Cognitive and Behavioral Distancing From the Poor

Bernice Lott
University of Rhode Island
The author argues that distancing is the dominant response
to poor people on the part of those who are not poor and
that distancing, separation, exclusion, and devaluing op-
erationally dene discrimination. Such responses, together
with stereotypes and prejudice, dene classism. The article
focuses on classism in the United States. Classism is ex-
amined in the context of theoretical propositions about the
moral exclusion of stigmatized others and is illustrated by
cognitive distancing, institutional distancing (in education,
housing, health care, legal assistance, politics, and public
policy), and interpersonal distancing. The adoption of the
Resolution on Poverty and Socioeconomic Status by the
American Psychological Association Council of Represen-
tatives in August 2000 is cited as an important step in the
direction of eliminating the invisibility of low-income per-
sons in psychological research and theory.
T
his article is about classism in the United States and
examines particularly responses to poor people and
poverty by those who are not poor. I propose that a
dominant response is that of distancing, that is, separation,
exclusion, devaluation, discounting, and designation as
other, and that this response can be identied in both
institutional and interpersonal contexts. In social psycho-
logical terms, distancing and denigrating responses opera-
tionally dene discrimination. These, together with stereo-
types (i.e., a set of beliefs about a group that are learned
early, widely shared, and socially validated) and prejudice
(i.e., negative attitudes) constitute classism.
My objective in this article is to encourage an exam-
ination of how psychologists and psychology collude with
others in maintaining classism. I hope this article, which
focuses on the general manifestations of classism in the
United States, can serve as a starting point for such an
examination. Illustrations of distancing responses to the
poor in institutional and interpersonal contexts, taken from
an interdisciplinary literature, are presented in the context
of relevant theoretical propositions to provide background
and encouragement for more specic discussions in psy-
chologys various academic, research, and clinical settings.
The work of researchers, teachers, and practitioners
will surely be enriched and increased in validity by knowl-
edge of the social class contexts of peoples lives. But
although social class distinctions in general have signicant
consequences for everyone, the focus here is on poor
peoples lives, because it is their treatment as other that has
the most widespread consequences for society as a whole.
Psychologists committed to social justice must carefully
document and analyze the barriers erected by classist bias
that maintain inequities and impede access to the resources
necessary for optimal health and welfare. Further, for psy-
chologists to be maximally effective in their theories, re-
search, and practice, such an examination needs to be
followed by serious discussion of the role they might play
in the reduction or elimination of classist discrimination.
The magnitude of economic disparities in the United
States has taken on crisis proportions. Other articles (Bul-
lock & Lott, 2001; Lott & Bullock, 2001b) have docu-
mented the dramatic and increasing inequity in economic
resources between the rich and the poor in the United
States. For example, the Center on Budget and Policy
Priorities (Shapiro, Greenstein, & Primus, 2001) reported
that between 1979 and 1997, the after-tax income of the
poorest fth of U.S. households decreased from $10,900 to
$10,800, while that of the top 1% of households increased
from $263,700 to $677,900. With respect to childhood
poverty, the latest Census Bureau gures are roughly the
same today as they were in 1979: Over 12 million chil-
drenone in sixlive in poverty. Thus, compared to the
rest of the industrialized world, this country remains at the
bottom of the heap (Sengupta, 2001, p. WK3). For fami-
lies of single working mothers, the poverty rate is 19.4%,
the same in 1999 as it was in 1995 (Single Mothers,
2001).
The American Psychological Association (APA) has
taken a bold rst step in recognizing the relationship of
such data to the work of psychologists by adopting the
Resolution on Poverty and Socioeconomic Status (APA,
2000). This well-referenced resolution ends with the prom-
ise of advocacy for research, education, training, and public
policy in the interest of low-income members of the na-
tional community. It is hoped that this resolution will make
a difference, but as Brown (1990) noted earlier, by gener-
ally accepting the assumption that U.S. society is classless,
psychologists in science and practice have made invisible
those who are not middle class. Reid (1993), too, has called
attention to psychologys exclusion and silencing of those
Editors note. Heather Bullock served as action editor for this article.
Authors note. Portions of this article were read at the National Multi-
cultural Conference and Summit II, Santa Barbara, California, on January
25, 2001, as part of the panel in the session entitled Social Class, Poverty,
and Afuence, and at a Psychology Department colloquium at the
University of California, Santa Cruz, on January 30, 2001.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Ber-
nice Lott, Department of Psychology, Woodward 10, University of Rhode
Island, Kingston, RI 02881. E-mail: blott@uri.edu
100 February 2002

American Psychologist
Copyright 2002 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. 0003-066X/02/$5.00
Vol. 57, No. 2, 100110 DOI: 10.1037//0003-066X.57.2.100
outside the White middle class and to its relative lack of
interest in lives different from our own (Reid, 1993, p.
134). A more recent search of the literature (Saris &
Johnston-Robledo, 2000) revealed again a dearth of liter-
ature on poor women (p. 235). When national attention
was nally given to violence against women in the United
States, an analysis by Richie (2000) suggested that public
sympathy for victims and survivors and a concern with
their needs were largely focused on those who were not
poor and not minorities of color. The White middle-class
woman consumed the greater proportion of attention in
the literature . . . she was featured in public awareness cam-
paigns, and she was represented by national leaders
(Richie, 2000, p. 1135).
The near invisibility of the poor in psychology as well
as psychologists lack of attention to social class in general
continues even when there is a direct focus on multicultur-
alism and diversity. For example, at the rst multicultural
summit sponsored by APA in 1999, poverty and social
class were rarely mentioned. Announcements for the Public
Interest Directorates miniconvention, entitled Valuing
Diversity, at APAs 108th Annual Convention in August
2000 also omitted mention of social class (APA, n.d.-a).
The printed announcement for the second multicultural
conference, held in 2001, described it as a summit dealing
with race/ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, and dis-
ability (APA, n.d.-b). And the most recent announcement,
for the third multicultural conference (APA, n.d.-c), enti-
tled Celebrating Our Children, Families, and Seniors,
once again ignores social class, mentioning only race,
ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, and disability in the
call for papers. It is now widely accepted that social cate-
gories like gender and ethnicity intersect and that these
intersections require study as psychologists examine each
category. Social class functions similarly in interaction
with other social categories and as a distinct construct.
The glaring omission of social class in considerations
of multicultural issues illustrates certain realities about the
discipline of psychology. Psychological theories are preoc-
cupied with people who are like those who construct the
theories, that is, those in the middle class (and primarily
European Americans). As just one recent example, Arnett
(2000), in developing a theory about emerging adulthood in
young people in their late teens through the 20s, talked
about this period in industrialized societies as one of in-
dependent role exploration (p.478). Like other theorists,
Arnett focused on the middle class. Unlike others, how-
ever, he did note that his characterization was not likely to
be true for the millions of working-class youth who do not
attend college right after high school and who constitute the
forgotten half in psychological research and theory.
In trying to understand this phenomenon, I came to the
following realization. Although those who are middle class
or afuent can experience the negative consequences of
racism, sexism, ageism, and heterosexism or the stigma and
exclusion associated with a disability, they do not person-
ally experience the stigma and exclusion associated with
being poor. A sizable minority within the discipline of
psychology may come from a low-income or working-class
background, but it is clearly not a salient feature of their
current lives.
Theoretical Concepts and Context
Categorization of groups of people into upper and lower
strata, into superior and inferior, is done by those who
require such categorization to maintain their power, pre-
vent others from obtaining an equal share of resources, and
sustain the myth of superiority (Williams, 1993). Thus,
classism results from unequal class privilege (i.e., un-
earned advantage and conferred dominance) and power
(Moon & Rolison, 1998, p. 132). Power, dened as access
to resources, enables the group with greatest access to set
the rules, frame the discourse, and name and describe those
with less power. Members of high-power groups will be
more able than those in low-power groups to maintain their
power as they receive its benets and increase their ability
to maneuver within the society they control. As Unger
(2000) has noted, Those who have the power to dene the
acceptable qualities of others benet from their ability to
label (p. 166). And Sidanius and Pratto (1999) presented
data and a convincing argument to support the conclusion
that it is power . . . that enables one to discriminate
(p. 19).
People in the United States have invented labels to
designate the poor both directly and indirectly. The words
racial minority and inner city are often used as codes for
low income, and it has been argued that rural poor Whites
are also racialized as a breed apart, a dysgenic race unto
themselves (Wray & Newitz, 1997, p. 2). Sweeney (1997)
noted that White Trash . . . are dened by their proxi-
mity . . . to Blacks; in housing projects, in sharecroppers
shacks, on chaingangs (p. 251). When White middle-class
people use the term White trash, they are talking about
Bernice Lott
101 February 2002

American Psychologist
them, not us, and are saying We are not that (Har-
tigan, 1997, p. 51). Derogatory terms, meant to be amusing,
have been invented for these others: crackers from Georgia
and Florida, lintheads from the Carolinas, okies from the
west, and hillbillies or ridge runners from West Virginia.
The related theoretical constructs of moral exclusion
and delegitimization have been introduced in the effort to
explain the atrocious and inhumane treatment of stigma-
tized people by those in power. Opotow (1990) argued that
those who are morally excluded are perceived as nonen-
tities, expendable, or undeserving; consequently harming
them appears acceptable, appropriate, or just (p. 1). Bar-
Tal (1990) proposed that categorizing members of certain
groups as having unacceptable values or norms serves to
permit or justify excluding them, dehumanizing them, and
treating them as outcasts.
Moral exclusion can take many forms. For example,
some assume that certain emotions that are not shared with
other animals, which are referred to as secondary emotions
and include guilt, embarrassment, delight, disillusion, and
sensitivity, are not experienced among members of out-
groups. Leyens et al. (2000) presented evidence that indi-
viduals regard out-groups as in some ways less human
(p. 194) or decient in the human essence (p. 195),
thereby making discrimination easier, more rational, and
even necessary. When people dehumanize others, they are
not likely to experience empathy. Thus, those who dehu-
manize other people can more easily behave in ways that
run counter to such supposedly human values as sympathy
and compassion (Schwartz & Struch, 1989).
Examples of moral exclusion are, sadly, numerous
across historical periods, places, and circumstances, and
the harm done to those designated as other ranges from
direct and overt damage to the results of disregard and
inaction. As Opotow (1990) has noted, Moral exclusion
can occur in degrees, from overt evil to passive unconcern
(p. 13). Within such a theoretical framework, it can be
argued, as Fine and Weis (2000) have done, that today-
. . . working-class and poor women (and men) have been
tossed from our collective moral community (p. 1140).
Treating poor people as other and lesser than oneself
is central to the concept and practice of classism. Through
cognitive distancing and institutional and interpersonal dis-
crimination, the nonpoor succeed in separating from the
poor and in excluding, discounting, discrediting, and dis-
enabling them.
Cognitive Distancing
Although psychologists distance themselves and the disci-
pline from the poor by generally ignoring social class as a
signicant variable in research and theory, cognitive dis-
tancing more typically takes the form of stereotyping. The
dominant images of poor people in the United States in-
clude negative beliefs about their characteristics, negative
expectations about their behavior, and the attribution that
their poverty is caused by their own failings.
Middle-class people tend to respond to issues about
poverty with ignorance, because they are largely insulated
from and do not know poor people. As noted by Berrick
(1995), the two groups shop in different stores, travel on
different streets, . . . eat in different restaurants, and their
children [often] attend different . . . schools (p. 3). The
mass media tend to reinforce this ignorance. A review of
media images of the poor by Bullock and her colleagues
(Bullock, Wyche, & Williams, 2001) found that, for the
most part, the poor are either not presented at all or por-
trayed as outsiders who are decient in character or
morality.
Stereotypes about the poor abound and appear to be
communicated with little hesitancy or embarrassment by
those who ascribe to them, including members of Congress
and state legislators who shape public policy. For example,
an analysis of congressional hearings on The Family Sup-
port Act of 1988 by Naples (1997) revealed a view of poor
women, in particular, as in need [of] sanctions and other
coercive behavioral measures to ensure their cooperation in
moving from welfare to work (p. 917). In 1996, this was
a dominant theme in the enthusiastic support for the insult-
ingly worded Personal Responsibility and Work Opportu-
nity Reconciliation Act championed by both major political
parties. One study (Beck, Whitley, & Wolk, 1999) exam-
ined the beliefs of members of the Georgia General As-
sembly, which, like all state legislatures, is now given
block grants by the federal government to use in assisting
poor people for limited time periods (no longer than two
consecutive years, and ve years over a lifetime). What the
investigators found was consensus . . . that the poor do
exhibit behaviors that . . . perpetuate their poverty. These
behaviors include a lack of effort, ambition, thrift, talent
and morals (Beck et al., 1999, p. 98) and low intelligence.
A sizable literature on the subject of beliefs about the
poor and poverty is found primarily within sociology and
social work. As summarized by Bullock (1995), research
indicates that, in general, the poor are perceived as failing
to seize opportunities because they lack diligence and ini-
tiative . . . . Poor people and welfare recipients are typically
characterized as dishonest, dependent, lazy, uninterested in
education, and promiscuous (p. 125). By and large, the
research literature supports the conclusion of Halpern
(1993) that the tendency in the United States is to see
poverty as an individual problem and to be preoccupied
with poor peoples behavior, rather than the social and
economic arrangements that perpetuate poverty, inequality,
and social exclusion (p. 160). One example comes from a
study by Fiske and her colleagues (Fiske, Xu, Cuddy, &
Glick, 1999) in which respondents made judgments about
17 groups often stereotyped in the United States. Welfare
recipients were found to be the only group that was both
disliked and disrespected and whose members were per-
ceived to lack both warmth and competence.
Researchers conducting a recent investigation with a
midwestern college sample compared beliefs about poor
people with beliefs about members of the middle class
(Cozzarelli, Wilkinson, & Tagler, 2001). Respondents en-
dorsed signicantly more of the negative traits they were
asked to respond to as being true of the poor than of the
middle class. These negative descriptors included unedu-
cated, unmotivated, lazy, unpleasant, angry, stupid, dirty,
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American Psychologist
immoral, criminal, alcoholic, abusive, and violent. Simi-
larly, when a sample of college students in another study
(Hoyt, 1999) was asked to list common stereotypes for
lower-class (the studys terminology) and middle-class
people, the most frequently listed traits for the former were
uneducated, lazy, dirty, drug/alcohol user, and criminal.
In two studies (Lott & Saxon, in press) in which
respondents made judgments about hypothetical target
women, social class was found to be a powerful trigger for
expectations. Whether presented as a potential parent
teacher organization (PTO) vice president in her childrens
school or as a possible girlfriend for the respondents older
brother or cousin, a working-class woman was judged to be
more crude and more irresponsible than was a middle-class
woman. In the PTO context, working-class women were
also judged to be more unsuitable for the job of vice
president. And Jacob (2000) found that a sample of African
American women and men described a hypothetical low-
income woman as being less intelligent than a higher-
income woman.
The cognitive responses of middle-class children to
poor people and poverty have been found to mirror those of
adults. A review by Chafel (1997) of two decades of
relevant national studies found a
remarkable similarity in the thinking of adults and children . . . .
[B]oth view economic privation as a self-inicted condition,
emanating more from personal factors (e.g., effort, ability) than
externalstructural ones (e.g., an unfavorable labor market, rac-
ism). Poverty is seen as inevitable, necessary, and just. (p. 434)
Adults consistently view the poor as morally decient and
personally responsible for their plight (Chafel, 1997, p.
438), and, with age, children come more and more to
accept the status quo and to view poverty as adults do, that
is, as emanating from individual differences in merit
(Chafel, 1997, p. 456).
Weinger (1998) showed a sample of low-income
White and Black children photos of two houses, one run-
down and one a suburban ranch-style residence, and asked
them to respond to questions about the people they thought
might live in each. Responses were analyzed thematically,
and the investigator concluded that the children expected
others to describe members of the poor household as
messy, dirty, stupid, crazy, ugly, nasty, disgusting, not
good people, doing drugs, not taking care of their family,
mean, troublemakers, cruel, unkind (Weinger, 1998, p.
108). Although these low-income children perceived the
nonpoor as scorning the poor, they did not share the neg-
ative beliefs. Instead, they described poor people straight-
forwardly as in need of resources: They need money, they
need paint, . . . [and] a job (Weinger, 1998, p. 112).
Some research has found differences among groups in
the degree to which they hold negative beliefs about the
poor. For example, from national survey data across several
decades, Clydesdale (1999) concluded that Americans
with high social statuses, whether economic, occupational,
or educational, are more likely to view the poor unfavor-
ably (p. 103). Those found to be most in favor of govern-
ment efforts to eradicate poverty were non-White respon-
dents and low-income respondents, whereas political
conservatives were least supportive of such efforts. That
conservatives tend to see poverty in individualistic terms,
that is, as failures of personal initiative, has been found by
others (Zucker & Weiner, 1993). In another study, business
students were found to have more negative beliefs about
the poor than did undergraduates majoring in social work
or sociology (Atherton, Gemmel, Haagenstad, & Holt,
1993).
In an important nding, a phone survey revealed that
respondents who had personal contact with the poor were
less likely than others to blame them for their circum-
stances (Wilson, 1996). It is also of interest that beliefs
about low-income people may vary as a function of their
ethnicity and the ethnicity of respondents. Jacobs (2000)
sample of African American adults described a White
target woman earning $12,000 a year as lazy and ugly but
described an African American woman with the same
earnings as frustrated, determined, and stressed.
A telephone interview study of a large sample of
adults in southern California (Hunt, 1996) found that
Blacks and Latinos are more likely than Whites to attribute
poverty to such societal factors as low wages, poor schools,
and prejudice. And, not surprisingly, poor people are more
likely to favor structural explanations for poverty than are
middle-class people (Bullock, 1999). At the same time,
however, Bullock found that the low-income women she
studied were eager to distance themselves from the others
on welfare by talking about how the others cheated and did
not work hard enough to leave the welfare system. Simi-
larly, an interview study of a sample of mothers receiving
public assistance in Florida (Seccombe, James, & Walters,
1998) also found that both Black and White respondents
tended to distance themselves from others on welfare. They
distinguished between me and them . . . [pointing out]
that, unlike other poor women, they were on welfare
through no fault of their own (pp. 856857). Although
subscribing to the dominant constructions of women on
welfare, the respondents evaluated their own circumstances
quite differently.
Although cognitive responses to the poor are typically
measured by survey methods, experimental techniques
have also yielded data supporting the proposition that dis-
tancing is a dominant middle-class reaction to low-income
people. Darley and Gross (1983) had college students
watch a videotape of a fourth-grade girl taking an oral
achievement test. Cues about her social class were con-
veyed visually by the childs clothes and the playground in
the background and by verbal information about her par-
ents occupations and education. Social class cues were
varied, but observers always saw the same child and the
same test performance. Viewers who were led to believe
that the girl came from a low-income home judged that her
test performance indicated a substantially lower level of
ability than did those who were led to believe that she had
a high socioeconomic background. In a replication with
some variations, Baron, Albright, and Malloy (1995) found
that, in two studies, participants who had no performance
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American Psychologist
information rated the low-socioeconomic status target girl
as lower in ability than the high-socioeconomic status girl.
Using a vignette approach, Kirby (1999) gave a sam-
ple of college students information about potential neigh-
bors who were considering the purchase of homes near
them. These potential neighbors were described as differ-
ing in source of income. Those described as receiving
public assistance were always rated worse and objected to
more than either those with some inherited income or those
earning all of their income (Kirby, 1999, p. 1503). These
results were replicated in a study in which homeowners
served as respondents. In both cases, there was strong
evidence of prejudice based on economic class (Kirby,
1999, p. 1508). In another vignette study, Phelan, Link,
Moore, and Stueve (1997) asked telephone respondents
how willing they were to hire a hypothetical 30-year-old
man for odd jobs, for him to live in their community, for
him to be a close friend, and for him to work at some job
in their local school. When he was described as homeless,
respondents expressed signicantly greater social distance
than when he was described as living in a small apartment.
Institutional Distancing
Institutional distancing, exclusion, or discrimination may
be deliberate and obvious or it may be subtle and indirect.
Regardless of its form or the extent to which people are
aware of it, institutional discrimination punishes members
of low-status groups by erecting barriers to full societal
participation. These groups, as noted by Moon and Rolison
(1998), are either invisible, like janitors and maids or other
nonpersons and not worthy of recognition, or hypervis-
ible as symbols of ridicule (e.g., rednecks, poor White
trash), disdain (e.g., welfare recipients), and/or fear (e.g.,
the underclass, gangs) (p. 129).
Sidanius and Pratto (1999) described institutional dis-
crimination as
the way that . . . schools, businesses, and government bureaucra-
cies disproportionately allocate positive social value (e.g., high
social status, good health care, good housing) to dominants and
disproportionately allocate negative social value (low social sta-
tus, poor housing, long prison sentences, . . . and executions) to
subordinates. (p. 127)
What follows are some brief examples of ways and con-
texts in which institutional distancing from low-income
persons is accomplished now in the United States.
Education
The system of public education in the United States, -
nanced primarily by community property taxes, has re-
sulted in a two-tiered institution: One tier is well-equipped
and maintained and serves mostly suburban, middle-class
children, and another contains run-down and decaying
schools in which there is generally a lack of everything but
problems. Much has been written about this dramatic and
dismal example of classism, but it remains a revealing and
continuing feature of American life. As noted by Books
(1998), Even as some students receive a world-class ed-
ucation, others are ghettoized and forgotten in rundown,
markedly segregated, and often dangerous and over-
crowded schools (p. xxii).
The U.S. Department of Education recently examined
how federal dollars in six different programs were being
used in the public schools and reported (cf. Wong, 2000)
that in schools with the most disadvantaged students, teach-
ers aides rather than qualied teachers were being hired and
paid with the federal money. Half of the instructors sup-
ported by special programs designed to help poor children
were teachers aides, among whom only 19% had a bache-
lors degree; this gure was 10% in the schools with the
highest poverty rate. Forty-one percent of the teachers
aides reported that half the time they were teaching stu-
dents on their own, with no supervision. In addition, the
report noted that low-poverty schools were gaining more
access than high-poverty schools to federally funded com-
puter technology.
Fine (1990) studied three urban high schools in three
different eastern states in an effort to understand the mo-
tives of students who dropped out and the community
response to this problem. At one high school, students not
doing well academically were viewed as inferior and
perceptually transformed into a threat to the well-being [of
the other students] (Fine, 1990, p. 116). It is not surpris-
ing, then, to learn that two thirds of the entering students
left school before graduating and that these students were
from low-income families and were minorities of color.
Fine argued that if two thirds of the students in a White,
middle-class school dropped out before graduation, the
community would be outraged and would not accept the
rationalizations offered. At another school, the threat to
middle-class students was seen to come from those with
torn clothes, and keeping elite children away from them
was seen as desirable. Fine concluded that the schools were
teaching these young women and men to see public ex-
clusion as natural, justiable, and perhaps even necessary
for the public good (p. 118).
One investigator (Luttrell, 1997) solicited life stories
from low-income women in adult education classes in both
an urban and a rural community. In reecting on their
public school experiences, the women talked about having
been degraded by teachers and school ofcials for their
speech, styles of dress, deportment, physical appearance,
skin color, and forms of knowledge (Luttrell, 1997, p.
114). They remembered being treated with disdain and
disrespect, looked down on, and given little encourage-
ment. Such experiences have been discussed by others and
validated in many studies. For example, Schultz (1999)
interviewed a small sample of girls in their senior year at a
comprehensive urban high school in northern California.
These girls were survivors of an inhospitable educational
system and were making it to graduation, but their stories
provided many examples of how school personnel had
responded to them with narrow and limited conceptions of
who they were and what they were capable of becoming.
It has been argued that inequity in the schools is not
accidental and that schools simply reproduce the social
organization of inequality (Smith, 2000, p. 1149) that
exists in other institutions. Thus, some students learn that
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American Psychologist
their voices will be heard, that they count, and that they will
be recognized. whereas other students learn the opposite
lesson, reinforcing their general experience of exclusion
from the world of mainstream expectations and achieve-
ment. Margolin (1994) has discussed the gifted child edu-
cation movement in the context of social class and inequal-
ity and has argued that gifted child education is related to
maintaining the power of the afuent. He describes gifted
child education as a strategy to develop a class of people
who lead, direct, and originate (Margolin, 1994, p. 77),
thus helping to support rank and privilege.
My own experience as a low-income high school
student is relevant here. Despite an exemplary academic
record and awards at graduation for highest achievement in
mathematics and science, I had no teacher or counselor
ever tell me about college scholarships or encourage me to
apply for any college except the one that was tuition-free
and that I could attend as a commuter. A few years ago, I
ran into a former high school classmate whose academic
record had not been extraordinary and who had married at
graduation and followed her husband through a career in
the navy. She had been middle class and Irish Catholic,
unlike me but like most of the teachers in our high school.
I learned from her that she had been recommended for and
received a scholarship at a prestigious college that she
ended up declining. This personal story is congruent with
qualitative research data and illustrates how conceptions
about social class can affect the guidance offered by school
counselors and teachers and do not reect an appreciation
of the adult paths that the lives of young people may take.
For the most part, social class has a powerful inuence
on educational paths and opportunities in grade school,
high school, and beyond. It has been reported that the rates
at which low-income people are attending college have
steadily declined (Hoyt, 1999). This is not surprising, given
the ever-increasing costs of a college education. A recent
report by a congressional panel (cf. College Aid, 2001)
found that in the year 2000, the cost of college was 62% of
family income for low-income families, compared with
16% for middle-class families and 7% for the highest
income families. Pell grants, currently at a maximum of
$3,300, cover only about 39% of the annual costs at a
public four-year college. It is noteworthy, as well, that the
so-called welfare reform legislation enacted by Congress in
1996 (Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Rec-
onciliation Act, 1996) restricts access to higher education
by persons receiving nancial assistance, despite what is
known about the positive relationship between education
and the ability to get meaningful and better paying employ-
ment. The new federal regulations permit no more than
30% of a states caseload to count education as work, and
an aid recipient may do so only for a maximum of 12
months if he or she is also engaged in some other work
activity for 20 hours a week. Not surprisingly, college
enrollment on the part of aid recipients has declined dra-
matically (Gault & Umrani, 2000). That ethnicity matters
as well as income is indicated by the results of a study of
aid recipients in Virginia (cf. Savner, 2000). Forty-one
percent of the White respondents reported being encour-
aged by their caseworkers to go to school, particularly to
study for a general equivalency diploma, whereas not a
single one of the Black recipients reported such
encouragement.
Housing
The subject of homelessness has been discussed and ana-
lyzed elsewhere (e.g., see Rollins, Saris, & Johnston-Rob-
ledo, 2001; Shinn, Baumohl, & Hopper, 2001; Shinn &
Gillespie, 1994). A new element in the housing crisis is
reluctance on the part of landlords to accept tenants who
receive some form of governmental subsidy. In cities
around the country, landlords are rejecting the applications
of subsidized tenants (Bernstein, 2001). In addition, gen-
trication and urban renewal succeed in uprooting about
two and a half million low-income people in the United
States each year from neighborhoods that are discovered by
nance capital for new investment. Displacementthe ex-
clusion of people from their communitiesfollows from
forced evictions, as landlords sell their property for great
prots and as poor people are unable to afford the dramat-
ically increased rents. Carr (1994), who studied 400 poor
families that were displaced for urban renewal from a
privately owned apartment complex in a Virginia neigh-
borhood, concluded that displacement, the act of casting
out, is inescapably an assault on personhood (p. 200).
It is generally the case that the majority of low-income
families live in communities that are geographically and
socially separate from middle-class communities. This is
more often true of poor families who are also minorities of
color (Halpern, 1993). The segregation of the poor into
urban ghettoes and sections on the other side of the tracks
in small towns across the United States reects the desire
and ability of the middle class to distance itself from the
poor. The distancing is accomplished with physical space
and also with language. As Moon and Rolison (1998)
pointed out, White trash live in trailer parks, whereas
middle-class folks live in mobile home communities; the
urban poor live in housing projects, whereas the nonpoor
live in high-rise apartments! Of course, the differences are
more than linguistic. Although the projects are dangerous
and poorly maintained, apartment buildings for the more
afuent are guarded around the clock.
It is well documented that communities in which poor
people and minorities of color live are most likely to be put
in environmental danger: They are most likely to be se-
lected as the location for polluting industries as well as for
hazardous waste sites. In one study (Stretesky & Hogan,
1998), researchers examined the communities surrounding
53 Florida Superfund sites, identied as containing hazard-
ous waste, and found that these were more likely to be
areas lived in by low-income African Americans and His-
panics. As in other studies, income and ethnicity were
identied as signicant variables. Another investigator
(Pinderhughes, 1996) has concluded that To save time and
money, companies seek to locate environmentally hazard-
ous industries in communities which will put up the least
resistance, which are less informed and less powerful po-
litically, and are more dependent upon local job develop-
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American Psychologist
ment efforts (p. 233). Costs for industries are lower in
poor neighborhoods, and the residents have little inuence
on permit-granting city governments and few resources
enabling them to move. The result is environmental ineq-
uity, a clear consequence of social class, economic injus-
tice, and unequal political power. As noted by Bullard and
Johnson (2000), The environmental protection apparatus
in the United States does not provide equal protection for
all communities (p. 574).
Health Care and Legal Assistance
A World Health Organization analysis ranked the United
States 37th in the world in its overall quality of health care
because of the unfair treatment received by the poor and
because of the huge number of persons in the United States
who are uninsured (World Health Organization, 2000). In
2000, 45 million people were without any health insurance
(Toward Universal Coverage, 2000); 91% of the unin-
sured were employed, dependents of an employed person,
or retired (Coalition for Consumer Justice Education
Project, Inc., 2001). To my knowledge, the report by the
World Health Organization was never mentioned by the
major party candidates in the recent presidential election,
nor was much attention paid to the amply documented
conclusion that health outcomes are strongly correlated
with social class position. As summarized by Belle,
Doucet, Harris, Miller, and Tan (2000), Poverty is asso-
ciated with elevated rates of threatening and uncontrollable
life events, noxious life conditions, marital dissolution,
infant mortality, many diseases, violent crime, homicide,
accidents, and deaths from all causes (p. 1160). For ex-
ample, in a study of cardiovascular disease (cf. Heart
Risks, 2001), researchers found that heart attacks were
signicantly more likely for people in poor neighborhoods
than for those in afuent neighborhoods, a conclusion that
was unaffected when cholesterol levels, exercise, and other
risk factors were taken into account.
Mirowsky and Ross (2000) have reported that for
people at the bottom of the economic distribution, the
decline in physical functioning with age occurs at twice the
rate as it does for the most wealthy, and that the gap in
mortality between the economically advantaged and disad-
vantaged is larger than that between smokers and nonsmok-
ers (p. 135). It is the egalitarian nature, not the wealth, of
nations that is correlated with the longevity of their citi-
zens, so it is no surprise that the United States, the most
inequitable of the industrialized countries of the world, is
behind 19 other nations in citizen life expectancy (cf. Belle
et al., 2000). That these well-established facts have as yet
had little or no inuence on public policy has been pointed
out by many (e.g., Lee, 1999; Newman, 1999; Tarlov,
1999). As noted by Lee (1999), inequalities in health
status related to SES [socioeconomic status] remain and
may have even grown larger in the past 100 years (p. 296).
Social class affects health status through differences in
access to health-promoting resources, differences in access
to high-quality treatment, and differences in attitudes and
beliefs held by health care workers. In a study of family
practice residents, Price, Desmond, Snyder, and Kimmel
(1988) found that a sizable percentage believed that most
poor people prefer to stay on welfare, that young women
have babies to collect welfare checks, that most poor peo-
ple are lazy, and that poor people cannot understand direc-
tions about their health care. Thus, it is not surprising that
investigations of physicianpatient communication (cf.
Roter, 1988) have revealed that low-income patients tend
to receive less information, less positive talk, and less talk
overall than higher income patients.
It is also not surprising to learn that out of 20,000
physicians who could be funded by a federal loan program
that encourages doctors to work in poor areas, only 1,900
physicians are currently participating (cf. D. Z. Jackson,
2000). In this way, professional health workers put distance
between themselves and the poor. Distancing is further
illustrated by the well-documented phenomenon of patient
dumping, . . . [the] denial or limitation of services for eco-
nomic reasons (Price et al., 1988, p. 618) resulting in
low-income patients being transferred from facility to fa-
cility. An investigation by Public Citizen, a consumer ad-
vocacy group, found that more than 500 hospitals in the
United States (10% of all hospitals) have been cited by the
federal government between 1997 and 1999 for violating
the antidumping law passed in 1986 (cf. Hospitals Vi-
olating Indigent Law, 2001). One in ve U.S. hospitals
has been cited since the law was passed.
Mental health workers also do not feel comfortable
with low-income clients and nd it difcult to empathize
with them, as indicated by the results of an extensive
literature review (Davis & Proctor, as cited in Leeder,
1996). They see the poor as inarticulate and suspicious
. . . resistant, apathetic and passive (Leeder, 1996, p. 52).
Further, low-income clients are more likely than others to
receive therapy that is brief and drug-centered and to be
treated by students or low-status professionals.
Other empirical studies have documented the greater
severity of punishment of poor juveniles for drug offenses,
the greater likelihood that low-income women will be
reported for drug use during pregnancy, and discrimination
against poor women in their treatment for HIV and AIDS
(cf. Bullock, 1995). Reid (2000) argued that the public
feels little concern or afnity with the disadvantaged peo-
ple who are now the predominant victims of AIDS (p.
720). Also illustrating inequality in medical resources is the
fact that the reproductive benets of poor women receiving
Medicaid assistance are different than those received by
women who are covered by employer plans. King and
Meyer (1997) found, in a national study, that reproductive
benets are distributed differentially on the basis of class
(p. 26). Poor women on Medicaid have mandated coverage
of contraceptives but not for infertility, and they cannot
obtain federally funded abortions.
Lawyers, as a group, are similarly reluctant to provide
services for the poor. Less than a third of low-income
people who need an attorney can get one (Merry, 1986).
Merry (1986) studied the ways in which working-class and
poor people in the United States think about and use the
law and concluded that their attempts to have the legal
system work on their behalf result in frustration. It turns
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American Psychologist
out to be a time-consuming, complicated, and uncertain
process . . . [and] the court [is seen] . . . as unpredictable,
confusing, and arbitrary (Merry, 1986, p. 266). She pre-
sented examples of attorneys whose words and actions
reected negative, stereotyped beliefs about low-income
clients.
The tendency for crime victims who are poor or home-
less to receive less attention in the justice system than those
who are more afuent is a phenomenon that is mirrored in
the media, which also gives less coverage to and shows less
interest in such crimes (Viano, 1992). Although low-in-
come victims receive less attention in the justice system,
low-income defendants and those who are minorities of
color are more likely to be convicted of a variety of crimes.
Just one dramatic example comes from a report by the U.S.
Justice Department (as cited in Deadly Disparities,
2000). Eighty percent of the 682 defendants who have
faced capital charges in the federal courts since 1995 have
been minorities, and U.S. attorneys recommended the death
penalty for 183 of these defendants, 74% of whom were
minorities and poor.
Politics and Public Policy
Middle-class taxpayers often see themselves as taken ad-
vantage of by tax-supported programs for the poor, but it is
really the case, as Rothblum (1996) has pointed out, that
the higher ones income and status in the U.S., the more
benets, tax credits, and other free perks are available
(p. 7). And there are special benets available to the very
rich from corporate welfare. Among the family-friendly
advantages enjoyed by middle-class taxpayers that are not
available to the poor, because their incomes are too low to
qualify for them, are federal tax credits for child care and
home ownership. Home owners receive direct nancial
assistance by being allowed to enter mortgage interest and
property taxes in their list of itemized federal deductions.
Although parents who accept public assistance are often
criticized for what their critics perceive as inadequacies,
Huston (1995) reminded readers that We do not consider
parents inadequate if they accept direct aid through the tax
system (p. 310).
Careful attention to the recent presidential campaign
would have led a visitor from another planet to conclude
that there were no poor people in the United States, so
seldom were they mentioned by the candidates from the
two major parties. I was reminded of a Doonesbury cartoon
(Trudeau, 1999) that featured an interview of a politician
by a journalist about the similarities between the two par-
ties. The journalist suggested to the politician a way of
differentiating his party from the other one: How about the
poor? You could always champion the poor! The politi-
cian replied, Thats itthrow us your dregs! Perhaps life
does imitate art as well as vice versa. The Democratic Party
candidate, from whom mention of the poor might have
been expected, shifted during the campaign from use of the
phrase working families to focus on and use the phrase
middle class. This change in language and approach was
noted by one journalist (Gore Pitches, 2000), who
counted the number of times each phrase was used in
speeches at different points of the campaign. For example,
in his 52-minute convention speech, Gore used the phrase
working families 9 times, compared with a single use in a
22-minute speech given in Cleveland while on the cam-
paign trail; in the same speech, the phrase middle class was
used 12 times. Neither the Democratic nor the Republican
candidates for president championed raising the federal
minimum wage, which at $5.15 an hour earns someone
working 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week for 50 weeks,
$10,300 a year.
Interpersonal Distancing
What Bassuk (1993) referred to as our unwillingness as a
nation to commit the necessary resources to . . . poor fam-
ilies (p. 346) is documented in a series of articles in an
issue of the Journal of Social Issues (Lott & Bullock,
2001a). This issue focused on poor peoples daily experi-
ences of exclusion, of being demeaned and discounted.
U.S. institutions reduce the effectiveness with which poor
people can access mainstream opportunities and benets,
and, in addition, distancing reactions are experienced di-
rectly from middle-class persons with whom low-income
persons interact. As Bullock (1995) concluded from the
research literature as well as from stories told by low-
income people, poor people commonly experience face-
to-face classist discrimination in their daily activities (p.
142). They talk about being insulted or disregarded by
others in shops, classrooms, and public ofces, including
those they must go to for public assistance. A sample of
women interviewed in one study (Seccombe et al., 1998)
spoke of the negative comments directed toward them by
welfare workers and of the contempt shown toward clients.
The respondents reported frequent disparagement and em-
barrassment at the grocery store. Looking for evidence of
fraud, cashiers and others closely scrutinize the food that
. . . [is] purchase[d] . . . [looking] for women who buy
steaks with food stamps (Seccombe et al., 1998, p. 854).
Bullock (1995) reported seeing in her own neighbor-
hood a long single row of children (p. 143) lining the
sidewalk outside of stores, into which only one or two were
allowed at a time. The shop owners, she guessed, were
concerned with stealing, and only allow a small number of
children in the store at a time so they can be carefully
observed. It is difcult to imagine children being treated
with such suspicion in middle-class or afuent neighbor-
hoods (Bullock, 1995, p. 143). Another example comes
from the recollections of children who grew up in trailer
parks (Berube & Berube, 1997). Because they were White
and poor, their Whiteness was called into question, and
they were continually challenged and provoked by the
middle-class White kids who lived nearby in houses.
One study (Riemer, 1997) of a group of women who
left the welfare rolls in their city and took jobs as nurse
assistants in a geriatric facility reported on how the women
were marginalized and stigmatized by their nurse supervi-
sors. On the job, the low-income women found that their
knowledge and experience were discounted, their sugges-
tions were unwelcome, and their behavior was subject to
continual negative scrutiny. Not only were they poorly
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American Psychologist
paid, but their interactions with supervisors squashed their
enthusiasm and motivation (Riemer, 1997, p. 232).
Final Thoughts
The central thesis of this article is that a dominant response
to the poor by the nonpoor is that of distancing, and
examples of such distancing in the form of exclusion,
separation, devaluing, and discounting, which operational-
ize classist discrimination, have been drawn from many
areas. The literature on beliefs amply illustrates cognitive
distancing and the fact that poor people tend to be seen as
other and lesser in values, character, motivation, and po-
tential. Such beliefs complement the deliberate or indirect
exclusion of low-income people from full participation in
social institutions. Examples have been presented from the
areas of education, housing, health care, legal assistance,
politics, and public policy. These document the reality
behind the recent words of a New York Times columnist
(Herbert, 2001): The poor are pretty well hidden from
everyone except each other. You wont nd them in the
same neighborhoods . . . as the well-to-do. Theyre not on
television, except for local crime-casts. And theyve van-
ished from the nations political discussion (para. 1).
Where poor people personally interact with the nonpoor in
shops and ofces, interpersonal distancing is a common
experience. Elsewhere I have written about the responses to
low-income parents by teachers and principals in the public
schools (Lott, 2001).
What can be said of positive efforts on the part of
human service professionals and others to help the poor
improve their life circumstances and cope with the often
devastating consequences of poverty? Do such efforts con-
tradict the generalization that distancing is the dominant
response to the poor? For those who do not see the poor as
other, the answer is yes. But help is too often accompanied
by beliefs in the dysfunctionality of poor families and the
discounting of strengths, skills, and wisdom. Too often,
professional efforts reect insensitivity and paternalism.
For example, Polakow (1995) has argued that countless
middle-class people in the human service professions have
built their careers as the direct beneciaries of poverty . . . .
[D]iagnosis and remediation are the essential ingredients of
a proliferating decit/pathology business (p. 268).
As long as efforts on the behalf of low-income people
are predicated on assumptions about their inferiority and
difference from oneself, the behavior of those trying to help
will reect distance, be it psychological or physical. As
argued by Schwalbe et al. (2000), the process of other-
ing, of dening a group as morally and/or intellectually
inferior (p. 423), provides advantages to the dominant
group. These advantages are obtained by maintaining bar-
riers that restrict access to resources by the others, thus
easing access by those who are like oneself.
There is evidence that poverty is beginning to be taken
seriously and that beliefs about the poor may change. A
study of recent news stories (Bullock et al., 2001) found
fewer negative stereotypes than in the past and more sym-
pathetic portrayals. Real efforts to counteract the serious
personal and social consequences of excluding the poor
from respectful consideration and concern may soon be
seen. For example, a representative from the U.S. Depart-
ment of Health and Human Services (Golden, 2000), in
writing about child abuse, acknowledged that the most
prevalent form of maltreatment in this country is neglect
and that neglect is most often associated with poverty,
isolation, and a lack of collateral support (p. 1053). Psy-
chologists can meet the challenge presented by such a
conclusion by suggesting appropriate and potentially effec-
tive interventions to those who shape public policy.
In conclusion, I urge readers to consult the Resolution
on Poverty and Socioeconomic Status (APA, 2000) passed
by APA, to read Bullock and Lott (2001) for ways to
implement the resolution, and to begin a continuing con-
versation about the role psychologists can play in disrupt-
ing classism. Such a conversation might include attention
to the speech given by Jesse Jackson (2000) at APAs
107th Annual Convention in 1999. He reminded us then
that
Most poor people work every day. Most poor people in the U.S.
are not Black, not Brown. Most poor people are White, female,
young, invisible, and without national leaders. Most poor people
are not on welfare.
They raise other peoples children . . . .
They put food in our childrens schools. . . .
They clean our ofces. . . .
They cut grass. . . .
They pick lettuce. . . .
They work in hospitals, as orderlies . . . no job is beneath them.
(p. 329)
To continue to exclude those for whom this is true from
communities of concern and respect has serious negative
consequences for us all.
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