{"id":49994,"date":"2013-07-13T07:39:39","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T06:39:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/blinded-by-the-stereotype-spotlight\/49994\/"},"modified":"2013-07-13T07:39:39","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T06:39:39","slug":"blinded-by-the-stereotype-spotlight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/blinded-by-the-stereotype-spotlight\/","title":{"rendered":"Blinded by the Stereotype Spotlight"},"content":{"rendered":"

Why are\u00a0drug sweeps routinely conducted by police in high-poverty minority neighborhoods<\/a>\u00a0and not dorms on college campuses?<\/p>\n

Why was shooting victim\u00a0Trayvon Martin drug tested<\/a>, and his shooter, George Zimmerman, not tested?<\/p>\n

Why are\u00a0Teach for America recruits, with no formal training as teachers, allowed to teach high-poverty minority students<\/a>, often in \u201cno excuses\u201d charter schools such as Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP), but affluent and white students tend to have certified and experienced teachers?<\/p>\n

Why are\u00a0charter schools, which often segregate students by race and class<\/a>, expanding, while\u00a0public schools also grow increasingly segregated<\/a>\u2013and why are both conditions essentially ignored?<\/p>\n

The answers lie somewhere in the blinding power of the stereotype spotlight focused on people and children living and learning in poverty.<\/p>\n

Consider Esther J. Cepeda\u2019s\u00a0\u201cOvercoming generational poverty\u201d<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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Teachers in low-income school districts often get specialized training about the culture of poverty in order to better understand their students\u2019 lives and take those challenges into account in the classroom. As a high school teacher, I was trained in Ruby K. Payne\u2019s\u00a0\u201cA Framework for Understanding Poverty.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

Payne has a 20-item list of the characteristics of generational poverty, which includes constant high levels of background noise, the overvaluation of entertainment as a respite from the exertions of survival, a strong belief in destiny or fate because choices are in low supply, and polarized thinking in which options are hardly ever examined (again, because so few tend to be available).<\/p>\n

Also pervasive in the culture of poverty is the sense that time isn\u2019t for measuring, that it occurs only in the present, and that the future exists only as a word.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Cepeda, first, carelessly* honors the Payne \u201cframework,\u201d\u00a0despite a significant and growing body of scholarship that has rejected Payne\u2019s worksheets and workshops<\/a>\u00a0as the worst possible examples of deficit perspectives built on stereotypes, and not credible and nuanced evidence about class or race.<\/p>\n

Payne, having no formal expertise in poverty, class, or race<\/a>\u00a0has admitted she based her work initially on her husband having grown up poor. In its genesis, Payne\u2019s work is at best anecdotal.<\/p>\n

But the \u201cframework\u201d also perpetuates and speaks to corrosive stereotypes about class and race. For example, Payne presents her clients (generating a tremendous amount of revenue for her through the self-published workbooks and workshops offered across the US) with what she claims are foundational conditions about people in poverty that explain why children living in poverty struggle in schools: According to Payne, people in poverty know how to bail someone out of jail, how to acquire handguns, and how to gather resources from trash and recycling bins.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s imagine for a moment a similar \u201cframework\u201d for affluence**. You may be from wealth if:<\/p>\n