Biased against the homeless? Homeless school children in the USA.
Reading up on the subject of homeless school children was heart wrenching for many reasons. The most difficult part is coping with the idea that our society is willing to turn a blind eye and further marginalize the people who are already living on the margins of society. The reality is that we as a society are unwilling to help those who are “less fortunate” even if those people happen to be small children. Instead we create laws which criminalize the people who are already suffering.
The state of Michigan has an enormous number of homeless school children, there are more than 36,000.
The number of children who are facing homelessness is especially high in small school districts in Michigan, some districts have numbers as high as one in four.In Oregon where I live there were 23,000 homeless school children in 2016/2017 school year.
The homeless population in New York City is especially saddening, there are more than 111,000 children in temporary housing. Bare in mind that these numbers do not reflect the number of infants, toddlers and preschool children living outside, and according to the Department of Health and Human Services the first five years of life is when people are most likely to experience homelessness.
Children who become homeless are bound to have a difficult time in school for a variety of reasons, whether it’s from a lack of sleep, inadequate food, or a lack of resources the children who end up homeless have the deck stacked against them in a society built on the premise of property ownership.
Homeless youth are more likely to be sex trafficked and raped. They face increased exposure to hard drugs and the diseases that accompany them.Also because of bias when a person becomes homeless they are viewed as less than human, this leads to all manners of mistreatment. Homeless people have a more difficult time getting jobs or getting approved to rent properties. Homeless people are subject to sub par medical care, they are dumped by hospitals rather than treated by them. Going to a hospital for help when you are homeless can even lead to arrest, not because of any crime, rather because of a bias known as the stereotype content model, which has found that people who are homeless are viewed as objects, not even viewed as human.
The state of Oregon spent over three million dollars to destroy the “homes” of the homeless in the past five years. Attacking the poor is easy, they often don’t have legal representation and the ruling class of wealthy people in the USA will actually reward you for harming the lives of the homeless.
The media helps in this effort by dehumanizing the homeless and characterizing our possessions as waste, or trash, or even a bio-hazard. Language plays a huge roll in dehumanizing the homeless, this subtle manipulation is broadly used in media, awareness of language as a form of biasing the public is largely ignored by the viewing public. For instance referring to a caravan of asylum seekers as a migrant invasion.
I had meant to make this into a very long post, but the emotional weight of researching this topic has very much halted me.
I was inspired to write this post by the social experiment that showed how differently people treat a homeless child in Sweden when compared to the treatment of a homeless child in the USA. People are so calloused and uncaring in the USA that they were willing to walk past a cold and shivering child who had no coat on, they did this for hours. Although I couldn’t find the video I was thinking of this one is very much on point for this blog, it shows how bias affects people’s willingness to help others.The long and short for me is that people have a choice where our treatment of the homeless is concerned, and it’s very important to recognize how the media uses language to dehumanize the homeless.
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People seldom think of the homeless children when the word homeless is mentioned. It should be the first thing that they think of when they hear it instead.
Good of you to point this out and the numbers are really eye opening or at least should be, you won't see it on the 10:00 news though.
If you see this on the news it will be in connection with either child protective services taking children or to parents endangering children, and not about how can we help.
Writing this post I am reminded of that one Will Smith movie where he is homeless with his son and they are sleeping in a bathroom in the subway, someone tries to come in, and he tells his son it's a dinosaur. That was an eye opening movie, I often forget that my childhood included time being homeless, my mother took that good of care of us.
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I am not going to say I am innocent and I think very few are when it comes to the manners in which we treat or refer to homeless people. I think I have had my fair share of dealings with people who ended up homeless by their own addiction and other methods. I have learnt and it might still be wrong but an opinion is required that it is as with most things in life to base that opinion on interaction. When it comes to the children it is sickening to think that it is even allowed. I think that they should focus 100% on providing havens for them , the grown ups can take care of themselves if it is such a situation but first and foremost good 'ol children first. Need space? How about empty a few prisons, death sentence wholesale.
!tipuvote 0.1
Really hard not to downvote that comment based on the final line. \n\nLife, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are not only rights for those who are housed, in fact they are not exclusively rights of citizens of the USA. There are certain rights that are considered universal, declaring that the homeless should be incarcerated or killed is a perfect example of dehumanization carried to it's ultimate end. Many of the homeless in the USA are on the streets because of medical bills, they aren't criminals or addicts, they simply didn't have the cash to afford healthcare. To condemn them to death for being bankrupted by the corrupt capitalist system is the ultimate goal of the dehumanization process. It seems to have worked on you @penderis, unless I misread your comment...
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:) I took care of your flag dilemma. I understand what you are saying.
Not so sure there is an unless, if I take dehumanization as my single focus maybe like you read my comment the way you wished I had written it then I have no issue with dehumanizing but my criteria will be and always has been to apply that logically. In the current state of the world and just my general outlook on humanity, hint also what my last line in-fact refers to, would be to apply such processes to offenders more specifically violent offenders.
The amount of resources used to accommodate "human rights" on people who are only able to use it when it benefits them is mindboggling. Dehumanize can also go another way, it can create an entity. We are well aware of the sheer control entities have, and they are well aware of the power that dehumanization has. Hence they fill prisons with humans, death row remains humane and children on the street... Well as you said dehumanize.
Just to be clear I agree, also never be concerned with downvoting me. Your opinion is yours, and thoughts are to be explored.
Those who are uncaring are seldom more caring just because someone is young. Though tbh I don't think that we should necessarily treat homeless children better simply because they are young. Rather we should try to help them all.
Though the young perhaps have more of a chance to get out of it. That actually proves that we should treat them all better, because we get nothing out of helping the eldest. It's simply humanitarian.
Of course, that lack of compassion doesn't just hurt the homeless. I've been walking home from the store before without a car, ended up getting heat stroke, and no one gave a damn. I ended up having to call a cab to drive me a few blocks. Had to keep calling back because I didn't have an address. The uncaring are turning us all into paranoid uncaring sociopaths through their constant gas lighting. Some homeless can be dangerous...but mostly because they cut funding to mental health. I suspect the majority are not dangerous or anything. They just reached a point in their life where they ended up without a home.
A responsible society would give them temporary lodging if they were nomadic, more permanent if they were not, and a job if they want it, as well as healthcare. That is literally what any tribe or community would do if a traveller came along. Why is it so hard when we're such a larger group?
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