By Taja Lindley
Originally posted on the Strong Families blog
Know: these are lies.
In the U.S. we have been conditioned to work to survive, to get by, to pay bills, to stay afloat, living a day-to-day and paycheck-to-paycheck existence. We have been conditioned to work most of our lives so we can enjoy pleasurable activities in our free time, pre-determined holidays, limited vacation and, if we’re lucky, during retirement. The U.S. “reduces work to a travesty of necessities, a duty by which we earn bread or oblivion for ourselves and those we love.”
Listen closely: when policymakers, public figures and the media talk about the current status of the economy and high unemployment, the discussion revolves around jobs. As it should: people are looking for work. But when the narrative around jobs is unconcerned with how work connects to the passion, purpose, ambitions and talents of workers, our economy does a disservice to our humanity and our creativity. The conversation reinforces a narrative that implies that any job will do. What about purpose? What about passion? Yes: we’ve got to feed our families, we’ve got to keep roofs over our heads, and there are bills to be paid. Survival is a primary need.
But we are so much more than our basic needs. In a world of haves and have nots, with widening disparities in wealth and income, the travesty of our global economy makes pleasurable work challenging to access. An economy organized in this way serves only the elite and powerful, whereby the majority of workers are employed and/or exploited to fill the vision and pockets of those who are already in power.
In short: systemic inequality makes pleasurable work more accessible for some than others.
The war on drugs, fetal personhood, and the criminalization of pregnant women
The New York Times has a short documentary up exploring the construction of the “crack baby” epidemic – an epidemic that was largely built on racist media hype and flimsy science.
What was just a very preliminary observational study turned into a widespread social panic about “crack babies,” children who would supposedly suffer extreme physical and cognitive deficiencies as a direct result of the use of crack cocaine. Ultimately, this was found not to be the case at all – rather, other issues correlated with drug use (such as lack of access to healthy foods, for example) were the main culprit in the health complications these babies faced. But the story fed into the racialized narrative of the war on drugs, and because crack use was most prevalent in urban communities of color, the media, legislators, and the general public quickly demonized low-income mothers of color struggling with substance abuse. Legislators enacted some of the harshest penalties for low-level drug offenses for crack, and to this day there is a huge disparity between sentencing for crack vs. powder cocaine – a drug much more prevalent with wealthy white users. Though the Fair Sentencing Act reduced this disparity and eliminated the five-year mandatory minimum sentence for possession of crack in 2010, the fact that there is a disparity at all is indicative of the ways that class and race play out in the drug sentencing and the criminal justice system.
Today, the legacy of these policies remains. Recent studies reveal the ways that these narratives, along with anti-choice policies such as fetal personhood initiatives, have resulted in widespread arrests and forced interventions among pregnant women – disproportionately low-income women, women in the South, and black women. Drug use still largely remains in the public imagination as an issue to be treated with punishment rather than health care, and harm reduction policies are controversial despite clear clinical evidence of their success as public health initiatives.
Go take a look at the ten-minute documentary, and stay updated on the work of organizations like National Advocates for Pregnant Women, who are working on the issues faced by drug-addicted pregnant women.