Blaming the Victim

Blaming the Victim

William Ryan

Language: English

Pages: 368

ISBN: 0394722264

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub


The classic work that refutes the lies we tell ourselves about race, poverty and the poorHere are three myths about poverty in America:– Minority children perform poorly in school because they are “culturally deprived.”– African-Americans are handicapped by a family structure that is typically unstable and matriarchal. – Poor people suffer from bad health because of ignorance and lack of interest in proper health care. Blaming the Victim was the first book to identify these truisms as part of the system of denial that even the best-intentioned Americans have constructed around the unpalatable realities of race and class. Originally published in 1970, William Ryan's groundbreaking and exhaustively researched work challenges both liberal and conservative assumptions, serving up a devastating critique of the mindset that causes us to blame the poor for their poverty and the powerless for their powerlessness. More than twenty years later, it is even more meaningful for its diagnosis of the psychic underpinnings of racial and social injustice.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

national health program and then, when the largely exceptionalistic programs that result don’t work, they will point to the continued high indices of poor health and say that you can’t cure America’s health problems by throwing Federal dollars at them. Notes Mary Hazen & Sam Cordes. Changing The Poor or Changing the System?—A Basic Issue in Improving the Poor’s Use of Medical Services. Ag. Econ. & Rur. Sociol. Monograph #113, 14 pp. University Park, Penna. Pennsylvania State University.

dealing with societal problems at a local level is just as clearly exceptionalistic. Therefore, although, obviously, participation at the community level is the only logical mechanism by which decision-making can be made inclusive in any real sense, just as obviously this kind of community control has to be systematically related to the level at which the problem exists—in many instances, this is the national level, and in almost all cases, it is at least at the regional or state level.

important social variable indeed. Prior studies had shown, for example, that a very high proportion of adult psychiatric patients come from homes broken by death, divorce, and separation. In the Midtown Manhattan Study, this observation was confirmed: among psychiatric outpatients studied, a full twenty per cent—one in five—reported a history of a childhood broken home. But the next finding was a real surprise: of the non-patients in the general population sample, thirty-five per cent—more than

semi-public corporation—analogous to COMSAT—could be established to deal directly with developmental problems identified in the research institutes. The primary aim of all such programs would be the stimulation of greater and cheaper construction by the private sector. Another, a governmental program aimed at stimulation of private activity, would be direct housing subsidies for the poor—as opposed to the present corruption-prone rent certificate program whereby local housing authorities lease

of the district council would be to operate a decentralized and integrated system of human services including education, order-maintenance, child welfare, family counseling, public housing, neighborhood health care, etc. This program of decentralized services would, of course, have to be backed up and supported by an additional city-wide centralized system consisting of both highly specialized direct services, and supportive indirect services. I would predict that such a system of elected

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