Using data collected during a four-year ethnographic study, this article examines the stigma management strategies of kids who are homeless in the San Francisco Bay area. We focus specifically on strategies of inclusion and exclusion. Strategies of inclusion are attempts by homeless kids to establish harmonious relationships with both peers and strangers. The most common are forging friendships, passing, and covering. Strategies of exclusion are aggressive and nonconciliatory attempts to gain social acceptance. They include verbal denigration and physical and sexual posturing. Some of these strategies successfully protect the kids' sense of self, while other strategies had the unintended effect of reinforcing their spoiled identities. We argue that these stigma management strategies are both informed by and interpreted through their disadvantaged social structural location.
Intimate partner and community violence are an unrelenting presence in the lives of homeless Latina 4 and African American women and their children. Impoverished neighborhoods are inundated with public acts of violence that impact daily life in profound ways. Sexual violence, drug use, gang violence, child abuse, and hypermasculinity are enacted visibly for all to see. Based on a four-year ethnography of homeless families in San Francisco, this research examines the gendered and racialized violence of poverty experienced by homeless mothers in San Francisco. Women in this research have endured physical and sexual violence as children and are typically victims of adult intimate partner violence. This research presents the excruciating narratives of violence and degradation suffered by homeless women of color. Their lived experiences illustrate that for many women of color, becoming homeless is a direct result of racialized poverty and chronic family violence. Framed within the intersectionality perspective, these women's stories advance our understanding of the interlocking nature of race, gender, and class oppression.KEY WORDS: gendered and racialized violence; homeless mothers; intersectionality; intimate partner violence; poverty.Sometimes life just seems unbearable. My childhood was filled with violence and brutality-there was never any relief. I was raped by my stepbrother for years and no one seemed to care. My mom was so beaten down she couldn't stop it. When I tried to get help from my teachers they were useless. One teacher even told me that I shouldn't be surprised that there was so much violence in my community because "poor people are animals and everyone knows that Hispanic men are crazy violent." Given the hella racism and abuse I experienced growing up, it's not at all surprising that my life went so horribly wrong-Geliza . 4 When referring to both Latinas and Latinos, I will use the term Latinix, which is gender neutral and inclusive of trans, queer, nonbinary, gender nonconforming, or gender fluid individuals. However, because the respondents in my sample all identified as cisgender when referring specifically to women or men, I will use the terms Latina and Latino, respectively, to indicate respondents' cisgender identity.
This article examines service learning in the Peace and Justice Studies Program at the University of San Francisco. The authors show that students who complete their two courses—Poverty, Homelessness, and the Urban Underclass as well as Field Experience—make significant contributions to the community service organizations they serve. Not only do their students learn, but the organizations benefit from the knowledge the students bring. Furthermore, through service learning, many of the students develop a long-term commitment to social justice and continue to work for social change years after leaving the university.
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