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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Frank,
Your questions are hard to answer. I would hope the needy would be helped along with the rest of the country when we start improving things. Right now, I think we are kind of preoccupied with dealing with the problems caused by us starting and encouraging wars and turning the world to hatred. You see the poor getting a bad deal while I see the oil rich alligned with the military industrial complex to suck as much money as possible, and using the church as a voting base by setting the stage to pit religion against religion to justify their war and profit from preparations for more. The purpose of the conservatives is to construct dividing lines so that they can feel good about controlling wealth and denying it to those on the wrong side of the line. They gain power because their message is always so appealing. Eventually the liberals always regain power and have a little time to clean up some of the mess before the next cycle of a new message. Hopefully next time, the liberals will also do something to help those less fortunate than themselves.
George Bush and the rest of his liberal followers believe, like the Reaganites before them, that if you give more money to the rich, it will somehow "trickle down" to the poor and improve their lives.
The fact is, all it ever does is make the rich richer. The gap grows larger and the poor stay poor.
LOL
Liberal Bush supporters
"May you be blessed with shoulders as broad as your mind."
That was a thoughtful article, Mr Lin, and I am encouraged to hear from students who are seeing these issues, rather than pretending not to. Now if commuters can begin to have a similar revelation there is hope for urban America.
But there is an additional way to give yourself that feeling from charity, and it's even better. Find the local businesses, give them your business and let "Burger King" go begging. Boycott the national chains, recognize that your college IS part of the community, no matter how different it is from the rest of the city.
I grew up some what poor. My Mom raised 4 kids alone. Was on food stamps for 1 month (swore she would never use them again and has not). I am middle class now. I worked hard for it and made some good and bad decisions. The poor need something more than money or hand outs. They need self respect and self discipline. I know "poor" people, and they would be laughed at by the poor of other nations, because of how much material goods they have. Americans give more to charity than all other nations on earth combined, as well as government aid to poor nations. We are the kindest people on earth. Period. Most rich people today have earned their wealth. 100 years ago, maybe from inheritance.
Mr. Lin speaks in the time worn mind set that the plight of the poor is a matter of Americans not being charitable enough. This old saw plays right into the Republican talking points about poverty being a matter of private charity rather than a public responsibility.
There is little to be done for the broken spirited, homeless and indigent other than charity, either public or private. However the truth is that the working poor suffer from practical poverty in numbers vastly exceeding those of the hopeless and resigned, often mentally ill, “hard core” poor.
We are frightened by the poor, as if it is catching, just as we are attracted to the wealthy as if that were catching. Neither is true. What is true is that each of us is as capable as he or she has the wherewithal to be, given circumstances of origin, education and inspiration. That capability determines where we end up in the spectrum of wealth, or actually more realistically the spectrum of poverty.
Given the limited number of CEO jobs, the somewhat more numerous VP jobs, the prospects for starting up a business, the diminishing number of middle management jobs, and the growing number of jobs that do not pay enough to keep you above the poverty line, where you fall in the spectrum of poverty is, in a statistical sense, not of your choosing.
Practically speaking, there is not much to be done to change the proportion of high to low paying jobs. Even communists systems recognize this, but the disparity in pay between the leadership and the proletariat is less pronounced. What can be done, short of communism, is to insure a national minimum wage is a living wage and that unions are free to organize and bargain.
One thing I have learned from living and working is that money in the hands of the working class finds its way to charity more so than when in the hands of the wealthy.
"What can be done, short of communism, is to insure a national minimum wage is a living wage and that unions are free to organize and bargain."
Unfortunately, corporate America has found it's way around these concepts: Globilazation. If labor costs rise in order to provide more Americans with a liveable wage, corporate America simply whisks their jobs to a more impoverished country.
"simply whisks their jobs"
You may assume that unions have figured that out. You may also have noticed that a large number of non umion Americans have awoken to it.
I hope you are not one of the folks that believes that low wages are essential to a strong economy, because quite the opposite is true. Economics has been hijacked by boot lickers to the wealthy. See the blog referenced in my profile. Political action to correct off shoring will be necessary and is even inevitable, once you realize where we have been, how much things have deteriorated, and that they will continue to deteriorate as a logical outcome of current economic policy.
"It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail." Gore Vidal
Sad but true I'm afraid.
Beautifully written piece on a issue that America has been unwilling to raise and discuss for many years.
I am also a great believer that America doesn't care about its poor but I also feel that it has alot to do with the fact that America has been founded on the basis of 'individualism'. The human ability to claw your way out of poverty.
Any measures used by the government to at least create a level playing field is seen as hand outs as many American tax payers would rather see their taxes to the Iraq than think of the poor 'getting their hands' on their 'hard earned money'. American taxpayers (rich, middle class alike) have never been huge fans of social programs to help the poor.
In the richest country in the world, it is hard to believe that citizens are so unwilling to commit to putting their taxes to helping fellow Americans in the their own country instead so much time is devoted to E News and the super rich, most who have been born into affluence or those who use their body and connections to reach the top.
Until taxpayers see social programs that help the poor as an investment and commit to helping America's poorest, the income gap within the US will continue to get worse.
Frank,
Your article has made me an instant fan. Very few people make the effort to bring up the subject of class these days. And you've identified the reason: America just doesn't care. Joe Bageant is perhaps the leading voice on this subject, but you won't find his writings on this site.
The fact is that the American capitalist system is mean as hell. Our sink-or-swim mentality simply ignores the little fish who can't swim with the sharks. Let's face it: There are a lot of good people in this country who are simply not well prepared to compete, either due to low intelligence, health problems, dirt poor upbringing, or any number of other disadvantages. We just leave these people to die in squalor without health care, while mentally challenged rich people like our President have the nerve to suggest that those who fail are lazy.
The real kick in the teeth for the working poor is the fact that the politicians and the news media are owned by the rich. They don't want the plight of the poor to be covered on the news, because then the populace would demand change. They do want unfair tax breaks, so they buy votes in the legislature. The poor, and the middle class as well, don't receive honest information and have no political voice with which to battle this injustice.
And the US has the gall to claim moral superiority over other countries!
amen!
Well said. Here is the link. http://www
Neoliberal policies transfer massive amounts of wealth upwards. Google the term, you will be seeing it again and again, so long as the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.
The churches want to "broker" welfare so that they, not the government helps the poor. Bush pays them off with "faith-based initiatives" and tax breaks but the have a history of not being charitable, as in the Great Depression. Yet, the churches receive vast sums of money. Talk about stealing from the poor.
American has two factories - one for wealthy investors, and one for the working poor. The ratio is 1,000 to 1. Yet by using gay rights, racial prejudice, abortion, guns, and war, the very people who need the benefits vote Republican. This undermines their unions and is called "false consciousness" in Europe.
This is all that Rove had to do - capitalize on the ignorance and the fears and prejudices of the White Americans, and most Presidents have been Republican for the past twenty seven years.
How the one tenth of one-percent screwed the 99.9% is the hatred and wedge issues employed by Rove and Strausians. Half of every tax dollar goes right into useless armaments by wealthy defense contractors while your social security is in the toilet with guys like Larry Craig. America, wake up!
I have been saddened by scenes of starvation in India, disease in Africa and hurricane ravaged South Sea islands but it took events like Katrina to show me how well we handle disasters or look after our poor or displaced.
How well we can supply flu vaccine to our own citizens, how well we feed our hungry is a national version of our ability to deal with Katrina. Your post deals with urban poor but most are rural white folks who we don't often see.
Well said Mr. Lin.
Since the 80's the American narrative has been re-created in the Reaganesque rugged individual BS
UC - typical deflection argument; try addressing the facts in this country.
ck - unspecific ('a proportion', 'An American'), no point made pertaining to the argument at hand; does America care about the poor or does it not? are you saying most Americans believe that they have a legitimate reason to not care about the poor?
I would even propose that America CREATES poor people. I have often heard people discuss the question of who will clean their toilets if there are no poor people. If the middle and upper classes' actions DO create poor people why would they stop if they are concerned with maintaining their current lifestyle? In the meantime their companies in China are being used to poison our children. And who knows what else is being poisoned? And what does lead poisoning do? Well, we've all heard the joke 'Did you eat paint chips as a kid?' which will sound something like 'Did you play with Chinese made toys when you were a kid?' I'm sure most of the financially secure class see outsourcing not as jobs but of the poor.
Excellent article Frank. Nobody should be silent on an issue concerning truly caring about others.
"I would even propose that America CREATES poor people."
Boy, have you hit the nail on the head!
Mr. Frank Lin:
I’m jumping in here in case you are reading these comments. What NoFear has said and indypeat agrees with is important. America CREATES poor people. You (Mr. Lin) are clearly a person who knows how to think. You said:
America literally does not care about poor people. In the same way that most Americans do not care about soccer or Kevin Federline.
This is the exact truth simply stated. I wish I had said it. Because I admire your thinking and your writing I am asking that you meditate on NoFear’s proposition. Specifically - America creates poor people. indypeat and I agree that NoFear is correct. What do you think?
You reminded me of a thought I had about this emphasis on getting the poor a 'college education' - though nobody believes there'se really an infinite number of 'middle mangement' jobs out there for anyone who simply applied themselves. The most intractable problem of the American poor (and increasingly the middle class)is demoralization. If you 'have' nothing you 'are' nothing. The very term "underprivileged" implies the existance of a privileged class above you.
Excellent comment.
Also, what those "get the poor a college education" people don't understand is that a college degree IN NO WAY guarantees you a good job. I have several friends who have college degrees and are suffering when looking for a job. They can't find one that will support them AND pay back their student loans.
A rather beautiful piece by the young Mr. Lin...
What is short on specifics is long on our emotions and motivations in relation to the huge and growing lower class in America.
It may just be that the author is on to America's biggest dirty little secret: 'We don't know what the answer is'.
We cover up the secret with 'talking points', indifference, band-aids. We cannot bring ourselves, even now, to the admission that 'the great American system' is flawed as it stands. Maybe it always was so and, as the glitz and wealth that covered Paris Hilton's sad rise to adulthood, the stumbling road to America in the 21st century was covered by feel good politicians, the old formula phrases - 'the greatest country on earth' et al - and watching TV sitcoms where everyone had a million dollar house and time on their hands to be an ass.
Convince the poor to start voting. That's one way to get attention, considering how many poor people there are. Unfortunately, the issues that lead to poverty also engender feelings of helplessness and voter apathy. A vicious cycle that those in power -- on both ends of the spectrum -- are all too happy to take advantage of.
The poor do vote, but against their own best interest. At least here in the south.
This is so true. I think the poor are coopted into voting against their own self-interest because of the "moral majority" antics that go on in churches today. What I want to know is, what would Jesus do about Katrina? What would Jesus do about 40 million uninsured Americans and a health care system responsible for the majority of bankruptcies in this country?
Abortion and stem cell research aren't the real issues, but they get propped up as the central issues in voter's minds. Even Iraq (all those proud patriotic poor mothers and fathers whose children had little better economic choice than to join the military) is a distraction and confusing subject for poor voters.
How do we show the poor that they are being used by the super rich? How do we get them to vote for their own self interest!!!?
Isn't it for them to determine what "their best interest" are? Do you think a political party should determine that for them?
To quote South Park, what's the point of voting when you're choice is between a giant douche and a turd sandwich? Both parties have been bought and paid for by big money.
I had always thought it would be amusing to reqiure the poor to vote as a precondition of receiving the dwindling public assistance that they do get -- can you imagine if that had been worked into the '96 welfare reform act? one can only imagine the consternation with which the rethugs would react...
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