Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well- warmed, and well-fed.
–Herman Melville
A Mindful Life / Kathryn Harper
express : discover : renew : create
And I love the way some people refer to people less fortunate than themselves as “those people.”
Amen.
I’ve been searching for the right thing to reply here. I may make people angry, and for that I’m sorry. I know this can be a sensitive issue, and I am keeping that in mind as I write this.
I think that Mr. Melville is very guilty here of over-generalizing, as are many advocates of the poor.
I think that the way we treat the poor — and in this case, I’m talking about the people that actually want to ‘help’ the poor — is the greatest obstacle to the reduction of poverty.
We tend to treat the poor as one mass, with great big rhetorical brushstrokes such as this quote. This makes us really no better than the folks la peregrina mentions who use the same width of brush to paint pictures of disdain and indifference.
The urban poor are far different than the rural poor. They have vast needs, desires and assets at their disposal. I can’t speak much about the rural poor. I can however report what I’ve observed of the urban poor.
What I’ve seen is that once you’ve accepted being poor and have figured out what options there are and what you can do and you’ve lived the lifestyle of the poor for awhile, there’s no reason to stop being poor. Urban poverty is addictive. It needs to be treated that way.
I’ve seen it firsthand. Get someone from a day-labor company, give them the easy job that we do, they do it well, offer them a job and they decline. Or if they do accept, they’re gone after a week. It doesn’t happen all the time, but it happens so much more than not, then you stop offering jobs to day-laborers, some of whom would undoubtedly be interested in no longer being poor.
There’s a guy that sits in front of the local market with a sign. I don’t give him any money. He has all of his arms and legs, so I figure he could go to a day-labor agency if he truly needed cash. It also tells me that he must be doing okay by sitting at the market rather than doing day-labor if he’s there daily, which he is.
One final anecdote: My company currently employs three homeless men. One put a down-payment on a place with his first check. The other two have been working here a while, and appear to have no immediate plans to secure anything resembling long-term housing. They are the two fattest people in the company.
I got this job through the day-labor route. I’m lucky they took a chance on me, because they tend not to take those chances on day-laborers. There was a betting pool established for when I’d leave and the longest bet was four months. That would have been up in January of last year. I mention that just to show this is the way it should happen. And the people in the cities who don’t want to be poor can thank the people who do for throwing yet another obstacle in their way.
Thanks for weighing in, Chad. You’ve provided a thoughtful reflection. I do agree there is a risk of “poverty mentality” that can shape a person’s thinking and actions. I lived that myself for many years.
You write from your personal experience, and I’ve not much to say in response. The reason that quote caught my attention, however, is that since my living situation has improved dramatically, I notice in myself that my thinking has changed. There is a tendency to forget what the struggle was like because I am well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed. I want to be careful not to slip into false assessments of others.
I donate to Modest Needs, which attempts to help people living paycheck-to-paycheck who encounter unexpected expenses from ending up on the streets. (You can read a better explanation at the site.) As a partner, I am allowed to evaluate and provide input on requests to help decide if the grant should be made. I find myself wrestling with empathy for how damn expensive it is to raise a family, versus wondering what financial mismanagement may have played a hand in them ending up stretched so thin. It is tempting to judge, to come up with ideas how they should handle their lives, but I don’t have all the information. Just trying to help myself remember this.