The Cincinnati Beacon - When Personal Responsibility Becomes Abusive

Monday, September 08, 2008

When Personal Responsibility Becomes Abusive

Photo courtesy of here.

Guest article by Thomas A. Dutton, Miami University Center for Community Engagement

Exactly when did the American mind become comfortable with the notion that punishment solves deep social problems? I suppose we should have seen this coming that, as U.S. society becomes not just a society with prisons but a veritable prison society, a kind of incarcerative logic would ooze into the social consciousness brandishing punishment—wielded as a stick to force behavioral change and exact personal responsibility—as social policy.

Case in point is the article in the Cincinnati Enquirer (August 5, 2008) as well as the paper’s lead editorial (August 8) urging removal of the Drop Inn Center from the Washington Park area as the “ultimate” solution: “Ultimately, with a new School for Creative and Performing Arts being built and other major changes nearby, the solution must include moving the Center, coupled with more comprehensive services to homeless citizens, as City Council member Roxanne Qualls has been advocating. Anything less is a short-term, feel-good solution.” Calling for the Drop Inn Center’s removal comes as no surprise as the Enquirer has been playing this broken record forever.

The Drop Inn Center is well aware of the pressure bearing down upon it as changes occur in the neighborhood. Even though most of this pressure is likely motivated by stereotypes and ignorance about what the Center really does, the Center is implementing policy and even costly changes to its physical plant in response. One such policy is referred to by the Enquirer as the “three-strikes-and-you’re out rule for residents who get into trouble.” As part of the “deal,” Cincinnati police will compile a monthly list of arrests of people within 500 feet of the Center (virtually all of Washington Park), which will then be reviewed by the Center to see who should receive a warning. If shelter residents don’t change their behavior, they can be kicked out. “The Drop Inn Center must hold its clients to higher standards of behavior,” says the editorial.

The language here is straight up punitive. And worse, the assumptions lurking behind that language stem from the same malevolent sources that in other contexts take form as racism, or sexism, or xenophobia, or chauvinism, or you name it. The Enquirer’s problem is that it judges the homeless as de facto bad neighbors in Over-the-Rhine, not because of their behavior, but because of their status.

That the Enquirer insists in substituting status over character is pernicious on its own terms, but the issue worsens when we look at the facts. In his report to the City Council Committee on Health, Environment, and Education (August 4, 2008), Executive Director of the Drop Inn Center Pat Clifford said, “Out of the 163 citations in the month of July [given out to people in Washington Park], only 15% or 24 were from people who stayed at the Drop Inn Center during that period.” Even in light of these facts, the Enquirer chooses ignorance as its strength.

The Center’s goal is not to kick people out—doing that would be just internalizing the oppressive discourse—but to actually reach out to people more directly to get them the help and resources they need in light of a stagnating economy closing off job and housing opportunities. We should be praising the Drop Inn Center in its efforts to approach the discarded with dignity rather than with the penalizing and castigatory logic that pervades the Enquirer and the social contract these days.

We should not be fooled by what’s really at work here. Underlying both the three-strikes deal and the call for the Center’s removal from the neighborhood is a discourse with a long history that has come to frame our conventional understanding about what urban poverty is and how it should be addressed. That understanding? That poverty is simply a behavioral problem, and if homeless individuals and the poverty-stricken more generally were to make the right choices to exercise personal responsibility, all would be solved. Poverty, concentrated and otherwise, is merely an individual, private matter in this view. Its solution rests with people changing their behavior by simply making better choices in their lives.

The dominance and persistence of this discourse should not be surprising. It’s been perfected through the last thirty some-odd years as part of the world’s shift in politics and economics, which many the world over now refer to as neoliberalism. Harking back to the classic liberalism of Adam Smith and more recently to the ideas of Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, neoliberalism is a fusion of ideology, economic practices, and political laws that reject the Keynesian welfare state in favor of an unbridled marketplace. Resulting in a kind of all-encompassing governmentality, neoliberalism was ushered into place during the last years of the Carter administration, amplified and formalized by Reagan (and Thatcher), and exalts in near-Gospel status today. For a very long time now we have been told:

-that so-called free markets are the magic elixir to bring forth not just an equality of opportunity for everyone, but prosperity as well;

-that the role of cities and states is to provide a good business climate for the unfettered and corporate-dominated economy;

-that the privatization of public assets and the deregulation of private operations are the surest means to advance the public good;

-that with the institution of corporate welfare, we can eliminate social welfare.

The consequences of all these years of neoliberal policy has been devastating, resulting in:

-massive inequality and misery on both the national and world scales;

-the transition from a production economy to a service economy in the U.S. has effected a massive redistribution of wealth upward as well as unemployment and underemployment downward for the middle class and below;

-incarceration rates have gone off the charts, with the U.S. becoming now the most incarcerated nation in the world;

-the U.S. now doesn’t even make the top 40 in life expectancy, and infant mortality rates within the black inner city of Cincinnati have reached as high as 23 deaths per 1000.

The list could go on.

What accounts for this huge disparity between the neoliberal reality and its professed goals of prosperity for all? Why do so many people subscribe to the neoliberal line?

Never underestimate the power of ideology. On a popular level, neoliberal ideology taps into the founding principles of the American experiment of individual freedom, liberty, and personal responsibility, based upon free markets and private enterprise. The principles run deep, and apparently any contemporary encumbrances in material life that prove how these principles are actually being undermined are having little effect in shifting that ideology. What should be a glaring contradiction smoothes out under the ideological gloss.

Which brings me back to the discourse accentuating behavioral change and personal responsibility underlying the Drop Inn Center’s future. It’s a travesty really. Is personal responsibility all we have as a societal answer to the structural realities of homelessness and poverty? How is it that thirty-five years of political-economic and governmental shifts that have produced jobless ghettos, underemployment elsewhere, cuts and rollbacks in the social safety net, and wealth inequality escape notice as causes of all this mess? Is it even within the bounds of thinkable thought today for citizens to believe they can make claims on the state?

And what are the answers bandied about to address these concerns?

One answer comes from the private marketeer types, who in their unshaken belief in the ideology of the market, feel that Over-the-Rhine will be saved simply by adding more market-rate everything—housing, commercial development, cultural activities. This is just like the “add-and-stir” logic that women and people of color have come to realize is no answer to addressing glass ceilings and all the subtle yet effective sexisms and racisms that keep people from overcoming workplace inequities. The market in Over-the-Rhine will likely succeed and a certain class of people will be well served. But what about those who have fallen below the reach of the market? Mixing in benefits for wealthier populations offers little for those who cannot afford such benefits.

Another answer comes from the advocates for behavior modification and personal responsibility. This is nothing more than the age-old, blame-the-victim of abuse ideology but only up to date. Now in addition to welfare queens, the undeserving poor, and welfare dependents generally, we can add to the list whole communities of color as well as the homeless, and portray them as crime-ridden and inhabiting a culture of poverty where the rules of normalcy no longer apply. The instant criminalization of black youth here is especially egregious.

We are in trouble. And those troubles will get worse. The neoliberal end-game of inequality plays out all too starkly in Over-the-Rhine: gentrification and calls to spank or remove the homeless; upscale commercial development and not enough neighborhood serving businesses for poorer residents; and two dog runs planned for Washington Park and no place for kids to swim and dive in a deep water pool.

As the impoverishment deepens and polarization thusly widens, we already can see what’s in store for urban policy. Indian theorist Arjun Appadurai calls it “econocide,” by which he means “the worldwide tendency to arrange the disappearance of the losers in the great drama of globalization.” It’s a powerful concept, wondering what the world will do with a “surplus humanity” that will never approach a decent standard of living in light of the global political-economic structures producing inequality. The U.S. is not off the hook here. As Ethel Long-Scott, board member of BlackCommentor.com, explains, “the fundamentally inhumane contradiction of the American economy is that it doesn’t need American workers anymore—of any color.” The question becomes: what to do with this surplus population?

For Long-Scott, the answer she fears is the one the U.S. is pursuing: “We are becoming more of a police state as this impoverished low-wage and no-wage class is seen as potentially explosive and must be held in check…Managing and controlling the new class of dispossessed is the new paradigm of policing and incarceration.”

A perfect example of econocide though this is, it is not just a paradigm for policing.

Econocide is what passes for urban policy these days. Whether by incarceration, active ignoring, criminalization, or outright removal, arranging disappearances is the game plan for the Drop Inn Center and Over-the-Rhine more generally. This is clearly evident in the two answers above. Displacing the new class of undesirables—homeless, poor white and black people—is the Enquirer’s ultimate answer (and the newspaper does not speak for itself). This is the same logic that historically produced reservations, race ghettos, and concentration camps. In Over-the-Rhine today this means more police, more surveillance, more sweeps, and now, apparently, the issuing of more tickets in Washington Park in order to increase the strikeout record at the Drop.

At a time when the Drop Inn Center has not seen its summer numbers decline from their usual high in winter, and as our nation becomes more and more marked by hyper-segregation, racial profiling, a corporate wealth-fare state with runaway jobs, accompanied by material inequity and voter apathy, the turn to econocide and an incarcerative logic is no answer to the kinds of conditions we need for a democratic realm that is inclusive. In fact, the opposite is the more likely result: a widespread culture of fear and loathing that only serves to produce stereotypes and homogeneity—a rejection of those not like you and those considered less-than. We must do better.

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anon says:
08 Sep 2008 at 11:19 pm | #

I don’t think I’m near smart enough to have an opinion worth anything on this topic. But, Saturday, I was doing some community outreach to poor families. For the first time in a long time I was going door to door again in a private subsidized housing community.

It was disgusting.

I could smell the poverty. I had forgotten what that smells like. Old, decaying, rotting, dirty - filthy dirty deep down in, like old urine, musky, moldy… I forgot people, kids, live like this every day. And we taxpayers are paying for it.

I’m sorry, but poverty is ugly and disgusting. People have real hard problems digging themselves out of it. I’m afraid that the older I get - the more help I think they need, the less I think everyone else should have to look at it, and the more we have the right to expect them to work with us to help them dig themselves out.

I don’t think I want to “tolerate” it anymore. If they have a mental health or drug/alcohol issue so severe that they are homeless - put them in an institution, control their behavior and yes, their lives. Until they have reached some objectives that will allow them to transition back into society as functioning. And functioning means able to maintain housing - with support systems, of course.

This society of tolerance just isn’t working and no, I don’t want to look at it anymore.

says:
09 Sep 2008 at 01:03 am | #

Let’s bypass all the high-flown ideological rhetoric and get right to the real problem. The Drop-in Center is presently in OTR because that’s where the people are who need those services. OTR is presntly being gentrified, and soon the Drop-in Center’s customers will be somewhere else.

Nobody’s purposely picking on the poor. The city’s a little strapped right now and needs to attract taxpayers so they can continue providing social services. OTR happens to have the right combination of cheap real estate and desireable location to be attractive to people who pay.

Notice that neither option involves abandoning our responsibility to care for our brethren in need.

Preserving the slum hinders the city’s economic development, threatening future charity. Cutting off our head to save our arm just doesn’t make sense. Therefore the Drop-in Center has to go. We can be reactive, and move it after their customers have gone. Or we can be proactive and move it right along with them to avoid disruptions in service. The choice is obvious.

Sorry if that seems hopelessly capitalistic, but the poor are darned expensive and somebody has to pay the bills.

JFD says:
09 Sep 2008 at 08:21 am | #

Let me see if I can put Mr Dutton’s position a little more succintly. If your contribution to society amounts to nothing more than negatives, (petty crime, sometimes more serious violent crime, vagrancy, panhandling, public relief of bodily functions), it is reasonable to have the expectation, that urban society has an obligation, not only to condone this behavior, but subsidize it as well. Meanwhile, Mr Dutton and other suburbanites like him, urge us from their distant enclaves, to keep these issues in the urban core. The last thing he wants to affect his world, is the decentralization of poverty.

says:
09 Sep 2008 at 04:06 pm | #

Just can’t help but think that your entire point here is to decriminalize drugs…

Vera Z says:
09 Sep 2008 at 09:52 pm | #

To Mr. Dutton I say Amen! Amen ! Amen! Thank you. As one of the poor, (I’m 70 years old and on a fixed income, which automatically puts me below the poverty level.) I get really sick of being blamed for all of societies problems. Thank you for shedding some light on what is really going on in this country. I Hope to God there other people out there who actually understand what Mr. Dutton is trying to say, and will offer a more positive picture of who we, the poor really are. Most of us who are poor are basically good people who do not have access to many of the things you people, who have responded so far, (I’m trying to avoid the word idiots.) take for granted. Vera Z

Nathaniel Kaelin says:
09 Sep 2008 at 11:42 pm | #

There are only two choices. We can halt gentrification and preserve OTR as a slum with its smorgasbord of services for the less fortunate. Or we can migrate those services to where they’re convenient for the people who need them.
Notice that neither option involves abandoning our responsibility to care for our brethren in need.

Notice that neither option involves abandoning our responsibility to care for our brethren in need.

I diagree that this is an either/or situation. Over-the-Rhine can succeed with an economix mix; Over-the-Rhine is succeeding now with such a mix. Gentrification can continue simultaneously with further development of credible low-income housing models (ie. OTR Community Housing, St. Anthony Village, etc.). Displacing marginalized residents and services to scattered city neighborhoods will not create a more effective system to serve “our brethren in need.”

Vera Z says:
10 Sep 2008 at 06:15 am | #

Mark Miller says,

“Nobody’s purposely picking on the poor. The city’s a little strapped...”

If the city of Cincinnati is so hard up for money, where are they getting the millions of dollars to give to 3CDC and other Corporations whenever they ask?
If they are not “Purposely picking on the poor”, why are they giving CMHA permission to demolish a majority of their section 8 housing units around the city and allowing landlords to raise their rents so that the poor are forced from their homes? Vera Z

james says:
10 Sep 2008 at 09:18 am | #

A mix yes, but the DIC as it currently operates, no. OTR Community Housing and others are doing great work. The only real point of contention is the concentration and subsidy of the habits of people who drink and litter all day and sleep at night at the DIC.

says:
10 Sep 2008 at 02:12 pm | #

"There are only two choices. We can halt gentrification and preserve OTR as a slum with its smorgasbord of services for the less fortunate. Or we can migrate those services to where they’re convenient for the people who need them.”

1st: “We can halt...” - The market is not “we”, ("we is government"), and the market will not support a vibrant enconomic district with the present Washington Park population wandering the streets. If adult men are inconvienced or even worried about walking streets with the Washington Park population, no way it will become “Gentrified”.

2nd: “ Or we can migrate those services....”, meaning I take move the services and the people who use those services will migrate to that new location. (where do we want them...., 5 miles away/10 miles - which old industrial area of cincinnati turn of the centry warehouses neighborhood?

3rd: Rudy proved in NYC how to use police to deal with the Washington Park population. Arrest and Harrass them until they leave. That is a policy choice - the “we” of Cincinnati.

Vera Z says:
10 Sep 2008 at 04:28 pm | #

Mr. Tiller, Are you saying then - #3 - that we should use our police force to get rid of the poor people in OTR? Are you suggesting that we should become a “Police State” ? Are you suggesting that we should arrest and harass American citizens for being poor?
A few years ago I wrote a song I called “our Song” This is the second verse,

“As the homeless grow in number,
The rich grow richer still.
Our Grandmas and our Grandpas
Go all day without a meal.
Jobs are disappearing,
Our schools are in decline.
“Jails are what we need,” They say
“To keep the poor in line.”

Vera Z

says:
10 Sep 2008 at 08:18 pm | #

Thomas Dutton!

Thank you for the article. You are right on point. We were discussing Adam Smith earlier this evening at the Quatman Philosophy Table. What a coincidence.

We were also talking of the manner in which expressway are built The politicos have no problem in picking paths through low income communities because the poor can’t fight back. The Drop In Center is no different. They are at their peril in our society where the poor are undesirable in the eyes of the governments, which are slimy prostitutes that operate at the whim of the well to do.

The best rehabilitation efforts that will help the clients of the Drop In Center would be to provide classes in guerrilla warfare and teach its clients how to shoot sniper-style.

JFD says:
11 Sep 2008 at 11:21 am | #

Deiter
That’s a great idea, especially if you’re volunteering to be a target.

Vera Z says:
12 Sep 2008 at 03:40 am | #

I’m curious, What is the difference between Neoconservatism, which I tend to think of as Imperialistic Fascism; and Neoliberalism? They both seem to be using the same tactics to reach their goal/goals. Whatever their goals are. Are they both working to establish the, so called, “New World Order”? Vera Z

says:
12 Sep 2008 at 05:01 pm | #

I’ll echo everybody else who left a comment, this is a great article. The two worst things about Cincinnati are--The Cincinnati Enquirer and Joe Deters. Just today (9/12) the Enquirer ran a big article on individuals who receive Section 8 housing. Some of these folks relocated from OTR so the powers that be could “take over the neighborhood” (so to speak). According to the Enquirer the people in the burbs don’t want “those” people in their neighborhood. So where are those people going to go? Who cares if you’re WWW. White, wealthy and well-connected like Joe Deters. Joe Deters puts on a suit and tie and he walks around with the impunity stamp branded on his forehead. He hands out “impunity stamps” and get out of jail free cards to anybody whose WWW. Don’t get me wrong theirs nothing wrong with being WWW. And I’m all for personal responsibility whether it be picking up the garbage where you live or paying your debt to society if you’ve committed a crime. Still everyone should be treated equally. None of this double standard justice BS. None of this I’m a crook in a suit, and you’re a crook in a white t-shirt so I’m better than you. If it walks like a duck....it’s a Joe Deter’s duck.

Cincinnati needs to move forward under new leadership. Get rid of divisive politicians and the Prosecutor (Joe Deters). Let’s start fresh. Let’s all get on board to solutions.

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Monday, September 08, 2008