Tag Archives: Stigma

Disabled and Proud

Posted on August 22, 2011 by Kelly Reznick

The following video is a trailer for a documentary about the Empowered Fe Fes (females). These young disabled women take to the streets of Chicago to interview non-disabled people regarding their feelings about disabilities and the handicapped and disfigured. The women also talk about their experiences of being treated differently and discriminated against because of their physical disability. This video ties in to the Erving Goffman reading from class, “Stigma and Social Identity”, which discusses interactions between the disabled and the non-disabled.

In the video, a disabled interviewer asked a non-disabled man what he would do if he were to become handicapped. The interviewee responded that he would pray to God and ask God to make him like everyone else, meaning a non-disabled person. This reminded me of the part in the reading where it discusses that people develop justifications for discriminating against the disabled.

“Further, we may perceive his defensive response to his situation as a direct expression of his defect, and then see both the defect and response as just retribution for something he or his parents or his tribe did, and hence a justification of the way we treat him” (Goffman, 3).

The interviewee’s would-be plea to God to erase his disability reflects a view that can be held by religious people. A Christian might believe that if you do everything right in your life, you will be rewarded by God. Therefore, that Christian might feel that if one suffers from a handicap, then that person did something wrong and, as a result of their actions, is now being punished by God. This could lead the Christian to feel justified in treating the disabled person harshly, as if the person deserves the disability for some supposed wrongdoing.

A young disabled women in the video describes what non-disabled people call her:

“They call me stupid, slow.”

These words used to describe the girl are what Goffman calls “stigma terms.” These are words that people use to label and marginalize the disabled.

“We use specific stigma terms such as cripple, bastard, moron in our daily discourse as a source of metaphor and imagery, typically without giving thought to the original meaning” (Goffman, 3).

Another disabled girl tells us how she was treated in high school differently because of her physical handicap:

“It was totally awful! Because I would get talked about and put down because of my disability.”

And another girl says how people told her she wasn’t able of accomplishing certain things. They would say:

“You can’t do this, you don’t know how to do that…”

These situations clearly reflects the property of a stigma, that it is an

“attribute that is deeply discrediting.” (Goffman, 2)

– Kelly Reznick

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ix8ZPEC4qSE

 

Posted in Assignment 3 | Tagged , , | 118 Comments

Experts: Mentally ill face criminal stigma

Posted on August 16, 2011 by ricardo.ledan

 

http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051124/NEWS01/511240312/1001

Tired of persecuting and convicting the mentally ill, Thomas Testa of San Joaquin County Deputy District Attorney office, has said enough is enough. Each of his cases deal with a victim dying  “under heinous circumstances” as he says, with the perpetrator having to serve life sentences in a state prison or shipped off to a mental institution. At least for Testa it could have easily been avoided if either the family or a local agency made sure the perpetrator took their prescribed medicine in the proper amount. But as other attorneys and psychologists have articulated, the situation is not as simple as it seems. Despite the small population of mentally ill people that commit violent acts, they argue that there is disproportional attention in relation to the act. Evidence of this can be found in the frequency that these acts are exhibited in the narrative of the national media; as well as the fierce sentencing that occurred in response, in several of the cases they portray. Collins of the Health services alludes to the fact of the stigma that mentally ill violent offenders face: “Criminals first rather then fighting a chronic disease”.

Goffman in “Stigma and Social Identity”, gives us an inside glimpse into the sources and justification of Stigma and its effects within the framework of society. In it we can specifically classify mental illness as of the “discreditable” kind, and the notion that stigmatized individuals are constantly linked  with their “defect” (in this case mental illness) in a way that is nonexistent in the traits of a normal person.

 

 

 

 

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Rosenhan Experiment

Posted on August 11, 2011 by Monica

A couple of says ago I mentioned an experiment that was done in the 70’s (1973 to be exact) in which a small group of people was coached to act “crazy” in order to gain admittance into an insane asylum. Psychologist David Rosenhan published On Being Sane in Insane Places, in which he described his and eight other participants’ experiences in respective psych wards. None of these participants had a history of mental illness. Among those taking part in the experiment were psychologists, a grad student, and a pediatrician.

Once the patients were admitted into the ward (they all went into different types of hospitals with different types of funding), they no longer gave any sign of being mentally ill. There are several things about this article that are interesting.  Most of the participants were diagnosed with schizophrenia (at the public hospitals) and one with manic-depressive psychosis (at the private, better funded hospital, no less), a diagnosis which has a far more optimistic diagnosis, with better outcomes than schizophrenia, according to this article.

Once the participants were labeled as mentally ill, everything they did was attributed to their diagnosis. Rosenhan himself points out that “the perception of his circumstances was shaped entirely on his diagnosis” (on a particular patient’s normal family history, which was manipulated to aid in his diagnosis as schizophrenic.)  One bored participant was though to be nervous, simply because he was pacing the corridor. In a comical anecdote, Rosenhan describes a situation in which, “One psychiatrist pointed to a group of patients who were sitting outside the cafeteria entrance half an hour before lunchtime.  To a group of young residents he indicated that such behavior was characteristic of the oral-acquisitive nature of the syndrome.  It seemed not to occur to him that there were very few things to anticipate in a psychiatric hospital besides eating.” Although it’s easy to assume that this particular psychiatrist, who I’m sure was a learned and esteemed member of the psychiatric community, lacks any and all common sense, it’s easy to see how enshrouded a mental patient can become in his or her label. Rosenhan calls this section The Stickiness of Psychodiagnostic Labels, a title which is all too appropriate. Ironically enough, the only ones who were able to detect the patients as far from crazy, were other patients in the ward. Some of these voiced their suspicions from the get go, accusing the participants of being journalists or professors because of the constant note-taking. They weren’t far off.

Crazy?

On a side note, the study also brought attention to some very unorthodox practices, such as orderlies using excessive force with patients, patients regularly not taking their medication, and the incredible depersonalization that the patients went through on a daily basis. Such treatment would make anyone feel crazy.

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Surveillance ! (Zhanna Onishchuk)

Posted on August 8, 2011 by

“The Outsiders” has made the point that certain people set the rules, and others are forced to abide by them.  Although we tend to rebel in our minds against the police and the government, we often just accept rules because they seem credible. There’s this new “Smart Meter” technology, an electricity meter to be installed by major electric companies in homes, that is advertised to reduce green house emissions and reduce electric bills. I heard about it from “Lionel’s” Commentary on the WB 11 news. Here’s the video :

Lionel Commentary

Can you believe it ? Now the government is not only surveillance criminals through unethical methods, as per our classmate (@Antonio,) but it is surveillance regular people.  If you do any research about the smart meter, which homeowners probably wont, it is difficult to find out out about the surveillance characteristics that the meter has, all that is advertised is its beneficial bill-reducing capabilities.

How are we supposed to follow rules when they are not justified at all ? We are blinded by everything that the government wants us to hear – and we have done nothing wrong. The government applied bad stigmas to regular people just as much as they do to criminals.   Otherwise, such deception and surveillance would not exist. This is proven over and over again with intrusive privacy legislation that applies to everyone. So are we all really criminals that need to be controlled ? If we look at aourselves as criminals, we can justify breaking laws. Which comes back to the government’s need to surveillance us. This loop will never end !

Zhanna Onishchuk

 

Posted in Assignment 3 | Tagged , , , | 18 Comments

Refusing to Hire

Posted on August 6, 2011 by LISA CHRISTENSEN

Hi guys, I responded to a post on stigma and unemployment and found it interesting so I decided to look alittle further into it. The first thing that came to my mind when trying to relate it to our crime/punishment class was the obvious stigma that comes with being a criminal or ex-criminal. If you think about it, most of the major social-institutions people encounter want to know if you’ve committed a crime. Schools, work, the army, all have typical applications asking you if you have every been convicted of a crime and some even ask if you have ever been arrested! Because once you have, you are labeled. With this label can come an unavoidable stigma; or as Goffman would say, “an attribute that is deeply discrediting” and restricting.

I found this article that I thought was interesting and relevant. The article is pretty recent, and it talks about a request made to outlaw criminal background checks as a tool to screen job applicants because it presents a hiring barrier for minorities. The articles talks about that because hispanics and african americans have higher rates of crime involvement they subsequently suffer an unfair rate of discrimination and it presents a hiring barrier for them.

To me, this is obviously raciest but looking beyond race and more closely at the criminal part of it all I can understand why a potential employer would want to know if they are hiring a criminal or someone who has been involved with crime, but I’m not sure how I really feel about it. Having something on your record pretty much ‘defines you’ to someone who is just looking at you and your credentials on paper. There is the stigma that if you messed up once, your likely to mess up again. However, this isnt always true. I know someone I went to highschool with has a felony on his record from when he was 18 years old and was basically just at the wrong place at the wrong time and he will forever carry the stigma of being a criminal with him. Its hard for him to find a job, many of which are not even available to him anymore even if he wanted (the army, teacher, police officer, etc). I guess thats life but holding that stigma is definitely deeply discrediting and restricting.

Posted in Assignment 3 | Tagged | 10 Comments

Stigmas and Unemployment?

Posted on August 6, 2011 by antonino.fioretto

I came across this article and it spoke about the relationship between stigmas associated with people who are unemployed. I found it very interesting that unemployment was a stigma. People who have recently been unemployed due to this downward economy are being put in a category and are unable to find jobs. They are faced with the unemployment stigma and employers are not hiring them. Even someone with 15 years experience in one company are being overlooked at because employers are labeling them as lazy and unable to get back into the job market.

I think this is ridiculous but I have had some friends and family who have lost their jobs due to getting laid off and are unable to get a job. One of my friends was working for a company for over 8 years and was unfortunately laid off; she cant even get a job at Starbucks because they feel she is overqualified. At first I didnt understand how that is a bad thing, having 8 years experience, but then I realized that they probably think she was only going to work at Starbucks for the time being until she gets a better corporate job. To an extent this makes sense but I think everyone knows the thousands of people who have been laid off and its not fair. These people who have lost their jobs have not done anything wrong yet they are being labeled and stigmatized as lazy or overqualified. To have lazy people and overqualified people in the same category is absurd. I think everyone needs to be given a chance to get back into the job market and this really should be illegal. I find it fascinating that it is illegal to discriminate against age, race, and sex but its not discrimination for not employing the unemployed.

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Is your tattoo a good or bad stigma?

Posted on August 1, 2011 by nancy.murphy

 Here is an interesting article that is somewhat of a critique of Goffman’s “Stigma and Social Identity” which ties into Lombroso’s ideas about tattoos. Tattoos seem to be a very popular topic amongst young people and on this blog. Many say that tattoo’s are a sign of deviance and show a lack of intelligence. Tattoo’s generally give a person a stigma, but is it a good or bad thing? Stigmas occur when something is different, whether it is a good, bad or neutral occurrence. People with physical disabilities are a common stigmatized group because we are always curious and fascinated by something that seems off. If you have ever seen someone who is blind, or with a limp and had to stare at them in fascination then you contribute to stigmatization, even if that was not your intent. Some stigmas are harder to define because they are things that can be hidden, such as homosexuality or sexual deviance. Today, some stigma’s can be ‘fixed’ with plastic surgery, such as rhinoplasty for those feeling stigmatized for having a big nose.

But what about a self inflicted stigma of a tattoo? Can something that is self inflicted be considered a negative stigma? Tattoos were generally used to brand people of deviance or to set them apart from the rest, such as slaves, criminals and the Jews during the Holocaust. Tattoo’s now can be considered a positive stigma since they are generally socially accepted and give you a sense of pride, make you part of a certain subculture or  show the world what you are about. Since so many people are tattooed today, I don’t feel there is much of a stigma at all just due to its commonality. A tattooed individual would be stigmatized if they had an offensive tattoo (swastika), face tattoo, or just too many tattoos. Lizard man is the perfect example of a stigmatized individual due to tattoo choices.

Posted in Assignment 2 | Tagged , , | 27 Comments

Educating Prisoners: How to bring “outsiders” in

Posted on July 31, 2011 by nikhil.wagh

In the following TedTalk, Nalini Nadkarni discusses how we have to stop viewing prisoners as inherently defunct, naturally born deviants and assailants and instead view them as individual biological entities that are constantly in flux. (Lombroso’s work still seems to have heavy influences on our criminal correctional approach today!)

http://www.ted.com/talks/nalini_nadkarni_life_science_in_prison.html

 

At the beginning of this short lecture, Nalini explains a metaphor that she uses as the fundamental basis for her argument. She explains that when most people look at a tree, they see a solid, stagnant object with a massive wooden trunk and some peripheral branches, etc. But the common assumption is that a tree once rooted is stationary, motionless and essentially unchanging. However, she shows how when we instead look at the twigs and branches of the tree instead of the main trunk, we can actually find a lot of flux, motion, change and essential adaptibility.

Nalini uses this metaphor to argue that our approach to treating prison inmates has been the same. Instead of assuming (like most of us do with the idea of a tree) that criminals are inherently deficient, we should instead understand that they can be changed, influenced and educated to live more productive and less detrimental lives. She brings up an important statistic: 60% of released in mates return to prison on criminal charges at some point in their life time. Thus, clearly the current “correctional” system is not working, and needs change.

With her emphasis on educating the prisoners on life sciences, raising their awareness on more academic and socially productive issues, Nalini argues that this is the way forward for the correctional system in America. Instead of just treating criminals like bestial animals and locking them up in bland, boring and frustrating holding cells, they should instead be placed in stimulating enviornments, where they can change their personalities, enhance their understand of social responsibility and eventually go on to lead more productive, and socially beneficial lives.

I found this lecture particularly interesting after reading the short Becker piece on Outsiders. Becker argues that this idea of treating people as “Outsiders” is a two way street. The rules of a group are broken by an individual and he/she is thus labeled an “outsider” but at the same time, the rule makers and enforcers at time can be considered outsiders themselves. Becker therefore argues that deviance is “not a quality of the act the person commits, but rather a consequence of the application of the rules and sanctions to an ‘offender'”.

Thus, both Becker and Nalini in a sense are arguing something similar. Both analysts are implying that the deviant is not solely to blame for their behavior. Rather, their behavior was in the past molded by an exogenous group attempting to deal with society, and their treatment was similar in its detached approach as well. Becker & Nalini are suggesting that we need more of an interventionist approach to dealing with criminal and deviants, with a better understanding of 1) What caused them to act in this way and 2) How we as policy makers can change our approach to help each one over come their criminal habits to form better and more socially responsible ones.

 

-Nikhil Wagh.

 

 

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