To Be a Homeless Man in Portland An Ethnographic Approach to Understanding their Experience of Prejudice

This paper analyzes the intolerance experienced by homeless men in Portland by describing and ethnographically interpreting their communication in that regard. The study examines what poverty looks like in America, and then uses established theories to explain the nature of prejudice and intolerance. This study explicitly sought participants’ perspectives by interviewing a particular subset of people who were living homeless in Portland, Oregon at the time of data collection. Using ethnographic methods and taxonomic analysis, this study discovered three key themes in these men’s communication code having to do with experiencing prejudice: understanding labeling, the system, and interactions. These focused findings provide new insights about how some homeless men in Portland experience prejudice across the barrier of privilege. ETHNOGRAPHY OF HOMELESS MEN IN PORTLAND 3 To Be a Homeless Man in Portland An Ethnographic Approach to Understanding their Experience of Prejudice Having grown up in an upper-middle class family in an Eastern Washington suburb, I had minimal exposure to any homeless population for most of my life prior to university. All of my friends were of similar socioeconomic status and I rarely ventured into the poor parts of town. Whenever my family and I would go into the city I would be sure to avoid eye contact with anyone who looked suspicious. This attitude of avoidance and fear stayed with me until a few years ago. Upon moving to Portland in 2009, the complexity of poverty started to makes its way into my thoughts and concerns. It is nearly impossible to live in a major American city without interacting with the homeless population. Walking around Portland's Chinatown in the early morning, one will likely find someone asleep on every doorstep. For the last year I have been volunteering at a non-profit organization that works to help alleviate poverty. Through this organization I have gotten to know men and women who spend their nights on the streets. For myself, a barrier of social class has been broken. Yet the barrier between the haves and the havenots remains generally strong. This divide between people, however, is not purely economic. It manifests itself in the attitudes, stereotypes, and assumptions we make of others. Sociologists, politicians, and academics across the board have sought to explain the prejudice that people feel towards one another. Yet in regards to the barriers surrounding social class, a key voice has been missing: the voice of the homeless. This study first conducts a literature review to see what poverty looks like in America. It then describes several theories that explain why prejudice and intolerance exist. By tying these understandings together, one can better comprehend how prejudice is connected to societies’ treatment of the homeless population. This treatment often stems from an idea called the Culture ETHNOGRAPHY OF HOMELESS MEN IN PORTLAND 4 of Poverty as well as from messages spread through the media. A key to this understanding is the additional perspective of people who actually live on the streets. If a full analysis of the intolerance homeless men experience is to be achieved, one must look at more than the findings provided by academics. It is also vital to consider the firsthand accounts of people who live in poverty. Through these combined lenses this paper answers, how do homeless men in Portland experience prejudice from more privileged people? Literature Review Homelessness in America The average American falls asleep with a roof over their head and food in their stomach. However for a growing portion of the population, this luxury of warmth and stability is out of reach. In 2009 Oregon was said to have the highest proportion of homeless people in the nation. In Portland alone there are an estimated 1,700 people sleeping outside and 1,000 more sleeping in shelters, low-rent, or subsidized motels every night (Neves 2011). Even more alarming, it is estimated that the rate of poverty in the United States is increasing twice as fast as the population growth (Mantsios 1998). Social discourse often portrays the United States as a classless society, yet the divide between the rich and the poor has actually grown wider (Allen 2011). In fact the U.S. has the most unequally distributed wealth and income in the industrialized world. About 34.2% of all people are classified as living in poverty at least two months out of the year, while the top 1 percent of American families are taking in more of the nation's income than at any other time since the 1920s (Jilani 2011). With this growing disparity in income, poverty has been shown to dramatically impact the lives of the middle and upper class as well. By maintaining a reserve population of unemployed and underemployed who are anxious for any job at any wage, poverty has a dampening effect on wages in general (Mantsios 1998). It creates systems where ETHNOGRAPHY OF HOMELESS MEN IN PORTLAND 5 people are easily taken advantage of. Therefore homelessness is to be understood as not solely a problem for individuals or a secluded group, but also for society as a whole. How prejudice Exists Prejudice is defined as a negative attitude toward a cultural group, based on little or no experience with them; it may arise from tensions between groups, negative past contacts, status differences, perceived threats, and the need to see one's own group as more positive than others (Baldwin 1998). Many theories help explain human intolerance. In his article "Tolerance/Intolerance, A multidisciplinary view of prejudice", Baldwin (1998) explained some of the perspectives that may be at the root of prejudice. From the evolutionary to the group, individual, and message levels, each approach offers something of value to the conversation. For example, for some evolutionary theorists the strongest subconscious human striving is for the propagation of the species or group (Baldwin 1998). Self-propagation supposedly occurs through fear of strangers, conforming enforcement, anti-predator aggression, or enforcement of group solidarity (Baldwin 1998). Van der Dennen (1987) explained intolerance as, "Fear of the stranger and what the stranger incorporates: the strange, the unknown, the out-of-control, the potential chaos, the potential evil, the potential impurity, contamination and pollution, the potential threat and danger" (Baldwin 1998, p. 43). Through this fear, prejudice persists. Another approach looks at Group-Level reasons for intolerance. This approach typically focuses on the power relations involved that preserve prejudice. According to this theory, even if we accept that fear and contempt are at the root of all intolerance, these are influenced by the presence of competing goals. Such goals often concern allocation of resources among groups. Aronson (1992) emphasizes political and economic competition. According to this view, "Given that resources are limited, the dominant group might attempt to exploit a minority group in order ETHNOGRAPHY OF HOMELESS MEN IN PORTLAND 6 to gain some material advantage" (Baldwin 1998, p. 112). At its' core this argument has Marxist tendencies. Marxist arguments state that the owners of production do what they must in order to keep control of production (Baldwin 1998). Therefore intolerance is truly just an issue of class conflict, resources, and a fight over power. Lastly, prejudice can be understood through Message-Based approaches. Rhetorical studies look at messages as texts, broadly defined to include interpersonal messages, media messages, and so on (Baldwin 1998). Individuals or groups use terms to interpret the behaviors and realities of others. For example, if one refers to people with names that belittle them or describe their characteristics and behaviors negatively, these words will filter and shape the way society views them (Baldwin 1998). Powerful and moldable, words are given meaning by their placement in the sets of ideas in which they are discussed, but groups or individuals can challenge those meanings and offer messages and texts that socially redefine the terms in less oppressive ways (Baldwin 1998). Therefore while prejudice can be influenced by rhetoric, it can also be contested. For some intolerance is seen as evolutionary, for others it is institutional and defined by power relations. Or perhaps it exists at an individual level, in our minds, behaviors, and the words we use. In order to gain a full understanding on the matter, one must consider the various perspectives. The Culture of Poverty The Culture of Poverty can largely explain the intolerance experienced by the homeless population. The Culture of Poverty is the idea that poor people share more or less monolithic and predictable beliefs, values, and behaviors (Gorski 2008). Despite the fact that the available evidence has not supported it, this concept has made its way into mainstream thinking as unquestioned fact. It is a kind of deficit theory, suggesting that poor people are poor because of ETHNOGRAPHY OF HOMELESS MEN IN PORTLAND 7 their own moral and intellectual deficiencies (Gorski 2008). To do so it draws on wellestablished stereotypes, such as that poor people are drunks, druggies, or lazy, and it ignores systemic conditions, such as inequitable access to high-quality schooling, that actually support the cycle of poverty (Gorski 2008). One way this intolerance manifests itself is in the language people sometimes use to describe homeless persons: "hoboes", "bums", "drunks" "crazy" and "druggies", and the stereotypes that result because of them. The fact that many people who are homeless may suffer from alcoholism and drug addiction does not entirely account for the stigmatization they receive because of it. One myth connected to the Culture of Poverty is that all poor people abuse drugs and alcohol. Many people use this excuse to blame them for their poverty. This kind of attitude creates an idea called "th