Social Constructions? So what?

I feel that Schnieder and Ingram felt as though they were getting at a truly novel idea that I think was not present. The notions that some groups are stigmatized and that that affects both their level of participation and the perception of how policy affecting them is viewed by the masses are not as revolutionary as one would get the sense of by reading the piece. I am particularly not convinced by the claim early in the piece that "[t]he theory is important because it helps explain why some groups are advantaged more than others independently of traditional notions of political power". To me, Figure 1 screams "traditional notions of political power". When I first read this I expected to later read about sometimes minorities not being as disadvantaged as one would expect, or that sometimes rich, white, men don't have it so easy. This was not the case. How does their theory about social constructions of target groups account for political advantage/disadvantage any different than popular images and ideas of target groups?

I agreed with the authors that there are objective realites to target groups (falling below x amount of income, driving a car, being a certain race/religion/sexual orientation, etc.) but I failed to understand whose construction of these groups was the most relevant. While it is true that there are objective relaties to the target groups, the authors failed to show that there is an overarching and popularly held constrution of group A; rather, the authors admitted that "Social constructions are often conflicting and subject to contention. Policy directed at persons whose income falls below the official poverty level identifies a specific set of persons. The social constructions could portray them as disadvantaged people whose poverty is not their fault or as lazy persons who are benefitting from other peoples' hard work."

If there is no agreed upon construction for a certain group, how can we talk about the implications of it if they are so fluid? If we lower our standards and agree that perhaps group A has a concrete construction of group B, what can be said of that, if anything?

Bottom line: the ideas presented in the piece were just common sense, intuitive ideas that were grounded in little to no empirical work. Yes, the idea that depending on how a group is viewed affects A, B, and C... but viewed by whom?