No Shame in My Game: The Working Poor in the Inner City. - book review

Progressive, The, Oct, 1999 by Marya R. Sosulski

No Shame in My Game: The Working Poor in the Inner City by Katherine S. Newman Knopf. 400 pages. $27.95.

Catherine S. Newman's latest book gives an unusual view of poverty. She and her graduate students at Columbia University talked with more than 300 Harlem residents who have jobs that don't pay living wages. And the researchers volunteered to work side-by-side with several of the residents. The result is No Shame in My Game: The Working Poor in the Inner City--a collection of compelling narratives about the lives of workers and their families, plus a discussion of the conditions that limit the economic possibilities of poor people in the United States.

An anthropologist who has spent many years researching various aspects of urban life and poverty, Newman has written extensively on these subjects. Recent books include Declining Fortunes: The Withering of the American Dream (Basic Books, 1994), and Falling from Grace: Downward Mobility in the Age of Affluence (University of California Press, 1999).

Newman came up with the idea for her current study while in the back of a taxicab in Harlem, preparing a talk she was scheduled to give for a conference on urban poverty. As she gazed out the window of the cab, she saw the neighborhood bustling with people on their way to work. This surprised her because a good deal of poverty research describes poor urban areas like Harlem as lifeless, depressing places, cluttered with people hanging around street corners with no place to go.

In No Shame in My Game, she argues that social science research has disproportionately focused on the plight of the unemployed ghetto-dweller or mothers on welfare. The media, too, depict welfare dependency as the natural state of poverty, while neglecting the majority of inner-city poor people who work. Newman cites the example of Rosa Lee Cunningham, a twenty-four-year-old single mother who combined work with illicit activities to support eight children but finally succumbed to drug addiction, prostitution, and pimping her own daughter to support her habit. Leon Dash made Rosa Lee famous and won a Pulitzer Prize for his series about her in The Washington Post. Since then, television and movies have favored similar images at the expense of showing poor households that are supported by legal--albeit insufficient--employment.

In fact, writes Newman, 69 percent of poor households have at least one working member. Many of the people Newman interviewed have held jobs at the same place for several years, often without raises totaling more than one dollar.

Seeking to correct the oversight, Newman decided to tell the stories of innercity people who put on a uniform and work at what many see as the lowest kind of employment--referred to in the book as a "McJob." She calls her prototypical restaurant the "Burger Barn." To Newman, a job working part-time for minimum wage in a fast food restaurant is representative of the limited kinds of employment open to the working poor.

Newman and her students spent time with several people employed at the Burger Barn over eighteen months. The researchers got to know the workers, their families, and their experiences of trying to earn a living in Harlem. The interviewees are hardworking and proud, even in situations that would make many others quit in frustration.

"Kids come in here . they don't have enough money," recalls "Kim," one of the respondents. "I'll be like, `You don't have enough money; you can't get the (food you ordered).' One night this little boy came in there and cursed me out. He (said), `That's why you are working at (Burger Barn). You can't get a better job. ...' I was upset and everything. I started crying. (My manager) was like, `Kim, don't bother with him. I'm saying, you got a job. You know. It is a job.'"

"Juan" supports himself with only his Burger Barn income. He contributes some of his paycheck to his ex-girlfriend (who also works at Burger Barn) and their young son and to his mother and her young children. Juan's prospects for advancement aren't promising, yet he continues to work and hope for better breaks.

Are these people typical? They seem almost unreal in their stamina. But Newman assures us that they are not exceptional. She writes, "The nation's working poor do not need their values reengineered. They do not need lessons about the dignity of work. Their everyday lives are proof enough that they share the values of their mainstream, middle class counterparts."

They are not superheroes. Rather, she says, the working poor are ordinary human beings with ordinary ideas about work and family values, perhaps with extraordinary faith in the U.S. job market. Many want to be role models for other people in their neighborhood, believing that if they work hard and long enough, the American economy will reward them as it has the middle class. Not all succeed at holding down jobs. Newman recounts the story of "Jervis," who didn't get a job at Burger Barn, although he had experience working in another fast food restaurant. A year later he still hasn't found work. Yet Jervis says he knows that he is responsible for his own success or failure. "Some people are willing to try hard and therefore they can make it, regardless if the deck is stacked against them or not," he says.