“Depending on which fieldwork moment and theoretical lens one might select, consequently, the Edgewater homeless can be construed as exploited victims desperately seeking the dignity of legal day labor or as conniving, lazy, good-for-nothing addicts. In fact, like people everywhere buffeted by their moment in history and bounded by their personal fallabilities, they struggle to sustain some sense of agency and moral logic within the chronic crises enveloping their immediate social network.”
The quote above is from Righteous Dopefiend, a novel that allows readers to vicariously witness the horrors that exist in the world of homelessness and drug addiction. The quote above displays the disparity between the general public perception of these homeless addicts and the reality of their situations, especially in the situations of the African-Americans. Although it is easy to view these homeless people as “lazy, good-for-nothing addicts”, the narratives in Righteous Dopefiend display the afflictions and varying levels of exploitation these people face. I was shocked by the unequal employment opportunities and racist behaviors these people faced.
During the mid-1900s, San Francisco lost 12,000 jobs due to globalization (Bourgois & Schonberg, 2009). Globalization also caused a lot of these skills these workers had to become futile. Due to high rents, high levels of income inequality, and low rental vacancy rates, homelessness became rampant in San Francisco (Bourgois & Schonberg, 2009). Moreover, there was a large reduction in the Federal Budget for subsidized housing, which further exacerbated the housing issue (Bourgois & Schonberg, 2009). Due to the scarcity of jobs, the homeless struggled to obtain gainful employment. Although homeless people suffer the stigma of being “lazy”, the narratives in the book showed how they would work through the most arduous and taxing labor conditions. Local business owners understood that the homeless were very desperate for work, and would often take advantage of their situation. The book displayed an example of a boss who would often use the homeless to sell drugs, so that if they were caught the homeless people would be implicated for the crime (Bourgois & Schonberg, 2009). The homeless were also paid less than the regular workers and even the undocumented Latino workers (Bourgois & Schonberg, 2009). Even when the homeless people who were employed wanted to join rehabilitation centers, the meager income they received was often not enough to pay for it (Bourgois & Schonberg, 2009).
Within the homeless communities, the African-American’s faced even tougher conditions. According to the novel, not hiring African-Americans was considered a “logical” business strategy (Bourgois & Schonberg, 2009). Even panhandling, begging in the streets for money, was tougher for African-Americans. White people were more likely to make a profit, and police were more likely to target the African-Americans.
References
Bourgois, P. I., & Schonberg, J. (2009). Righteous dopefiend. Berkeley: University of California Press.
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