Another Payne on the Path to Justice

Class is the tow rope that pulls oppression. Its aching, twisting stretch for respectability churns the undertow that drowns equality and erodes courage.

This high-gauge lash is dragging through Iowa City this weekend (January 27, 2007) in a workshop at the HACAP center on Waterfront Dr. called, "Bridges out of Poverty." The workshop is sponsored by the Iowa City Housing Authority and is based on the work of Ruby Payne and her book, A Framework for Understanding Poverty.

Payne's skill at self-promotion has been a convenient fit for educators eager for a quick fix in dealing with poverty, and her popularity has rapidly surged with little or no honest investigation of her competence. In fairness, it is flashes a beacon of hope to those who sincerely seek educational equality for their students from low-income families. Confidence in Payne's methods, like Payne's thesis, is based on collegial gossip and unsubstantiated and rather rare anecdotes of success.

The fundamental problem with Payne's thesis is that she doesn't know anything about poverty, let alone the culture of poverty, either through direct experience or scholarly research.

Anita Perna Bohn, an assistant professor at Illinois State University, examined Payne's scholarship and discovered that her work didn't meet any of the academic standards of research. I.e. There is no documentation that Payne has ever been a serious scholar of poverty or the impoverished either through academic or self-education. The "findings" in her self-published book are not verifiable, reproducible or valid. Bohn goes on to say that Payne's methods are not only incompetent but "downright dangerous" and states:

"On my first read-through of the [Payne's] "rules" I didn't know whether to laugh at the sheer stupidity of some of them or to rage at the offensive stereotyping of people in poverty and the thinly veiled bigotry reflected in others. I am still hard pressed to understand why ideas like this have made Payne the hottest speaker/trainer on poverty on the public school circuit today. One thing is certain, though: Ruby Payne has flown under the radar far too long. It's time for teachers and administrators to take a critical look at her immensely popular message."

In fact, there's scant evidence that Payne has ever read a book about poverty, other than her own.

Her bibliography consists entirely of authors with a right-wing, conservative, and economically laissez faire perspective on issues of which only a few are even vaguely related to poverty. She has no reference to any of the scholarly titans in the field like, Shirley Bryce Heath, Jonathan Kozol, Annette Lareau, and J.U. Ogbu. The bibliograhpy does include several books by Thomas Sowell, who has written position papers against a minimum wage, affirmative action, the liberal media bias, universal health care, and same sex marriage.

Payne shares these political views and seeks to advance them in her work. She is a public proponent of "No Child Left Behind," and cites Fox News as the authority for her statistics.

It's not only that Payne is a white, affluent, woman with no direct experience of poverty; she regurgitates and reinforces the most vicious stereotypes of those who live in poverty. Payne contends that people in poverty never plan, are slothful and undisciplined, talk funny, and don't care about their children.

Payne's theory is far from new and basically an unimaginative rehashing of the bigotry that blames poverty on those who are poor. She maintains that if "you people" would learn to talk, walk, and dress like "us," you'd be fine. (Apparently she's unaware of the millions of those with Ph.D.s and other advanced academic credentials working the same low-paying jobs as the working poor.)

This bias is outlined in the flyer distributed for the Iowa City workshop. The flyer states:

"You will be able to…

"▪ Explain how economic realities and living in an economic class system affect patterns of living and decision-making [Low income people are on to this.]

"▪ Describe and teach the hiden rules of middle-class [These rules are hardly hidden and are basically the problem.]

"▪ Understand the various language registers [It's okay to look down on you if I think you talk funny.]

"▪ Understand how to use discipline to bring about positive change [Working two to three jobs to survive doesn't require sophisticated discipline?]"

The flaws in these teachings isn't only that they assume that most low-income people don't know these things already, they deny that it is, in fact, middle-class and affluent America that has a whole lot to learn from the low-income people about discipline, planning, and cultural linguistics.

One particularly perverse tactic used by Payne is to make fun of how the underclass tells a story. Payne insists that a story must have a succinct beginning, middle, and an end without tangents or colorful illustration. This exposes Payne's own aversion to knowing anymore than she wants to know and lets the dominant culture that desperately needs some of this information off the hook for their own class bigotry. Fortunately Payne's limitation here hasn't had more social acceptance, yet, or the entire body of our most beautiful and powerful creative literature would be erased.

Payne denies the interlocking connections between class and race and gender. This has led to a teaching manual specifically addressing the inherent racism in Payne's approach. In An African Centered Response to Ruby Payne’s Poverty Theory, by educational consultant, Jawanza Kunjufu, Dr. Kunjufu asserts that "to provide an adequate education to students in poor communities requires teaching students how to eliminate poverty" rather than meaningless middle-class mimicry. The case he makes is solid and has led to several educational consultantships to debunk and/or clean up after Payne's work.

A peer review of Payne's book, "Savage Unrealities" by Paul Gorski (an assistant professor in the graduate school of education at Hamline University and founder of EdChange.org) refers to Payne's standpoint as "horrifying."

"Payne argues that her work is not about race but about class. … why does she paint such racist portraits of the African-American and Latino families in her scenarios? Payne identifies violent tendencies, whether in the form of gang violence or child abuse, in three of the four families of color depicted in the vignettes, but not in any of the three white families. Each of the families of color, but only one of three white families, features at least one unemployed or sporadically employed working-age adult. Whereas two of the three white children have at least one stable caretaker, three of the four children of color — Otis, who is beaten by his mother; Opie, who is left in the care of her "senile" grandmother; and Juan, who is being raised by his gang-leader, drug-dealer uncle — appear to have none."

Ruby Payne's workshop is not driven by informed educational practice but by a desire to foster a conservative economic agenda. Given some (proportionately few) people of color adopt conservative social and economic philosophies, it is safe to assume that the African Americans and Latinos that Payne has recruited for her cause come from those philosophical ranks.

I did watch a recording of this workshop that was presented last year and found the program to be completely consistent with the fears and objections of Payne's critics.

This column is not an indictment. Well meaning people can be misinformed and otherwise misled. It is a plea for more caution and thoroughness before we subject people to things that may do more harm than good. Our helping agencies should not be exploited to advance a narrow political agenda.

Please write or call the Iowa City Authority and the Iowa City Council today and ask them to

▪ review this program and disband this workshop.

▪ investigate and ask for a verifiable track record from the Bridges Out of Poverty Systems Change Team in Polk County along with the credentials of its trainers and leaders.

▪ consider a healing presentation by a reputable educational organization that works with race and poverty.

Contacts:

Mary Copper, Iowa City Housing Authority Self-Sufficiency Programs coordinator
Mary-Copper@iowa-city.org
319-887-6061

City Council of Iowa City

To contact the entire City Council of Iowa City
Council Members
410 E. Washington Street
Iowa City, IA 52240.
council@iowa-city.org

Members must be phoned individually.

To contact city councilors individually

Ross Wilburn, mayor
ross-wilburn@iowa-city.org
(319) 358-6374

Regenia Bailey, mayor pro-tem
regenia-bailey@iowa-city.org
(319) 351-2068

Amy Correia
amy-correia@iowa-city.org
(319) 887-3578

Connie Champion
No individual email address
Res: (319) 337-6608
Bus: (319) 338-2210

Robert Elliot
No individual email address
(319) 351-4056

Mike O'Donnell
No individual email address
Res: (319) 354-8071

Dee Vanderhoef
dee-vanderhoef@iowa-city.org
Res: (319) 351-6872

Related Links

Savage Unrealities by Paul Gorski
http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/21_02/sava212.shtml

A Framework for Understanding Ruby Payne by Anita Bohn
http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/21_02/fram212.shtml

Ruby Payne's bibliography
http://www.ncacasi.org/enews/articles_feb06/sch_accred_class_issues.pdf