Barbara Ehrenreich: Rediscovering American Poverty
from TomDispatch:
Rediscovering Poverty
How We Cured “The Culture of Poverty,” Not Poverty Itself
By Barbara Ehrenreich
It’s been exactly 50 years since Americans, or at least the non-poor among them, “discovered” poverty, thanks to Michael Harrington’s engaging book The Other America. If this discovery now seems a little overstated, like Columbus’s “discovery” of America, it was because the poor, according to Harrington, were so “hidden” and “invisible” that it took a crusading left-wing journalist to ferret them out.
Harrington’s book jolted a nation that then prided itself on its classlessness and even fretted about the spirit-sapping effects of “too much affluence.” He estimated that one quarter of the population lived in poverty -- inner-city blacks, Appalachian whites, farm workers, and elderly Americans among them. We could no longer boast, as President Nixon had done in his “kitchen debate” with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev in Moscow just three years earlier, about the splendors of American capitalism.
At the same time that it delivered its gut punch, The Other America also offered a view of poverty that seemed designed to comfort the already comfortable. The poor were different from the rest of us, it argued, radically different, and not just in the sense that they were deprived, disadvantaged, poorly housed, or poorly fed. They felt different, too, thought differently, and pursued lifestyles characterized by shortsightedness and intemperance. As Harrington wrote, “There is… a language of the poor, a psychology of the poor, a worldview of the poor. To be impoverished is to be an internal alien, to grow up in a culture that is radically different from the one that dominates the society.”
Harrington did such a good job of making the poor seem “other” that when I read his book in 1963, I did not recognize my own forbears and extended family in it. All right, some of them did lead disorderly lives by middle class standards, involving drinking, brawling, and out-of-wedlock babies. But they were also hardworking and in some cases fiercely ambitious -- qualities that Harrington seemed to reserve for the economically privileged. ..................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175516/tomgram%3A_barbara_ehrenreich%2C_american_poverty%2C_50_years_later/#more
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Poverty has many causes, not just one small group of causes.
I've known people hit by calamity. They could do nothing to stop the poverty that hit them. Most recovered after a few years. Some broke. Many were elderly and eventually just died. One woman had a genetic disease that put her in a wheelchair at age 10.
There are lots of reasons. But seldom did anybody just swindle people out of the money and opportunities they didn't have. It's happened--usually with the people so swindled cooperating and making, well, bad choices. But some are just robbed blind (as opposed to "robbed open-eyed"
.
The idea that bad choices aren't involved is a crock. It's ass-covering. Self-absolution. Avoiding introspection and regret by means of blaming others, God, fate, the universe.
I'm watching kids set themselves up for poverty. They are making choices. They will deny that they've chosen poverty. The girl who decided to have a baby and then drop out of school. The girl who thinks waitressing for tips is more important than her junior year grades. The athlete who was given a raw deal and needed to get a job to pay his own way but who put sports over grades, and then increased work hours over sports.
Recently an elderly couple left their home to go to a party a few miles away. They got on I-10, a local road in these parts. It was a choice. The man missed his exit, an accident. Then he chose not to get off at any of the following wrong exits.
The couple's kids located them in Tallahassee, Florida, a few days later. They never chose to go to Florida. They hadn't decided to go to Florida. Their choices, however, were such that Florida was their only destination and where they'd have to wind up.
A lot of people can't admit this. My neighbors can't. They made choices. They're working lower-middle class or working poor. They made decisions that had consequences they didn't like. Their current choice when confronted with counterevidence is to deny it. They failed because of racism. Others succeed because of pure luck. The guy who took unemployment as a chance to leverage his work history and job training and get certified in a related field then scored a job at $15k/year higher? Just luck. No choice involved. If he made good choices, what was their excuse?
This isn't a moral issue. It's not an issue of honor or self-worth. The kids making bad choices act like you're insulting them when you point out they've made a mistake. They deny it. They blame others. They're children. 18, perhaps, but children.
