Intersections of Race, Gender, and Precarity

Navigating Insecurities in an American City

Stephanie M. Baran

• Publisher: Lexington Books
• Year: 2022
• eBook ISBN: 9781978758032
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Agricultural Public Policy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

In Intersections of Race, Gender, and Precarity: Navigating Insecurities in an American City, Stephanie Baran argues that when it comes to assistance the United States government often creates more problems than it solves. These institutions are not in the business of creating a pathway for people to escape poverty, often compounding that poverty instead. Through a two-year ethnographic study of poverty and insecurity in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the author shows how people navigate situations of poverty through interviews with recipients and organizations as well as those working at a local community pantry. Consequently, research uncovered how local food organizations with connections to the Milwaukee Chapter of the Black Panther Party hide their more radical roots to protect food donations from white donors, in essence protecting white fragility. People are far closer to experiencing poverty than they realize, as shown by the Government Shutdown of 2019 and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, and typically have incomplete and inaccurate ideas of poverty as well as how people can experience upward mobility. Intersections of Race, Gender, and Precarity reveals this gap through a focus on how all these factors show up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Figures
• List of Abbreviations
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Note on Methodology
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: “Let’s go eat in the office”: Life at a Milwaukee Food Pantry
• Chapter 2: Benefits: How Public Perceptions Hurt Recipient Access
• Chapter 3: Perceptions of Poverty
• Chapter 4: Food Insecurity in an American City
• Chapter 5: Outside the Pantry
• Chapter 6: What Happens When a Government “Fails” to Act?
• Chapter 7: “I feel like a rat in a race”: The Benefit Experience
• Chapter 8: Hunger Task Force: Your Free and Local Food Bank
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Author