Reshaping the Rhetoric: The Nexus of Violence, Poverty, and Minority Status in the Lives of Women and Children in the United States

• NCJ Number: 167059
• Journal: Georgetown Journal on Fighting Poverty Volume: 3 Issue: 1 Dated: (Fall 1995) Pages: 17-23
• Author(s): A Browne
• Date Published: 1995
• Length: 7 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Issue Overview
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: Paper presented at "A Leadership Summit: The Link Between Violence and Poverty in the Lives of Women and Their Children," held April 28, 1995, at the Georgetown University Law Center, Washington, D.C.

Annotation

This overview of the nexus of violence, poverty, and minority status in the lives of women and children in the United States includes a critique of current national policies and how they impact this nexus.

Abstract

Although the growing research on family and intimate violence now spans two decades, almost no studies have been done on the prevalence of violence in the lives of women and children living in poverty or on the ways in which poverty, oppression, and social policies contribute to and maintain the prevalence of violence in their lives. As a group, ethnically diverse women and women living in poverty are at especially high risk of all types of violence inside and outside the home. Assumptions about the prevalence of violence among some minority populations may, in themselves, work against prevention; for example, beliefs that African-Americans are "just violent people" affects the responsiveness of formal help sources, including how victims and perpetrators are treated by the police, how seriously partner assault or assaults against children are viewed, how victims are counseled, how medical and social service personnel treat and refer both victims and perpetrators, and the proportion of early interventions and other resources devoted to addressing violence within African-American communities. Also, immigrant status and little knowledge of the English language are critical factors in the responses of some minority women to the dangers they face. Cultural values also may suppress help-seeking by ethnically diverse women. National rhetoric associated with policy development in the United States today does not show a valuing of children, of women, of the impoverished, of single mothers, or of minorities. Over the past two decades, national concerns about poverty have consistently been overshadowed by our preoccupation with punishing those whose behavior bothers or threatens us. Without funding for education, job training, child care, transportation, and the generation of an expanded job base, "workfare" and benefit "term limits" cannot work. Current policy suggestions promise to force even more families and individuals below normal subsistence levels, further nurturing violence in American society. 53 notes