I thought Nussbaum could have gone a little deeper in
talking about a decent living-standard and social welfare in chapter 6; I was
slightly disappointed that she only touched on the surface of the role that
laws play in these issues. I also
thought some of the points that Nussbaum brought up regarding this topic can
easily transition into issues of racism.
People in poverty are viewed in such a negative way in our country; it
seems that anytime someone is struggling financially, blame is cast on that
person for not working hard enough. If
someone is on welfare, they are often viewed as lazy or thought to be “taking
handouts”. It is also important to note
that once someone is in the welfare program, it is difficult to get out and
this is something that many people do not realize. When someone is born into an economically
depressed area, the likelihood of them becoming well-off by working hard is not
in their favor. The education they will
receive in primary and secondary public schools will not be of equal quality of
someone going to a public school in an economically thriving area due to the
distribution of public school funding.
This will make it difficult to continue onto higher education or earn a
job when competing with those who had the advantage of growing up in a
different area. The people born into
poverty lack the equal opportunity to thrive in this country; they are often
trapped in a very unjust cycle. It is
very tragic that these individuals receive such a negative stigma in this
situation. Many of the people in these
areas are black individuals that have been trapped in this cycle due to the
historical injustices that took place following slavery and the Jim Crow era. Because
of this, the negative stigma associated with poverty is often cast on black
people and helps attribute to racism in this country. I wish Nussbaum would
have talked about this more. Nussbaum
only briefly talks about this topic so does not dive deeply into these issues,
but I would be very interested to hear what she would have to say on this
problem and its relationship to shame. I
would think discussing affirmative action in chapter 6 would have been very
fitting.
Krista, I agree that Nussbaum covered many topics on a surface level rather than diving in-depth into each issue. You discussed how you wanted more from her, and you mentioned the idea of stigma, especially when it comes to discrimination in America. Something that I was wondering when I was reading this chapter was how she distinguishes between shame and stigma.
ReplyDeleteOn the bottom of page 284, Nussbaum states, “Meanwhile, public housing projects that once were intended to give adequate and respectable shelter to poor residents now stigmatize all those who live in them. Access to shame-free housing is among the major challenges our society must face in the next decades.” In this statement, I feel like she is using stigma and shame interchangeably, when I do not necessarily think that they can be used in this way. Stigma and shame are most definitely linked causally – shaming can lead to stigma, and stigma can lead to shaming (this Nussbaum does not deny). However, there are definitely instances in which shaming practices do not necessarily lead to stigma. Person A could shame Person B for not wearing shoes in the shower. That is not really a stigma, but an instance of shaming.
In the case of stigma, it may be that it is always stemmed from shaming. I cannot think of an example in which a person with a stigma is not shamed, but I feel like Nussbaum needs to make a better clarification here as well.