Jane says

I am reading some Jane Addams right now - doing some thinking/writing about class and race privelege in reaction to "the transmission of poverty" school of thought. I've always thought it fairly peculiar that I did not come across her writings until my graduate training in sociology (in a seminar on American Pragmatism). Had they been introduced to me while I was working on my first masters' at the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration, I might not have jumped ship on social work. However, I suppose they did not have us read Addams for the same reason that I jumped ship: the predominance of the clinical/professional model of social work in which the client and not the context is seen as that which should be treated.

Anyway, a couple of quotes from "The Subjective Necessity of Social Settlements:"

"[T]he paradox is here: when cultivated people do stay away from a certain portion of the population, when all social advantages are persistently withheld, it may be for years, the result itself is pointed at as a reason, is used as an argument, for the continued withholding."

this one I particularly like-
"We are all uncomfortable in regard to the sincerity of our best phrases, because we hesitate to translate our philosophy into the deed."