Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-g7gxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-09T12:47:59.205Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Foreword

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2021

Get access

Summary

Shame is how they get away with it. Shame is the weapon they use. Shame is the weapon you use on yourself that makes you feel so useless. And those who are shamed most often and most deeply, made to feel ashamed for so much of their life, are the poorest among us.

When others say that they are disappointed in you, they are trying to inflict shame on you. They are attempting to make you contrite and silent. To force shame upon you. The poor are the most common targets of shaming because the rich are not ashamed of how they became rich and use shame as a weapon to control those they most harm.

Shame beats you down. Shame is an ancient form of control. Shame is the mechanism used to control behaviour. Most of us are capable of feeling shame for our own actions without anyone else having to shame us. However, those who play the specific and cruel ‘shame game’ outlined in this book – a public and prolific shaming that targets the poorest among us and a mechanism that has been used with incredible effectiveness to ‘keep the poor in their place’ – are rarely ever ashamed of themselves.

In this book, Mary O’Hara shows why the ‘shame game’ being played out against poorer people in the US and the UK is so destructive and effective. She dissects how it works to help keep the poor, poor – through blaming and shaming. She outlines why, for people who have lived in poverty, the impact of being shamed can be devastating, and how those who do the shaming do so by turning a blind eye to the experiences and the voices of the poor.

For the players of the shame game – the rich and the powerful who consolidate their power and vast wealth at the expense of others – shaming people is a way of affirming how great they are. And, they constantly need to feed that affirmation. They tell us they are ‘wealth creators’ while ignoring the role of inherited fortunes or that it is in fact workers, often paid a pittance, who generate wealth. They claim they are successful because of their own talents and efforts, rather than having benefited from evergrowing social and economic inequities – divisions they created.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Shame Game
Overturning the Toxic Poverty Narrative
, pp. xiii - xviii
Publisher: Bristol University Press
Print publication year: 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×