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Case Studies: Clarence SpignerSam Clark |
Jonathan Gorstein - Abstract |
Jonathan Gorstein - Outline |
Anne Marie Kimbal |
Ann Kurth Angry ManAbstractThe fact that Arnold Blackthorn was never legally married makes little difference to him. He has been divorced and is now without “wife” and child. Arnold is presently caught up in a bureaucratic maze of welfare rules and legalese that seems totally hostile to just him. He’s is worried to the point of hysteria about his 6 year-old daughter. He feels little Rayna’s situation grows worst by the minute due to her mothers’ negligence of which only he has witnessed, and possibly from the new man now in the house. Child Protective Services has no record of Rayna being abuse. Arnold is the one the case-workers do not like. His brooding mood and intense demeanor is off-putting, and his unscheduled drop-ins with complaints expressed in a rage does not his promote his alleged case of child abuse. Arnold knows the deck is stacked against him, but he can not understand why child’s mother is automatically given the benefit of the doubt? Arnold has a high school education. He works for a construction company by day and drives a cab at night. His dream is to start his own home repair business. Having been singled all of his adult life (he’s now 43 years old), Arnold use to live only for himself. Then he met Rayna’s mother, and her child came into his life. A system of child welfare seems built just to keep him away. Rayna is not Arnold’s biological child. When asked his relationship to the little girl, without hesitation he responded that he is her father. To him, this was a true statement. But he now realizes that the “truth” in his eyes will only diminish his credibility as a concerned “father.” He realizes when it’s found out that he lied to officials, his declaration of parent-hood will sink his case of the child being at-risk. All he can think about is the physical and psychological abuse that surely
will be visited upon his daughter. Disciplinary Bases: Public Health; Social Work; Public Policy; Law; Psychology; Sociology Learning Objectives:
Child of GodAbstract Elana Billings always knew she was adopted. She came from Philippines as a baby, and that is just about all information about her background she has been able to get from her parents. They lived on what was left of a farm in a back-water town of 15,000 people located somewhere in the northeast corner of the State of Oregon. Elena’s father, Jack Billings, was a red-neck with a heart-of-gold. You’d have to know Jack to understand that description. Her mother, Abigail, worked as a nurses’ aid in the State’s mental institution before it was converted to a minimum security prison. Jack now works as prison guard there. His job has done little to improve his view of humanity. When she reached age18, Elena won a scholarship and went away to college. Stories about the “nature” of Black inferiority still tore at her. Her mother cautioned that father’s opinions came from ignorance and his own sense of inferiority. Still, Elana wrestled with personal feelings of inferiority which exacerbated when she begin to suspect that her biological father might have been an African American soldier. Still, she gravitated towards her new found “blackness” both politically and socially at college. Blacks seem to reach out to her under a collective assumption that she obviously was “one of them.” She saw little reason to debate it since she enjoyed the social cohesion. She joined Black political and cultural organizations; dated Black, and studied African and African American history. She developed interests in biology and the social sciences, and combining them, built an academic background for a career in public health or cultural medicine. Her studies started focusing on the determinants of health: i.e., genetics,
the role of the social and cultural environment, lifestyle factors, and the
health delivery infrastructure. These approaches re-sparked her concern about
just how “black” she might be. For instance, how biologically predisposed
to certain diseases was she? Was she more or less vulnerable to certain socio-environmental
assaults? Did culturally-based assumptions about health behaviors foster blame
or credit; and how would she fit-into the status-quo of the health and medical
establishment? Disciplinary Bases: Public Health; Sociology; Biology; Psychology; Semantics; Public Policy Learning Objectives:
The Un-ChosenAbstract Jefro Snider was a very sick man. The night was cold and the pain in his side was excruciating. He urinated behind a dumpster in the alley, and could not tell if red color in his pee came as a result of the neon sign that reflected from a bar over-head or not. He shuffled to a doorway to sleep, and wait for the morning sun. Jefro grew up during the Jim Crow Era in South Carolina. His father, an impoverished
share-cropper, died young, leaving him and his two younger brothers, Henry
and John, to be were raised by their mother. The boys were all in their teens
when their mother died, and so they moved north to New York City to make their
way in the world. When he met Cathy, a middle-class young woman from a troubled family, it was
as if the two would form an everlasting bond and shelter each-other from a
heartless world. But in less than a year, Cathy left. That was seven years
ago and Jefro has been roaming the back allies of major American cities since. Disciplinary Bases: Public Health; Anthropology; Sociology; Public Policy; Geography; History Learning Objectives:
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