have their own schools and banks. They even travel apart - creating a booming industry of private jets and yachts.
If we compared the schedules of rich, poor and middle-class in the US, we'd certainly find spacial differentials along the lines of: hours spent inside a social service, hours spent at a public health centers, number of trips to restaurants and grocery stores (and which ones?), and certainly many others.
And this leads to a question that has always puzzled me - why aren't social conservatives more concerned about class issues? I don't accept the answer that most conservatives, or even a substantial of conservatives, just "don't believe" in what they say. But once we grant the reality of their convictions one would have to note that the emerging American caste system leaves few avenues for social participation for the poor, and almost no avenues for cross-class mingling. Anyone who takes a serious concern to the moral character of the country should be wondering how we can expect to find common values amongst people who never eat together, work together or live together. People whose radically different experiences and day-to-day schedules leave them with few shared frames of reference, figures of speech or experientially tested principles - the very informal social cues, lore and vernacular from which more cognizable political and moral values emerge.
Throughout this piece I've compared the US class structure to apartheid, secessionism and the caste system. Some would object that these are too extreme, but I invite them to reflect on the specific manner in which those divisive classificatory sociopolitical practices impede conversation, and even mutual comprehensibility, between citizens. The idea that equal opportunity could ever be enough to hold a society so stratified together seems naive when consider the profound impacts of spatial separation on less tangible social codes. The separatist leanings of "Richistan" further demonstrates the impossibility of reconciling unity with inequality.
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Costs of living
Much political rhetoric on poverty invokes the "vulnerability" of the poor. It's an appropriate term, I think. It does not hold that the poor are helpless or that they are necessarily victims. Neither does it deem poverty a source of shame. What it does emphasize is the capacity of the poor to become victims. The support structures that middle-class Americans enjoy and take for granted cannot be depended upon by those who live on so little. Simple things like health care or a well-funded school that can be so crucial in preventing something like childhood asthma or being held back a year in school from developing into a life-long impediment to success. And I think that, as those examples illustrate, no one is truly more vulnerable than children living in poverty.
The Annie E. Casey Foundation - which takes it's mission to be "helping vulnerable kids & families to succeed" has released it's KIDS COUNT report on children living in poverty. The extensive research reveals a lot of heartbreaking information about the inequalities that are weighing down so many lives.
Local newspapers from Indiana to Michigan are already running stories on the plight of poor children in their states. Perhaps this information will act as a corrective to the apathy with which poverty is treated in so many states. My home state of Texas ranks worst in the nation for children living without health insurance - 1 in 5 children under the age of 18 are not covered for health insurance at any point during the year. What makes that figure all the more troubling is that I know how stricken by inequality Texas is. We have wealthy metropolitan suburbs, communities soaked in oil money. And we have cities, especially along the border where stable jobs and decent pay are too hard to come by. Where people still can't expect to take home more than six dollars for an hour's labor. We have rural areas, where agriculture has been sidetracked to agribusiness and tiny underfunded schools have to service two or three counties worth of impoverished kids. These are the places I lived in and traveled through before leaving to college. And I know that in these places it would be met as a welcome improvement if 1 in 5 kids could be insured.
Growing up my sister had a lot of trouble with allergies. She was sick a lot. In the worst patch, which lasted about two years, she missed so many days that we had to petition the school to let her pass. But she got a lot better after that because we did have a good insurance plan from my Dad's government job, and we could take her to a specialist. She also had a speech impediment but there was a teacher at the magnet school who counseled here through that. She's fine now. You would never know she had those problems. For a family without the support that we had, her health problem could have become more serious. She could have been held back and given up on by the education system. She could have had to deal with the consequences of her speech problem for her whole life - stigmatized in classrooms and in interviews for jobs, But we had the material support we needed and now she is going to graduate in the top of her class and go to college next year.
I haven't been back to Texas in awhile. I now reside in Minnesota most of the year. Coincidentally, Minnesota consistently ranks lowest on all the indicators of child poverty. By and large our children are insured, our families make enough money to get by. I've come to like a lot about Minnesota. I even think about living there after I finish school. The people are more tolerant than in Texas, and yes, more liberal. Minneapolis-St. Paul have everything I would want from a city. And even the winters aren't so bad when you've got the right people to share them with.
But as I start to seriously think about what I am going to do with my life, part of me feels that I need to return to Texas. To organize those communities that are so neglected, and so vulnerable, and fight for justice. For a more egalitarian Texas. It wouldn't be easy - not in terms of politics, and not in terms of lifestyle. But how can I turn my back on my home? What am I doing organizing for homeless people and immigrants in Northfield when there are even more poor immigrants and people without homes back in my hometown who don't have a couple thousand idealistic college students willing to go to bat for them? The Texas Republicans won't help them. The Texas Democrats won't fight for them. And our President thinks programs like S-CHIP are irresponsible - as though there could be anything more irresponsible than allowing children to grow up without food and medicine and a decent place to learn. It might take a whole life to just lay the groundwork for a progressive movement in Texas. But if no one is willing to do that work, then there really is no hope. I got out of Texas because I was one of the lucky ones who was never made vulnerable by inequality. That's why, when I'm done with school, I'm going to be able to live wherever I want. Do something I love. That's why I'm even in school right now. And so maybe the only right thing to do is to go back.
The Annie E. Casey Foundation - which takes it's mission to be "helping vulnerable kids & families to succeed" has released it's KIDS COUNT report on children living in poverty. The extensive research reveals a lot of heartbreaking information about the inequalities that are weighing down so many lives.
Local newspapers from Indiana to Michigan are already running stories on the plight of poor children in their states. Perhaps this information will act as a corrective to the apathy with which poverty is treated in so many states. My home state of Texas ranks worst in the nation for children living without health insurance - 1 in 5 children under the age of 18 are not covered for health insurance at any point during the year. What makes that figure all the more troubling is that I know how stricken by inequality Texas is. We have wealthy metropolitan suburbs, communities soaked in oil money. And we have cities, especially along the border where stable jobs and decent pay are too hard to come by. Where people still can't expect to take home more than six dollars for an hour's labor. We have rural areas, where agriculture has been sidetracked to agribusiness and tiny underfunded schools have to service two or three counties worth of impoverished kids. These are the places I lived in and traveled through before leaving to college. And I know that in these places it would be met as a welcome improvement if 1 in 5 kids could be insured.
Growing up my sister had a lot of trouble with allergies. She was sick a lot. In the worst patch, which lasted about two years, she missed so many days that we had to petition the school to let her pass. But she got a lot better after that because we did have a good insurance plan from my Dad's government job, and we could take her to a specialist. She also had a speech impediment but there was a teacher at the magnet school who counseled here through that. She's fine now. You would never know she had those problems. For a family without the support that we had, her health problem could have become more serious. She could have been held back and given up on by the education system. She could have had to deal with the consequences of her speech problem for her whole life - stigmatized in classrooms and in interviews for jobs, But we had the material support we needed and now she is going to graduate in the top of her class and go to college next year.
I haven't been back to Texas in awhile. I now reside in Minnesota most of the year. Coincidentally, Minnesota consistently ranks lowest on all the indicators of child poverty. By and large our children are insured, our families make enough money to get by. I've come to like a lot about Minnesota. I even think about living there after I finish school. The people are more tolerant than in Texas, and yes, more liberal. Minneapolis-St. Paul have everything I would want from a city. And even the winters aren't so bad when you've got the right people to share them with.
But as I start to seriously think about what I am going to do with my life, part of me feels that I need to return to Texas. To organize those communities that are so neglected, and so vulnerable, and fight for justice. For a more egalitarian Texas. It wouldn't be easy - not in terms of politics, and not in terms of lifestyle. But how can I turn my back on my home? What am I doing organizing for homeless people and immigrants in Northfield when there are even more poor immigrants and people without homes back in my hometown who don't have a couple thousand idealistic college students willing to go to bat for them? The Texas Republicans won't help them. The Texas Democrats won't fight for them. And our President thinks programs like S-CHIP are irresponsible - as though there could be anything more irresponsible than allowing children to grow up without food and medicine and a decent place to learn. It might take a whole life to just lay the groundwork for a progressive movement in Texas. But if no one is willing to do that work, then there really is no hope. I got out of Texas because I was one of the lucky ones who was never made vulnerable by inequality. That's why, when I'm done with school, I'm going to be able to live wherever I want. Do something I love. That's why I'm even in school right now. And so maybe the only right thing to do is to go back.
Thursday, July 19, 2007
Are Republicans MORE likely to support a single-payer healthcare system? No, but maybe they should be.
Much of the controversy surrounding filmmaker Michael Moore’s lambasting of the American healthcare system in his recent documentary SiCKO has revolved around his analysis of healthcare costs in America as compared to costs in other Western countries. Moore and CNN medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta recently debated some numbers on Larry King Live after Gupta suggested that some of the information presented in the film was misleading and even flat-out inaccurate. Regardless of whether or not Moore fudged some data in the film, his fundamental critique of our healthcare system cannot be disputed. Americans pay much more for healthcare than citizens of other nations while receiving lower quality care. The single-payer, government financed healthcare in these nations provides a high-level of care without wasting money on administrative overhead and without generating nauseatingly enormous profits in the private sector. Gupta and Moore’s data on healthcare costs may have been conflicting, but both sets of data reveal this truth.
Moore goes on to suggest that the major barrier to implementing a single-payer system is the size of the healthcare lobby in Washington. Politicians, including presidential hopeful Senator Hillary Clinton, the leader of the failed 1993 effort to implement sweeping healthcare reform, depend on the support and financial backing of the healthcare industry. It’s not surprising that she and the other “first-tier” presidential candidates are not advocating a single-payer system. Insurance companies would have no role in a single-payer system and, to protect their livelihoods, are throwing money—the real thing that wins elections in the U.S.—at all the major candidates. Even if they were not so dependent on the industry for campaign dollars, the candidates would likely still balk at promoting a single-payer system for fear of the ruinous “socialist” label that would come along with it.
For obvious reasons, Republicans, typically the pro-business party in our two-party system, are overwhelmingly opposed to a single-payer system. But if they were to take a step back for a moment and consider the impact of lower-quality care on the American workforce, they might become the stronger advocate for single-payer. One of the most cited reasons for their support (albeit, sometimes lackluster and/or misguided support) of public education is that it pays of financially in the long-term. Educated people accomplish more and are more productive than uneducated people. Famed economist Adam Smith, hero of the Reagan administration when it sought smaller government, even posited the benefit public education provides to the economy. Taking this sentiment to the next step, wouldn’t better healthcare lead to higher worker productivity? In the long run, wouldn’t a healthier, more productive workforce lead to a healthier and more stable economy? Moreover, if a single-payer system lead to lower healthcare costs overall, wouldn’t new investments stemming from those healthcare savings grow the economy?
I think the answer to these questions is yes. Perhaps a single-payer system would be pro-business in the long-term. Unfortunately for us, politics in this country is rarely concerned with the long-term. As Niccolo Machiavelli realized a half-millennium ago, the most important goal of those in power is to do whatever it takes to stay in power. No serious presidential candidate will support a single-payer system until that breaking point when support from the for-profit healthcare industry does not translate into enough campaign cash to buyout the votes of an American electorate too fed-up with our increasingly dreary system of healthcare. I’m not going to get my hopes up, but maybe SiCKO will get a rise out of us.
Moore goes on to suggest that the major barrier to implementing a single-payer system is the size of the healthcare lobby in Washington. Politicians, including presidential hopeful Senator Hillary Clinton, the leader of the failed 1993 effort to implement sweeping healthcare reform, depend on the support and financial backing of the healthcare industry. It’s not surprising that she and the other “first-tier” presidential candidates are not advocating a single-payer system. Insurance companies would have no role in a single-payer system and, to protect their livelihoods, are throwing money—the real thing that wins elections in the U.S.—at all the major candidates. Even if they were not so dependent on the industry for campaign dollars, the candidates would likely still balk at promoting a single-payer system for fear of the ruinous “socialist” label that would come along with it.
For obvious reasons, Republicans, typically the pro-business party in our two-party system, are overwhelmingly opposed to a single-payer system. But if they were to take a step back for a moment and consider the impact of lower-quality care on the American workforce, they might become the stronger advocate for single-payer. One of the most cited reasons for their support (albeit, sometimes lackluster and/or misguided support) of public education is that it pays of financially in the long-term. Educated people accomplish more and are more productive than uneducated people. Famed economist Adam Smith, hero of the Reagan administration when it sought smaller government, even posited the benefit public education provides to the economy. Taking this sentiment to the next step, wouldn’t better healthcare lead to higher worker productivity? In the long run, wouldn’t a healthier, more productive workforce lead to a healthier and more stable economy? Moreover, if a single-payer system lead to lower healthcare costs overall, wouldn’t new investments stemming from those healthcare savings grow the economy?
I think the answer to these questions is yes. Perhaps a single-payer system would be pro-business in the long-term. Unfortunately for us, politics in this country is rarely concerned with the long-term. As Niccolo Machiavelli realized a half-millennium ago, the most important goal of those in power is to do whatever it takes to stay in power. No serious presidential candidate will support a single-payer system until that breaking point when support from the for-profit healthcare industry does not translate into enough campaign cash to buyout the votes of an American electorate too fed-up with our increasingly dreary system of healthcare. I’m not going to get my hopes up, but maybe SiCKO will get a rise out of us.
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Least surprising news story ever
The Justice Policy Institute has published the results of a study on approaches to gang violence. Their conclusion: social justice is more important than criminal justice in de-escalating the levels of violence in American communities. What a shocker. The Star summarizes the findings:
Mass arrests, tougher prison sentences, increased surveillance and staggeringly huge gang databases typify the enforcement approach relied upon to respond to gang violence. These methods are rooted in rational choice theories which hold that if only law enforcers can make the penalties and risks of gang activity sufficiently scary in comparison to the perceived benefits, youth will stop joining gangs. There's a major problem with this trend, and it's that the decision to join a gang is hardly the result of cost-benefit analysis.
While a small proportion of youth will join a gang for protection or excitement, the vast majority report more subtle push factors that incline them to participate. Most youth join because they become connected to gangs through their family members or peer groups. The less connected the youth are to mainstream social institutions such as schools, workplaces and families, the more likely they are to join. This list of risk factors for gang membership shows that academic failure, unemployment, and family break-down consistently make the list across a wide range of studies. Drug use is also a major risk factor, as drug-using peer groups tend to overlap with gang-participating peer groups.
The solution is manifestly not imprisonment. While in jail, about 60% of inmates lose their jobs, another 40% lose touch with their families. Gangs, unlike employers, students, and mothers, are a presence in juvenile incarceration facilities. With their social networks and career prospects damaged by imprisonment, released youth are very likely to be pulled into gang activity once again. This also suggests that imprisoning drug-using youth is a poor approach (and an unfair one, since affluent white kids get an inordinate amount of the court-assigned rehab stints, while working-class minorities see much more of the prison time). More than often, as David Schraub recently noted, prison stints for minor drug offenders only produce especially hardened criminals who will only return to incarceration.
What is needed are better crisis intervention programs for at-risk youth, to connect youth on the edge to positive peer groups and proper educational facilities. Too often though, these development programs are alienating to urban and working-class youth, as they essentially try to integrate those youth into middle-class white peer groups. They also tend to emphasize the criminality and deviance of the community the youth came from (and was heading to), rather than emphasizing the institutional conditions producing these outcomes. A corrective to this would be development programs that are designed for minority and poor youth with a social justice approach to development that emphasize social awareness as well as self awareness in decision-making.
And of course, as the Justice Institute finds, there's no reason we should be worried only once we've identified youth as being at-risk. Stronger schools in low-income communities that try to tackle the cumulative developmental disadvantages of growing up poor (which range from poor nutrition to under-stimulation as a result of parents working long hours), employers that offer reasonable income and hours to poor adolescents, and reforms in both work and welfare that allow parents to spend more time with their children would all go along way to limiting the pull of gangs in low-income communities.
How might we pay for all that? Well, a strong progressive income tax has never hurt anyone. And de-criminalizing marijuana use would free up millions of dollars from enforcement and imprisonment expenditures. In these instances, we almost have the choice to look at a kid and decide if we're going to pay for his classroom or his jail cell.
In the mean time,trying to punish violence after-the-fact with harsh penalties is a no-win strategy. And there is no apparent gain to suppression tactics that use heavy surveillance and intimidation tactics, save to give poor children the experience of living in a police state. A more promising tact is to seek out the sources of violence and marginalization in American life that push so many youth into criminal circles. The war on crime and drugs has only produced what philosopher Brian Barry calls a Black Gulag, a vast and costly system of incarcerated black men as a result of unfair policing and sentencing, not to mention a flagging, underfunded system. of social programs - and which, as the ultimate insult, seems to have failed to significantly reduce crime rates in urban communities. The JPI report reveals disturbing but unsurprising parallels in the fruitless punitive-militarist approaches to gang activity that are too frequently adopted by law enforces. The police war on gangs appears, so far, to have been nothing more than a war on America's poorest youth.
More police, more prisons and more punitive measures aren't the answer to reducing gang activity, concludes a new U.S. study that experts here say underscores the need for Canada to reject that approach in favour of investing in jobs, schools and programs for disenfranchised youth.
Mass arrests, tougher prison sentences, increased surveillance and staggeringly huge gang databases typify the enforcement approach relied upon to respond to gang violence. These methods are rooted in rational choice theories which hold that if only law enforcers can make the penalties and risks of gang activity sufficiently scary in comparison to the perceived benefits, youth will stop joining gangs. There's a major problem with this trend, and it's that the decision to join a gang is hardly the result of cost-benefit analysis.
While a small proportion of youth will join a gang for protection or excitement, the vast majority report more subtle push factors that incline them to participate. Most youth join because they become connected to gangs through their family members or peer groups. The less connected the youth are to mainstream social institutions such as schools, workplaces and families, the more likely they are to join. This list of risk factors for gang membership shows that academic failure, unemployment, and family break-down consistently make the list across a wide range of studies. Drug use is also a major risk factor, as drug-using peer groups tend to overlap with gang-participating peer groups.
The solution is manifestly not imprisonment. While in jail, about 60% of inmates lose their jobs, another 40% lose touch with their families. Gangs, unlike employers, students, and mothers, are a presence in juvenile incarceration facilities. With their social networks and career prospects damaged by imprisonment, released youth are very likely to be pulled into gang activity once again. This also suggests that imprisoning drug-using youth is a poor approach (and an unfair one, since affluent white kids get an inordinate amount of the court-assigned rehab stints, while working-class minorities see much more of the prison time). More than often, as David Schraub recently noted, prison stints for minor drug offenders only produce especially hardened criminals who will only return to incarceration.
What is needed are better crisis intervention programs for at-risk youth, to connect youth on the edge to positive peer groups and proper educational facilities. Too often though, these development programs are alienating to urban and working-class youth, as they essentially try to integrate those youth into middle-class white peer groups. They also tend to emphasize the criminality and deviance of the community the youth came from (and was heading to), rather than emphasizing the institutional conditions producing these outcomes. A corrective to this would be development programs that are designed for minority and poor youth with a social justice approach to development that emphasize social awareness as well as self awareness in decision-making.
And of course, as the Justice Institute finds, there's no reason we should be worried only once we've identified youth as being at-risk. Stronger schools in low-income communities that try to tackle the cumulative developmental disadvantages of growing up poor (which range from poor nutrition to under-stimulation as a result of parents working long hours), employers that offer reasonable income and hours to poor adolescents, and reforms in both work and welfare that allow parents to spend more time with their children would all go along way to limiting the pull of gangs in low-income communities.
How might we pay for all that? Well, a strong progressive income tax has never hurt anyone. And de-criminalizing marijuana use would free up millions of dollars from enforcement and imprisonment expenditures. In these instances, we almost have the choice to look at a kid and decide if we're going to pay for his classroom or his jail cell.
In the mean time,trying to punish violence after-the-fact with harsh penalties is a no-win strategy. And there is no apparent gain to suppression tactics that use heavy surveillance and intimidation tactics, save to give poor children the experience of living in a police state. A more promising tact is to seek out the sources of violence and marginalization in American life that push so many youth into criminal circles. The war on crime and drugs has only produced what philosopher Brian Barry calls a Black Gulag, a vast and costly system of incarcerated black men as a result of unfair policing and sentencing, not to mention a flagging, underfunded system. of social programs - and which, as the ultimate insult, seems to have failed to significantly reduce crime rates in urban communities. The JPI report reveals disturbing but unsurprising parallels in the fruitless punitive-militarist approaches to gang activity that are too frequently adopted by law enforces. The police war on gangs appears, so far, to have been nothing more than a war on America's poorest youth.
Sunday, July 15, 2007
I will be personally responsible for ensuring that Giuliani never comes close to the White House
I'm currently reading Why Social Justice Matters by Brian Barry. So far,my verdict is that the book is inessential from a theoretical standpoint, but certainly informative as it marshals a staggering amount of empirical data to depict the damage of cumulative disadvantages on individual life-chances and the structural maintenance of gross inequality in the US and UK. But this post is just meant to share a choice passage on Giuliani, which comes up in the context of comparing a couple different models of social policy.
Giuliani embraced the ethic of the Work and Personal Responsibility Reconciliation Act with such fervor that he actually instructed city employees not to welfare recipients that they were also eligible for food stamps.
ARE YOU KIDDING?
That line actually almost made me throw up. The media depicts Giuliani as “Rudy!”, this big-hearted grinning guy who was “America's mayor”. And in reality, he is exactly the type of person who will jeopardize the ability of his own citizens to feed themselves and their families, just so he can shave some money off the food stamp budget and score whatever political points come from reducing the number of people on food stamps. Which to be honest, I didn't even fathom was a type of person so much as an utterly disturbing caricature of a person that might be a villain in a Dickens novel.
Only slightly less terrifying is Giuliani's approach to helping homeless people:
His first homeless service commissioner, Joan Malin (who resigned in 1996),
recalled that in 1995 the Mayor had determined to shrink the soaring shelter population the way Richard J. Schwartz, his senior policy adviser, was shrinking the welfare rolls: tighten eligibility rules, deter applicants at the front door, and eject those who failed to meet work requirements. ... 'What Richard's done in the welfare system is what you need to be doing' , She was told by Giuliani. 'It became his mantra.'
To back up this policy, he 'reduced subsidized housing placements from the shelters to a 10-year-low, and let the pipe-line of city-owned apartments dry up'.
Unfortunately, Giuliani's theory that the homeless were responsible for their own plight did not seem to be borne out by reality. 'By February of 2001, the number of people lodging nightly in the shelter system equaled the 1980s peak of 28,737...
In the end, it turns out that the simple-minded explanation of homelessness – that it is due to lack of affordable housing – was right all along. 'A New York University Study that followed homeless families in 1988 and a random group on public assistance who had not been homeless found that only one factor – subsidized housing - determined whether a family in either group was stably housed five years later'.
Surprise, surprise.
My earliest memories of politics are from the Clinton years, New Democrats who climbed on-board the conservative rallying cry of “personal responsibility”. And since then, I've had six years of W., a man who finds it endearing, not unsettling, when a woman has to work three jobs to support her family. This whole idea that social policy should chiefly entail preaching to underprivileged women and men about their bad life choices while we cut off their support systems is absurd, but the political mainstream seems content with the “condescend-and-let'em-fend” approach. Sure, people make choices. But those choices are undeniably constrained by systems of which individuals have no control. Hell, the consistent ability of privileged employers and wealthy tax-payers to control the domestic policy agenda suggests that even an organized coalitions of individuals have few chances when it comes to, say, creating a market for affordable housing. So exactly how can one feel justified in demanding that a family demonstrate more personal responsibility for their position in the market we do have? And what about the responsibility of the privileged to ensure a minimally decent standard of living for our neighbors? It's a unique kind of cruelty that blames the homeless – perhaps America's most stigmatized and excluded sub-class – for their plight.
But leaving the esoteric mattes on hold, I think even Americans of a less determinist bent than I would find Giuliani's approach unacceptable. And yet the “values voters” of our country could care less about how many families he's sent to the streets, so long as he'll come around on sending women to jail for having abortions. He may have been America's mayor, but if he becomes America's president, I'm going to grad school in Canada.
Good (but not great) news for trans people
Jamie Tyroler has a great column up at CAMP situating the AMA's newly minted non-discrimination policy within debates over transgender equality and universal healthcare. Medical discrimination is an issue that transgender people have struggled with for too long, and in a way that no other group in the United States has. Tyroler's article relates a disturbing and personal example:
A post at MySoCalledGayLife reminds us of another tragedy:
All around the country, people have been dying simply because the ethical commitment that doctors have made to respond to those in need seems to be outweighed by their irrepressible disgust for those who do not, and indeed, can not, live within the confines of the binary equation of sex and gender. This is not an issue that requires a PhD in Gender Studies to grasp. There is little that deconstruction can offer in comprehending the great pain and misery that medical discrimination deals. It is an issue as simple as whether or not we will heal the sick and tend to the suffering, regardless of how they relate to the loaded vocabularies of "man" and "woman".
Thankfully, the AMA gets it right. In fact, they nail it. From employment, to insurance, to treatment, the AMA will now forbid discrimination based on gender identity. Many trans people who have labored to find help from our nation's doctors will rest easier with the burden of medical discrimination lifted from them.
But there is still much to be done on the front of transgender health. Transgender cultural competency needs to be a priority in medical training. No one should have to feel like alien or unsafe when they go to visit the doctor. Insurance providers should research the actual (not hypothetical, stereotypical, or downright mythological) costs and benefits of sexual reassignment so that their trans clients can receive fair quotes - rather than being unfairly gouged, or as is usually the case, completely denied coverage. Surveys and studies need to identify trans subjects so that a profile of the health needs of the trans community can emerge. If we do not effectively and preemptively concern ourselves with the health needs of American minority populations and prioritize a strong response to disparities in health care and research, then we will continue to watch each underserved population die in unnecessarily high numbers. It doesn't seem like a hard choice.
But the Christian right is ful of surprises. Led by Tom Coburn and the AFA, they're already lining up against such efforts. They would rather see tax cuts than an increase of spending for the CDC. And they are especially incensed that the CDC has made strides to include trans people, MSM, WSW, sex workers and drug users into the fold of people whose health will be addressed. Forget that we know little about most of these groups except for the simple fact that they appear to be at elevated risks for a variety of illnesses. Apparently, the price of deviance is not only shame, but marginalization, destitution, sickness and death. The AFA even offers a direct action meme, which lures in fundies with the "outrageous" claim that the CDC has used their money for an event focusing on trans people! The horrors!
And so now, the bizarre alliance between "family values" voters and free market capitalists has one of the largest Christian organizations lobbying the President to spend less on health care. The followers of a Christ who not only healed lepers and the blind, but counseled and comforted prostitutes, criminals and adulterers, cannot bear the idea of spending their money to assist the ill and at-risk who must exist on the fringes of the social mainstream because of absurd norms of propriety and sexual conservativism. Irony does not do the situation justice. It is merely a disgrace.
A few years ago, a transgender friend of mine tried committing suicide by swallowing a large amount of over-the-counter medication. She walked to a local emergency room where the doctor on duty ordered her to leave and not to return. The doctor told her that this hospital would never treat someone like her. Fortunately, she survived her suicide attempt. Unfortunately though, walking home in a very fragile state, she was raped.
A post at MySoCalledGayLife reminds us of another tragedy:
In 1999, Robert Eads, a female-to-male transsexual, died of ovarian cancer after multiple doctors refused to treat him. His case was documented in the 2001 documentary, Southern Comfort.
All around the country, people have been dying simply because the ethical commitment that doctors have made to respond to those in need seems to be outweighed by their irrepressible disgust for those who do not, and indeed, can not, live within the confines of the binary equation of sex and gender. This is not an issue that requires a PhD in Gender Studies to grasp. There is little that deconstruction can offer in comprehending the great pain and misery that medical discrimination deals. It is an issue as simple as whether or not we will heal the sick and tend to the suffering, regardless of how they relate to the loaded vocabularies of "man" and "woman".
Thankfully, the AMA gets it right. In fact, they nail it. From employment, to insurance, to treatment, the AMA will now forbid discrimination based on gender identity. Many trans people who have labored to find help from our nation's doctors will rest easier with the burden of medical discrimination lifted from them.
But there is still much to be done on the front of transgender health. Transgender cultural competency needs to be a priority in medical training. No one should have to feel like alien or unsafe when they go to visit the doctor. Insurance providers should research the actual (not hypothetical, stereotypical, or downright mythological) costs and benefits of sexual reassignment so that their trans clients can receive fair quotes - rather than being unfairly gouged, or as is usually the case, completely denied coverage. Surveys and studies need to identify trans subjects so that a profile of the health needs of the trans community can emerge. If we do not effectively and preemptively concern ourselves with the health needs of American minority populations and prioritize a strong response to disparities in health care and research, then we will continue to watch each underserved population die in unnecessarily high numbers. It doesn't seem like a hard choice.
But the Christian right is ful of surprises. Led by Tom Coburn and the AFA, they're already lining up against such efforts. They would rather see tax cuts than an increase of spending for the CDC. And they are especially incensed that the CDC has made strides to include trans people, MSM, WSW, sex workers and drug users into the fold of people whose health will be addressed. Forget that we know little about most of these groups except for the simple fact that they appear to be at elevated risks for a variety of illnesses. Apparently, the price of deviance is not only shame, but marginalization, destitution, sickness and death. The AFA even offers a direct action meme, which lures in fundies with the "outrageous" claim that the CDC has used their money for an event focusing on trans people! The horrors!
And so now, the bizarre alliance between "family values" voters and free market capitalists has one of the largest Christian organizations lobbying the President to spend less on health care. The followers of a Christ who not only healed lepers and the blind, but counseled and comforted prostitutes, criminals and adulterers, cannot bear the idea of spending their money to assist the ill and at-risk who must exist on the fringes of the social mainstream because of absurd norms of propriety and sexual conservativism. Irony does not do the situation justice. It is merely a disgrace.
Sunday, July 8, 2007
Struggling to Be Part of the Story
This thoroughly researched but ultimately unrevealing resource from the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force probably won't make any waves in the debate over same-sex marriage. If anything it is a testament to the fact that political deliberation over the topic really has stalled out. In rating the crop of 2008 Presidential hopefuls on a handful of crucial LGBT issues, the conclusions of the Task Force are nowhere near groundbreaking. Kucinich emerges as the clear champion for LGBT people. He and Gravel are the only candidates to support same-sex marriage, but Gravel is ambiguous in his support for transgender inclusive hate-crime laws, adoption by same-sex couples, and robust HIV/AIDS policies. Other than that the Democrats nail each issue with the conspicuous exception of full same-sex marriage rights, and the Republicans are categorically miserable on all counts. There is no way to equivocate when a genuine bipartisan consensus emerges: the political mainstream, left and right, is opposed to same-sex marriage. A whole six senators openly support same-sex marriage, a number that belies the growing support for marriage equality amongst voting Americans.
The opponents of same-sex marriage have been successful in large because they have managed to frame the controversy as a "moral issue" - the type of issue that centers around beliefs, beliefs which cannot be authoritatively challenged or established. LGBT activists and their allies obviously see the issue as one of discrimination and social policy. But the language of inequality rarely makes it into mainstream discussions of same-sex marriage, even in the apologia of lefty candidates.
For example, John Edwards on same-sex marriage. He has described it as "the single hardest issue" and the site of many "personal struggles." He has told audiences that supporting same-sex marriage would be a "jump" for him, but that, ultimately, he is "not there yet." Obama's stance is similar. He writes in The Audacity of Hope that,"It is my obligation, not only as an elected official in a pluralistic society but also as a Christian, to remain open to the possibility that my unwillingness to support gay marriage is misguided."
Consciously or not, Edwards and Obama play directly into the interpretation that sees same-sex marriage as nothing more than a "cultural" or "moral" question, akin to asking whether an explicit piece of art is lewdly pornographic or genuinely expressive. And in this sense, their framing of the debate is oddly similar to that of the religious right - the issues is another battle in a culture war, in which the real questions are not about people or policy, but about what culture we will produce, consume, and tolerate. Their meditations on the issue make the straight-speaker the primary subject of the political narrative on same-sex marriage. Rather than telling a story about people who suffer indignity, social marginalization, and deprivation of economic privileges that are often crucial to the functioning of family life, the Democratic front-runners are making the moral odyssey of the oppressor the center of the debate.
This is surely a trend to be resisted. The debate over same-sex marriage should not be about the soul-searching of privileged heterosexuals, and whether or not they have strength of introspection to extend equality to same-sex couples. The narratives of queer women and men struggling for equality should be inescapable when the issue of same-sex marriage is raised. Thats why projects like 10Couples are so important. They show same-sex couples of varying positions in structures of racial and class privilege, all living lives that are somehow marred by exclusion. These types of narratives are hard to shrug off. Oregon's Supreme Court decisions show the exact types of legal contortions that must be conceded in order to make a case that discrimination in the arena of marriage is constitutionally acceptable - and even then, the Court was not convinced that barring same-sex marriages constituted effective or humane social policy.
People like Obama and Edwards who take themselves to be allies of the queer community should be pressing the conservative opponents of marriage equality as hard as queer activists are pressing the courts. But beyond merely disappointing LGBT constituents with soft stances, they themselves engage in an unacceptable kind of oppression, akin to cultural imperialism, when they monopolize the policy debates with their own stories and leave no space for narrative representation of the oppressed. bell hooks has observed similar trends in feminist conceptions of solidarity. White and middle class women, she argues, claim sisterhood with women of color and working-class women. But those privileged women continue to control the movement, to focus on their own goals and narratives. At best, acknowledgment of privilege comes as an intense catharsis - but even then, the focus is on the emotional experience of the privileged, not on a substantive political challenge on behalf of the underprivileged.
True allies do not behave in such a manner. Real solidarity entails a willingness to make political action for the oppressed the priority in a movement, even taking actions that don't seem comprehensible from within one's own narrative because they are the only way to genuinely treat the claims flowing from the narrative of the Other. Genuine solidarity is much like an ethic of service, a commitment to do for the oppressed what they cannot do for themselves. It is not about understanding the narrative of the other 100% - such a total comprehension of the subject position of one differently situated in structures of privilege. When we occupy the position of privilege within a movement, we should see the ultimate test of our solidarity in our willingness to act for the oppressed on the basis of precisely those things which our privilege prevents us from grasping entirely.
Or to phrase it in the language of organizing - Rule number one of being an ally should be: Check your privilege at the door. The system is built for you, and takes the validation of your experience as given. This is a movement to challenge that system. As a result, this movement is not about you. It is about justice for the oppressed, and the stories of their oppression should never have to compete with the history of your alliance for centrality.
I phrase the rule thusly speaking to the heterosexual allies of the LGBT movement. When I theorize as a feminist, an anti-imperialist, or an anti-racist, the lesson is mine to learn as well. To serve in solidarity is the price of privilege.
The opponents of same-sex marriage have been successful in large because they have managed to frame the controversy as a "moral issue" - the type of issue that centers around beliefs, beliefs which cannot be authoritatively challenged or established. LGBT activists and their allies obviously see the issue as one of discrimination and social policy. But the language of inequality rarely makes it into mainstream discussions of same-sex marriage, even in the apologia of lefty candidates.
For example, John Edwards on same-sex marriage. He has described it as "the single hardest issue" and the site of many "personal struggles." He has told audiences that supporting same-sex marriage would be a "jump" for him, but that, ultimately, he is "not there yet." Obama's stance is similar. He writes in The Audacity of Hope that,"It is my obligation, not only as an elected official in a pluralistic society but also as a Christian, to remain open to the possibility that my unwillingness to support gay marriage is misguided."
Consciously or not, Edwards and Obama play directly into the interpretation that sees same-sex marriage as nothing more than a "cultural" or "moral" question, akin to asking whether an explicit piece of art is lewdly pornographic or genuinely expressive. And in this sense, their framing of the debate is oddly similar to that of the religious right - the issues is another battle in a culture war, in which the real questions are not about people or policy, but about what culture we will produce, consume, and tolerate. Their meditations on the issue make the straight-speaker the primary subject of the political narrative on same-sex marriage. Rather than telling a story about people who suffer indignity, social marginalization, and deprivation of economic privileges that are often crucial to the functioning of family life, the Democratic front-runners are making the moral odyssey of the oppressor the center of the debate.
This is surely a trend to be resisted. The debate over same-sex marriage should not be about the soul-searching of privileged heterosexuals, and whether or not they have strength of introspection to extend equality to same-sex couples. The narratives of queer women and men struggling for equality should be inescapable when the issue of same-sex marriage is raised. Thats why projects like 10Couples are so important. They show same-sex couples of varying positions in structures of racial and class privilege, all living lives that are somehow marred by exclusion. These types of narratives are hard to shrug off. Oregon's Supreme Court decisions show the exact types of legal contortions that must be conceded in order to make a case that discrimination in the arena of marriage is constitutionally acceptable - and even then, the Court was not convinced that barring same-sex marriages constituted effective or humane social policy.
People like Obama and Edwards who take themselves to be allies of the queer community should be pressing the conservative opponents of marriage equality as hard as queer activists are pressing the courts. But beyond merely disappointing LGBT constituents with soft stances, they themselves engage in an unacceptable kind of oppression, akin to cultural imperialism, when they monopolize the policy debates with their own stories and leave no space for narrative representation of the oppressed. bell hooks has observed similar trends in feminist conceptions of solidarity. White and middle class women, she argues, claim sisterhood with women of color and working-class women. But those privileged women continue to control the movement, to focus on their own goals and narratives. At best, acknowledgment of privilege comes as an intense catharsis - but even then, the focus is on the emotional experience of the privileged, not on a substantive political challenge on behalf of the underprivileged.
True allies do not behave in such a manner. Real solidarity entails a willingness to make political action for the oppressed the priority in a movement, even taking actions that don't seem comprehensible from within one's own narrative because they are the only way to genuinely treat the claims flowing from the narrative of the Other. Genuine solidarity is much like an ethic of service, a commitment to do for the oppressed what they cannot do for themselves. It is not about understanding the narrative of the other 100% - such a total comprehension of the subject position of one differently situated in structures of privilege. When we occupy the position of privilege within a movement, we should see the ultimate test of our solidarity in our willingness to act for the oppressed on the basis of precisely those things which our privilege prevents us from grasping entirely.
Or to phrase it in the language of organizing - Rule number one of being an ally should be: Check your privilege at the door. The system is built for you, and takes the validation of your experience as given. This is a movement to challenge that system. As a result, this movement is not about you. It is about justice for the oppressed, and the stories of their oppression should never have to compete with the history of your alliance for centrality.
I phrase the rule thusly speaking to the heterosexual allies of the LGBT movement. When I theorize as a feminist, an anti-imperialist, or an anti-racist, the lesson is mine to learn as well. To serve in solidarity is the price of privilege.
Friday, July 6, 2007
No Asylum
Though the sentiment most associated with Guantanamo is certainly outrage, readers of Kafka can only greet the reports from the world-infamous prison with grim familiarity. The intractable tangle of bureaucratic language and legal jargon that has confounded what progress the executive is willing to attempt – trials canceled because what we once thought were “illegal enemy combatants”, already a dubious conceptual category, have not proven to be discernibly “illegal” but merely “enemy combatants” of a more vanilla variety – recall the unnavigable bureaucracy of the The Castle, while Josef K could only take Jose Padilla as kin.
But long before Guantanamo became the symbol par excellence of America's institutional nightmares and grotesque easiness with egregious human rights abuses, Kafkaesque tales of absurdity and horror could be heard. Or at least they should have been.
Imagine a prisoner. He is in solitary confinement, spending twenty-three hours a day in utter isolation. Typically unsupervised, he babbles to himself, pound the walls with his fists and head. He may come to occupy an entirely hallucinated world. Or he may attempt suicide. He may succeed. If he even consciously committed a crime, his memory of the event may have deteriorated alongside his other capacities. You wouldn't find this man in Cuba. You would find him in New York City. And not just in the past six years, when Guantanamo's dark odyssey unfolded, but at virtually any point in the past three decades.
Solitary Housing Units (SHUs) are the places that too many prisoners call home. They are not easy for anyone to withstand. But for the mentally ill, they are sites of unparalleled suffering. The Department of Justice concedes that 16% of America's inmate population suffers from a diagnosable mental illness. The American Psychological Association and Human Rights Watch estimate that the number is closer to 1 in 5. Depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and many other acute mental illnesses impact over some 300,000 inmates. For some, mental illness motivated their crime. For others mental illness emerged after imprisonment. But either way, the likelihood that mentally ill prisoners will end up in SHUs is extreme. As Jamie Fellner of Human Rights Watch explains:
They end up in segregation because their illness makes them less able than other prisoners to cope with prison life. They are more likely to be victimized and more likely to be injured in a fight. They are more likely to break the rules. They are more likely to behave in ways that annoy, disgust and even enrage security staff who have scant training in how to recognize, much less cope with, symptoms of mental illness.
Not only are they more likely to end up in SHUs, but solitary confinement is uniquely hellish for inmates suffering from mental illnesses because it virtually guarantees that their condition will deteriorate as their needs go unaddressed. Fellner continues:
The very architecture of SHU facilities, as well as SHU rules, keep them from receiving group therapy, up therapy, individual therapy, daily living skill training, educational and vocational programs, structured and unstructured group recreation and other activities that can play a crucial role in restoring or improving mental health—or at the very least in preventing further deterioration in the patient’s psychiatric condition.
Fortunately, the State of New York has taken action to close this disturbing chapter in the history of America's prison system. S333, once signed by Governor Spitzer, will amend New York's correction and mental hygiene laws so that inmates suffering from mental illnesses will not be eligible for placement in SHUs. All inmates being considered for SHU placement must first be screened by a board of professionals prior to transference. Those found to be suffering from mental illnesses will be placed into special treatment programs where supervision and close treatment are mandated by law. A simple attentiveness has saved hundreds of women and men from a hellish existence, and it is possible that more states will take thus cue from New York. It is certainly welcome news. But it is also a relatively minor step in correcting the sprawling system of bureaucratic shortcomings, institutional failures, and social aporiae that have brought about the system in which the inhumanities described above can occur.
America's health and human services system, sprawling beast that it is, has utterly failed the mentally ill of this country. The web of failed and flagging programs that has produced the deplorable status quo is so complex and mutually reinforcing that it is difficult to even begin the discussion. But one thing is certain: responding to the crisis of mental health care in this country will be impossible within an individualist paradigm. Reinvigorated communities and an ethic of care must have a part in the process – easy enough to theorize, but wickedly difficult to implement since the communities and caregivers in most need of solutions already have their resources stretched thin.
Americans, committed to an ideology where “equal opportunity” is seen as the upper limit on egalitarian obligations tend to downplay inequalities in outcome. And the mantra of “individual responsibility”has dealt plenty of harm to the robust redistributive and welfare-provision policies that would actually be needed to redress the dire inequalities of wealth and assets that cut across America's socio-political landscape.
The dire implications for the mentally ill are made clear in this eye-opening report on mental health care in low income communities. Medicaid and Medicare programs that can't reimburse hospitals enough to even keep sufficient numbers of psychiatrists on the payroll make affordable mental health service hard to find. For uninsured Americans, or for Americans whose providers don't practice parity for mental health, mental health problems may go untreated until a serious lapse lands the sufferer in jail or in an emergency department (ED). Of course, EDs themselves, especially those serving low-income communities where huge numbers of people are on Medicaid or totally uninsured (and on avearage 20% of all mentally ill people are uninsured), have to cut back on which services they can provide and frequently send mental health patients away without treatment, as their emergencies are often easier to ignore than those suffering a physical emergency. Inadequate Social Security payouts are a problem, too. Currently, SSI payments average $632 a month. But a modest, single-bedroom apartment in the United States averages $715 a month. People dependent on SSI for income simply can't compete in the current housing climate. And, of course, many of America's mentally ill, unable to find consistent work, are in precisely that position. So they end up untreated on the streets, often facing prison as the ultimate destination. With all of these support networks – Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, public hospitals – failing, is it any wonder the prison system has emerged as the de facto “solution” to the problem of mental illness – a solution that looks increasingly like reinstitutionalization?
Some necessary solutions are clear: Medicaid and Medicare must receive more funding, SSI payouts must increase, housing prices may need to be capped or controlled, and government-paid health care (that includes parity for mental health care), needs to become a reality. The government should provide people who cannot afford a place to live and the mental health care they need with the income and assets necessary for survival.
But a more fundamental shift is also necessary. It is interesting to observe the drastic differences in treatment between the developmentally disabled and mentally retarded on one hand, and those suffering from psychological illness on the other. Americans, defying the typical individualist ethos of self-reliance, have by and large stepped up to the plate to provide for the former group (Vladeck, 2005). Many of the coverage caps in Medicare/Medicaid programs have been addressed, and political advocacy has been more effective on their behalf. It seems that Americans can comprehend permanent disability, but the idea that a person may experience episodic mental illness that requires extending the offer of assistance throughout a lifetime, to be taken as needed, strikes many as a blank check for welfare. People must either announce “dependency” (perhaps the most loaded word in the wide lexicon of social policy) or strike out on their own. Gray areas need not apply.
Feminist critics like Iris Marion Young have long pointed out the obvious problem with this ideological construct: most everyone falls somewhere in the middle of the autonomous/dependent spectrum. Those of us who can find all of the care we need within the private sphere – through family or friends – are fortunate, but atypically privileged. Again, it is the most vulnerable, those for whom everyday support structures are inadequate or absent, whose cases force us to reexamine our public policy. But in any event, we should not make the error of believing that it is only those people who are dependent while the rest of us live autonomous lives. The binary cannot stand, and social services ought to be implemented with the diversity of cases in mind. The goal of social policy should be the creation of communities of mutual aid which respond to the emergent needs and crises of members, but perhaps more importantly, support and care for members in affirmative ways that make crisis intervention less and less necessary.
At the level of policy, this might look something like a flexible fund, perhaps created at federal or state-wide levels so that patterns of inequality would not leave the most vulnerable communities with the least funding, that could be applied to support EDs, aid needy people in finding housing, or pay for routine psychological wellness exams for all who consented to them. These types of solutions would encourage communities to come together and analyze their needs, rather than suffering under larger bureaucracies whose shortcomings only become clear in the wake of failure. A community-oriented approach would also empower the mentally ill to participate in and with community aid projects, rather than facing strictly medical/institutional solutions that dehumanize on the basis of condition.
In short, a socialism that is truly “social” will emphasize community and communication as means of empowering and nurturing the most vulnerable segments of society, rather than expecting the kind of harrowing systems that have been producing incomprehensible no-exit nightmares since Kafka's day to do the work of justice. Nowhere is the need for such a revolution in thinking more apparent than in the crisis facing the mentally ill today. With their fate so firmly in the hands of ailing bureaucracies, the mentally ill in America are often the hapless playthings of a system that is dully malevolent in its neglect. Where the status quo produces Kafkaesque vertigo, it is incumbent on all who see the social bond as a site of obligation to respond with care.
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