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Disruptive Christian Ethics
the compounding impact of racism that is generally present in the lives of
poor women of color utilizing the welfare system. For instance, Dana, a
homeless thirty-seven-year-old Native American welfare recipient, talks
about what she encountered when she left the reservation. She describes
how debilitating it can be to cope with the attitude that “All Indians are
thieves. . . . All Indians are no good. Nothing but drunken Indians.”86
Sometimes there is also a detrimental internalization and reproduction
of the values in welfare reform rhetoric by the women. Activist/author
Grace Chang describes Asian immigrant and refugee women who were
able to receive some public assistance and their feelings of deep shame
about it. In addition, some of these women seem to have “absorbed, whole
sale, the dominant negative images of black Americans as welfare abusers
and positive images ofAsian Americans as ‘model minorities.’”87In another
instance, a young male El Salvadoran refugee whom Chang interviewed,
who was poor and economically struggling himself, described Mexican
immigrants as “pregnant women coming over to have babies and get wel
fare right away.”88 The negative impact on women’s own self-perceptions
as well as the learned behavior of competitive, racial/ethnic devaluation of
others that takes place among poor persons of color should be counted
among the costs of this kind of public policy.
Whereas accounts of the damaging effects of racism may not be com
pelling to many in our society, the stories about sexual violence in the lives
of poor mothers might be.89Again, the aim of many of these studies is to
persuade those who construct welfare policy to do so in a manner that is
responsive to the problems poor women actually confront. After offering
several women’s testimonies, social theorist Meredith Ralston asserts that
besides experiences of racism and sexism, the childhood physical and sex
ual abuse of women must be taken into account in order to understand
“why women are homeless, addicted, and on welfare.”90 Sometimes
women become homeless because of the emotional trauma of having been
assaulted in their homes. For instance, Linda, who was gang-raped by five
men in her apartment, and Hattie, who was raped and tortured for many
hours by two men in her apartment, both found that they just could not
go back to their homes.91 It is also a frequent occurrence for women who
are homeless to be raped when trying to find a safe place to sleep or look
ing for shelter in bad weather.92
In addition to having to face the traumatic impact of sexual assault by
strangers, intimate assaults on women who are poor that directly affect
their need for assistance also occur within their ongoing intimate rela
tionships.93 In defense of women who are stigmatized for failing to marry