Book Review: The shame game: Overturning the toxic poverty narrative

“Shame: The Misplaced Debt of Structural Sin”

“…For instance, amidst significant inflation and growing need among diverse sectors of society, the Reagan administration sought to reduce social welfare. What they managed to cut was deep, a sharp contrast even to previous Republican administrations (O'Hara, 2020, pp. 72–73).…”

“…Having grown up with extreme economic distress, Mary O'Hara has dedicated her writing career to investigative social justice. She writes, “A prevailing, powerful narrative that blames the poor for their misfortune, shames them for being poor, and which distorts and distracts from the structural causes of poverty and the actions required to overcome it is exactly what's at play” (O'Hara, 2020, pp. 81–82) 5.…”

“…Being able to make those deep cuts relied on racist anti‐poverty rhetoric. In a 1976 campaign speech, Reagan first used the term “welfare queen.” It stuck, and he relied on the US social system to mirror and repeat the falsehoods that welfare recipients were mostly single Black women who cheated the government—and therefore taxpayers—out of their money (O'Hara, 2020, 107–108) 7. Reagan made it seem like Black women who needed economic support were morally inferior, just like racist science in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries argued that Black women's bodies were inferior to white women's bodies—and thus that they were morally inferior (Schiebinger, 1993, pp.…”

“…Because my family is white, there was every expectation that we were not unable to pay ordinary life expenses and could not suffer economically. In one study, a significant number of white persons think people want to remain on government assistance, while, for example, most Black persons consider poverty temporary (O'Hara, 2020, p. 18910). In other words, the white‐identified narrative on US economics carries a racist moral judgment.…”

“…While the measure of poverty in 2019 was income below $24,000 for a family of four, it takes over twice that much to cover basic bills, such as food, housing, utilities, and a car. In other words, more people in the US live paycheck to paycheck than what the poverty statistics indicate about economic distress in the United States (O'Hara, 2020, pp. 71–72).…”