America Doesn't Care About Poor People
"I jus' want somethin' to eat" is a plea you get used to hearing in Hyde Park, Chicago, usually accompanied by an outstretched hand and eyes that are surprisingly self-assured -- even assertive -- for someone who depends upon strangers for sustenance. The typical University of Chicago student -- white, wealthy, and professedly liberal -- will do one of two things: either stop to hand him some change or, in an overwhelming majority of the time, pretend not to see him.
Something interesting happens when the road less traveled is taken, however; the man accepts the change, usually with a sincere expression of gratitude, and walks away. The student, meanwhile, leaves with a feeling that is more pronounced than indifference, yet less self-righteous than outright pride. It is a sentiment that can more or less be summed up by a defeated sigh; yes, the world may be a horrible place, but I don't have to buy into it.
A week after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, I (along with thousands of others in the blogosphere, I'm sure) chided Barbara Bush for a particularly uncouth choice of words she used to describe her visit to the Astrodome, where many of the evacuees who ended up in Houston were being housed. In a column for my high school newspaper, I wrote:
After surveying the conditions inside the Reliant Astrodome, former First Lady Barbara Bush made this puzzling remark: "Many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them." Bush, who once vented to Diane Sawyer, "Why should we hear about body bags and deaths? It's not relevant. Why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?" when asked about her son's war in Iraq, also shared her concern that some of the storm refugees might want to stay in Texas for good -- "which is sort of scary," she says. Well, allow me to put Barbara's beautiful mind at ease.
Two years later, I am sad to say that Barbara Bush was right. Far from being "puzzling," her remark -- as devoid of taste and compassion as it was -- also happened to be dead-on. Many of the people in the Astrodome were "underprivileged;" in fact, many of the people in New Orleans were "underprivileged." Before Hurricane Katrina, nearly one out of every four families in New Orleans lived below the poverty line. In a city with no light rail or subway system to speak of, nearly 30 percent of New Orleans' homes did not have a car. In other words, a disaster existed long before a disaster hit.
Mrs. Bush's most controversial assertion was that things were "working very well" for the evacuees. After all, being forced out of your home and potentially losing your loved ones is hardly an image that one would associate with things working well (the Bush administration notwithstanding). But Mrs. Bush was on to something in her observation that poor people were being treated differently in the Astrodome, post-Katrina, than they had been treated in New Orleans, pre-Katrina. For a few days in September, they were being cared for.
It's funny, in a country that Ray Nagin, Kathleen Blanco, Michael Brown, Michael Chertoff, and George W. Bush all call home, Kanye West -- of all people -- managed to elicit a public outcry when he said, "George Bush doesn't care about black people." Well, he was partly right. America's worst-kept secret is that it doesn't care about poor people. No, not that it doesn't do enough to help (it tries), or that it doesn't at least claim to be concerned (it does) ... no, America literally does not care about poor people. In the same way that most Americans do not care about soccer or Kevin Federline.
It hurts me to say this, because I know that this sentiment is generally not shared among the Americans (and non-Americans) who I am fortunate enough to know. Two years ago, I wrote:
And to this day, I squirm at the praise lauded upon our country for our resolve and our fortitude in the face of such adversities. Individual heroes -- the countless, nameless, faceless men and women who work tirelessly to give our evacuees a temporary home complete with cots and clothes and food supplies, or, in remoter regions of the world, devote their lives to improving the well-being of others -- they deserve our revering attention, our unbridled adulation. But we, as a nation, are quite simply and patently not there yet.
My feelings today are largely unchanged. In our public consciousness, poor people exist only to feed the notion that, if they scratch and claw hard enough, they might one day be able to join the coveted ranks of the American middle class. Our society reveres and elevates the rich and powerful; even when we make fun of them, we do not disparage their wealth or power but simply what they choose to do with it. We are so fixated on looking longingly upwards that we do not see the people we have trampled upon underneath. (My lower-middle class upbringing, for example, taught me little about the way people lived just a stratum below me, but a great deal about the class that I was one day supposed to infiltrate.)
The problem is, of course, that this all comes at a time when incomes are rising and, technically, we're all getting wealthier; our collective well-being over the past few decades has skyrocketed. Even television shows that depict characters in the most desperate of situations -- say, a show about an airplane that has crashed onto a deserted island and the survivors are left to fend for themselves -- are filled with urban professionals who must adjust to a strange new lifestyle of scarcity. Otherwise, we continue to gorge ourselves on stories about celebrities with too much disposable income, or doctors with too much disposable income, or my personal favorite -- Dirty Sexy Money, a new show coming this fall about Manhattanites with too much disposable income -- in a country where 40 million people do not have health insurance.
We make fun of the rich, yes, but we crucify the poor. We do not like hearing about them; we do not like seeing them; we do not like thinking about them in terms of anything other than their supposed failure to achieve America's promise of social mobility. Different standards for different people; and let the damned be damned. In this context, the warm feeling that came from knowing that, thanks to you, someone has food in his stomach for another evening takes on a slightly demented tone when you reach for your third bag of Fritos in your quest to pull off yet another all-nighter, doesn't it?
You see, that's the hideous truth that Katrina was brazen enough to reveal to us two years ago, and still, we have done nothing to decelerate the ever-widening chasm between the American poor and the American mainstream. Why should we, when even idealistic young college students are growing increasingly content in pretending that they don't see a problem? Katrina was not strong enough to cause the crisis of American poverty to come to a head... so what will be?
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"America Doesn't Care About Poor People"
Bush: No we do not care,they are not part of my plan. They are an obstacle.
Cheney: Let nature get rid of them.
Rice: Who? Poor people? I do not recall.
Rove: We need a concentration camp.
Gonzo: They are all criminals.
FEMA: We need another Katrina to come and clean up the mess.
Dear Frank:
My dealings with the homeless have been different. In New York they usually don't say anything after you give them money. They act like disgruntled salesman awaiting a commission check. (When you get out of college you'll learn all about that)
Most homeless people aren't lovable Tom Joads who mother nature forced out of a home. They are people with serious drug, alcohol and mental problems. Honorable Ed Koch did not think it was constitutional to leave them in insane asylums so he thought best to let them roam the streets of New York.
That brings me to my next point of Katrina and the Constitution. I don't know if you've taken any poly-sci classes in school yet, if not, sign up for one next semester and learn about the FEDERALIST PAPERS.
They were a series of articles written by some of our founding fathers most of which was Alexander Hamilton, the many who created our economy.
Their biggest fear was to have a populace that became dependent on an omnipotent centralized government. One that would become lazy and not think for itself. The people of New Orleans WAITED for HELP from the federal government.
1) Their governor refused to heed warning signs from the federal government and did not enact the national guard
2) Their mayor (who got re-elected) pulled pump operators off duty and did not use the city's school buses because he "didn't know where to go."
3) The people of New Orleans refused to leave because "These warnings happen all the time and I can't afford to go out of town and get a hotel room for a false alarm."
They wanted relief from the federal government and they got it in the form of $2000 debit cards and they bought themselves Gucci bags.
So Frank, please don't lecture us about the poor.
I recall a "Doonesbury" strip from the mid-70's: Duke and Honey are talking, and Duke says to Honey: "Of course all labor leaders love the working class - that's how they avoid belonging to it!"
Many in the middle class despise the poor, because the poor are uncomfortably close (one paycheck); politicians love the poor for the reason depicted in the "Doonesbury" strip above - they can avoid belonging to the poor.
If you are 'economically challenged', one way to re-frame your circumstances to be more palatable and workable is to incorporate the concept that 'help is NOT on the way', and that it solely and exclusively YOUR job to start getting out of whatever kind of hole you're in.
This short-circuits the lofty promise cycle, and will help you focus first on the short term, and then the long term. Get yourself a shredder, or at least a good sharp pair of scissors, and pre-mulch the junk mail, get yourself some low-wattage bulbs/cut off the circuit breakers when not needed, break it down to local phone service/get a cell phone with a phone card, learn how to cook, and stock up on your basic dietary staples, and start kind of 'roughing it' in your own home. When you start treating driving as a responsibility/chore rather than a fun activity, your fuel usage/bill will drop like a rock. It takes a little bit of re-thinking, but if you have 300 bucks over your rent costs, you can make it month-to-month, providing you've got a little bit of self-determination in your soul, as it were. Tell the 'we are from the government, and we are here to help' people to find Honest Work, and develop and implement your own solutions. Once you've done it, you'll never travel within 50 miles of a welfare office again, and best of all, you can then teach others. Work full-time, save your money,
don't make excuses, and, like they say in the Nike commercial, 'just do it'. Nuff said.
Class is perhaps the most underexamined issue facing America today. There isn't a single root to the problem, and so many people seem to overlook the psychological effects that a life of poverty can have.
Truly, the only solution there is to poverty is a change in American values, and that means shifting away from our desire for wealth and material goods. Nobody needs a lot of money to be happy. What is necessary is health, education, and the basic freedom to do whatever makes oneself happy. The poor aren't just victims of the rich, but of many other institutions in this country. Our goal shouldn't be to make the poor rich, but to make it so money isn't the key to everything.
Solution to poverty. Simple make sure every one who is able to work has a job that pays enough to live on and save a little for retirement.It would be nice buuut corporations world wide will not be willing to cut into their bottom line. Also this solution would destroy their false feeling of superiority.
"America Doesn't Care About Poor People"?
What country ever has? Hence Jesus' remark, "The poor you will always have with you..."
Pretty much the best article written on Huff Post I've read in a while.
We need to organise them but the poor are kept so ignorant and they are so lied to how can anthing ever mobilize them. They need to be able to take power, but short of some sort of organized force. There just aren't enough enlightened middle class people to outweigh the selfish ones who are just scared mainly.
america does care about it's poor people if for no other reason than that they are very quickly becoming those poor people that they didn't use to care about, thanks to a stolen election in 2000
it is the bush/cheney/halliburton cartel and every corporate croney on their list that could give a shit about the rest of us
in fact, it is very clear, after 9/11, iraq & katrina that they have absolutely no regard for human life whatsoever unless, of course, it hasn't been born yet
Hedonistic Americans are too busy building wine cellars and walk-in cigar humidors in their McMansions to notice the poor.
"Charity and mercy...pffffffffft. That's for West Coast tree huggers, nuns, and sissies."
You know, I can remember a time when only twenty-something yuppies were caught up in rampant and unapologetic self-indulgence. The Reagan-era mentality of garrish and tacky one- upsmanship has crept to middle-aged folk and senior citizens.
Everybody is a freaking credit-card-abusing yuppie these days. The only thing that's changed is they're no longer wearing alligator-emblazoned Izod shirts.
Sorry, I work too hard for what little I earn to feel guilty about someone that wishes to exist off of the toil of others. Yes, I may be "greedy", but I see my job as slowly diminishing my health. So when somebody demands that I give them part of my paycheck, I see it as them demanding a piece of my spine. Most of those that want a piece of my spine haven't worked theirs in a long time, except to walk to the store and buy a 40 ouncer. My health won't support me and the upright walking leaches forever.
Hey I gotta solution....
GO TO WORK....
please note that this no-compassion (probably doesn't know the meaning of the word) Kundera troll is not to be confused with
KHANDARA, WHO SOMETIMES WEARS A TIN FOIL CAP AND THINKS THAT 9/11 WAS AN INSIDE JOB
let light love & peace prevail...
You got a job for someone ??
There are NO jobs for the poor. They don't exist. If an illegal alien doesn't have the non-skilled jobs, then a teenager does.
Try being black, basically uneducated, with a police record and compete for minimum wage jobs, if you can find any. Sorry, but it doesn't happen anymore.
I know these things as I work with parolees 'out west' and have seen way too many end up violated and back in jail because there are NO jobs !! Nada,, none...
It's a building national crisis.
You know what, I'll tell you true. As a conservative, Christian, rightwing, fascist fundamentalist I do not give 2 S**ts about MOST of America's poor.
I have spent quite a few years of my life living in amongst a number of these poor folks and tried help people to climb out of the holes created by the mistakes they have made of their lives.
I tried to give a welfare mom and her kids a respectable life, out of the slums and into the real world. She chose to go back to the slum with a loser who couldn't even hold a job because "he can come whenever I need someone to, and he makes me respect him when I get a bad attitude (slaps her around when she confronts him)". I had a job which tended to interfere with my constant presence, and I don't beat on women (no matter how much the temptation!).
I have tried to lift up drug-addicted street girls; giving them a safe place to sleep, decent meals, helped them to get into rehab, tried to help their kids and family members. To no avail, mostly as all of them eventually returned to their past ways or were dragged down by their own families (who usually were the ones that helped them get into trouble in the first place).
I have tried to give second chances to alcoholics, to help them find work, have a place to live, to show them that someone cares. It was all a waste as these people are so wrapped up in enjoying their own misery that in the end they will always return to self-destruction and try to take me with them.
part two
You reach a point after a while where you realize that the best thing you can do for anyone is to let them know that their are opportunities out there for them to exploit if they so desire, and if they don't want to try or they think somebody owes them something just let them kill themselves and get out of the way of the rest of the world so people who want to try have the opportuntiy to do so.
If we let the stupid, the useless, and the lazy kill themselves off (especially before they can breed), its better for the gene pool and mankind's future.
You argue so gracefully that the problem is systemic. No one man, rich and charitable as he might be, can save a nation worth of the products of poverty and stupidity. In short, been there, but it changed my thinking and not my Christian duty.
I find myself in some agreement and in some disagreement.
Mostly agreement that America tends to not look to deeply into the problem of the poor. I remember when the Ronnie Raygun administration, under his "leadership" declared there are probably no more than 30 thousand homeless people in America and that ketchup was a vegatable, so yes it's easy to believe the people who can make a difference simply do not.
I've found myself in the position of walking past those asking for a handout but only because it happens so often.
In L.A. they followed a couple of guys who worked the offramps proclaiming the usual "Homeless Vet" or"out of work have to feed the kids". Turned out neither was true, AND these guys were bringing in about 2 to 3 hundred A DAY! One guy was followed to his car and back to his home. He showed no remorse and no shame.
NOT to say most poor who are begging are not actually poor, but when you see things like this you have a tendency to not be as charitable as you once might have been.
BUT there are deeper reasons, some sociological and some beyond the control of the poor and homeless. My top belief is the greed factor.
ENRON is perhaps the best example. A few men decided to make themselves exceptionally wealthy and ended up making a lot, thousands in fact, much less well off if not outright relying on a small fixed SS income.
This attitude, with the outsourcing, the lowering of wage standards, use of illegals, and the greed of companies to do anything to make more and more money at the expense of employees is all a part of the problems of the poor.
They just showed a video in NOLA of the housing shortage and the first thing landlords did, when realizing there was a housing shortage, was start gouging rent prices.
The Love Of Money Is Indeed The Root Of All Evil.
Yeah, OK, we don't care about the poor, yeah right. I live in the inner city of Baltimore and let me tell you, we care about the poor, its the poor that don't care about themselves that is the problem. We care about them too much, we give them too much, so much that they do nothing for themselves. Why would they? They can make more money off the welfare system and not pay taxes on it, then they can if they were to go work two jobs.
We pay their rent, Section 8 anyone? We pay their power bill, we pay their health insurance, we pay for their food (and alcohol and tobacco).
This article is typical liberal dooms day bs. America not caring for the poor is just plain wrong. Have you ever been to another country where people actually do live in poverty? Cause they sure as hell don't in America and if they are then they simply don't know the avenues to get money from the government.
What do you suggest ?? If you stop welfare aren't you condemming them rather harshly ? They already lack a means to get off welfare. Argue as you wish, but there are no programs to get these folks into jobs that actually exist, nor are there schools to teach them skills where there are actually jobs. The lowest paid jobs have been taken by illegal aliens in many areas.
I also abhor folks that try to muddle their arguements by comparing America to other poor countries. That's just stupid. There is a huge difference there... a lot of poor countries don't have the resources or industry to even begin to employ the masses. But we should...
Most poor folks would happily work for a living if they had the work. THAT is the issue. Of course there will always be an element of laziness and professional welfare recipients. The system, itself, is at fault for that, because it can't provide jobs or hope-- just maintenence.
What REALLY surprises and worries me is that any attempt to help the poor is always viewed as a Liberal cause. That is insanity !! And a strong indication of a total lack of true compassion for fellow humans. Anyone who takes that stance truly has no idea what the scope of the problem really is... there's more going on here than some welfare Moms, addicts, and a beggar on the corner.
last i heard you couldn't purchase alcohol or tobacco with food stamps. section 8 doesn't pay their rent, it helps them with it, depending on the income to the family. (ie rent is 750/month but the person can only afford 400.) the welfare system doesn't keep em riding high on the hog or anything of the sort. but they stay on it and don't work because they have to feed their families. you don't seem to realize that a person making 50 bucks more then the gov't cut off for assistance is still to poor to feed their family. so they don't work, cuz its the only way to ensure food on the table. (i am NOT saying that all persons on welfare abuse the system. some do, yes, but why punish everyone for what some are doing? that's like pulling an apple out of a tree, seeing that the apple is bad and then just dousing the rest of the tree in lighter fluid and turning it into ash.)
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Posted August 29, 2007 | 10:30 AM (EST)