discrimination among immigrants

In Bread Givers the narrator emphasizes how poor the family was and how selfless the women were expected to be in the wake of their father's pursuit of righteousness. Their father uses the excuse of religion to shift the burdens of finance and home on his wife and children, making them feel guilty and materialistic when they go wanting. Bessie, Fania, and Masha all lose the possibility for love because of their father's pride and obstinate attitude. One of her father's arguments against his daughters' lovers is poverty. He begrudges Fania's poet, claiming he will never be rich and attempts to sell Bessie to her suitors, denying Bernstein when he refuses to support him. All the while, their father continually gives away their money to charities and lodges in order to earn his salvation while they starve. Our understanding of the father's cruelty is developing with the narrator's but much of what he says and does is counter-intuitive.  His simultaneous denial and exploitation of their status as poor confuses me throughout the novel, but it is not unheard of or even uncommon among narratives about people living in poverty.  Is it a projection of a socially constructed identity created by the ideal that if you have been working hard in America you shouldn't be poor? Is it projected self-hate? Why do you think their is so much pride and yet negativity between and among poor people?