I read this article in a mailer called Worldextra. It's basically a advertising flyer with a couple of articles thrown in. It was sited as "the Washington post".
A search of the site for the Washington Post never found anything like it.
Since I can't site it or link it, I'm going to paraphrase it or even copy it word for word. Not because I think it is fake but because, where ever it came from, it made me think, so might make someone else think also.
("Which is generally more often to blame if a person is poor: lack of effort on their own part, or difficult circumstances beyond their control?
The Washington Post and the Kaiser family foundation asked 1,686 American adults to answer that question--and found that religion is a significant predictor of how Americans perceive poverty.
Christians are much more likely than non-Christians to view poverty as the result of individual failings, especially white evangelical Christians.
There's a strong Christian impulse to understand poverty as deeply rooted in morality--often, as the Bible makes clear, in unwillingness to work, in bad financial decisions or in broken family structures, said Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. The Christian worldview is saying that all poverty is due to sin, though that doesn't necessarily mean the sin of the person in poverty. In the Garden of Eden, there would have been no poverty. In a fallen world, there is poverty.
In the poll, 46 percent of all Christians said that a lack of effort is generally to blame for a person's poverty, compared with 29 percent of all non-Christians.
The gulf widens further among specific Christian groups: 53 percent of white evangelical Protestants blamed lack of effort while 41 percent blamed circumstances, and 50 percent of Catholics blamed lack of effort while 45 percent blamed circumstances. In contrast, by more than 2 to 1, Americans who are atheist, agnostic or have no particular affiliation said difficult circumstances are more to blame when a person is poor than lack of effort (65 percent to 31 percent).
The question is, of course, not just an ethical one but a political one, and the partisan divide is sharp: Among Democrats, 26 blamed a lack of effort and 72 percent blamed circumstances. Among Republicans, 63 percent blamed lack of effort and 32 percent blamed circumstances.
A statistical analysis of the data showed that political partisanship is the most important factor in views on the causes of poverty, but religious identity stands out as one of several important demographic factors.
Theologians point to passages in the New testament that shape Christian's views on poverty, from the verse in Thessalonians that says the one who is unwilling to work shall not eat, to Jesus's exhortations to care for the needy people including those who are sick and in prisons, to the many interpretation of his statement quoted in Matthew, Mark and John, the poor you will always have with you. (the rest of that had to do with Mary Magdalene rubbing expensive unguent on his feet--I added the part in parentheses).") (that was all a transcription of the article as written)
So think about that a minute or two. See how many of those statements are true in your life and belief system. See if any of those beliefs were made a part of your early upbringing.
Now, let me introduce you to John. (I made up the name, due to its lack of cultural and racial identification)
John is a 24 year old male that is currently sofa-surfing with his friends. He is working as wait-staff at a chain restaurant that most of us have visited at least once. He lives in a city with poor walkability and a limited public transportation system but has a decent bike. He finished high school with average grades. He played basketball and ran track and while he was not horrible, he was no star. He is 5'9" tall, which is about average and of average build. He works 2 jobs and gets about 45 hours a week. He takes home about 1500 a month.
John was raised by a single mother--Sarah. She raised him in section 8 housing. She could barely read and thought he was doing great because he never got in trouble at school or with the law. She spent her life on permanent disability for having been born with cerebral palsy and having an IQ of 75.
John didn't like bringing his friends home and avoided trouble because he didn't want people treating his mother badly. She died when he was 19 after a seizure.
John's mother Sarah was raised in group homes after her mother--Margaret-- died of an overdose. Her mother was 17 when she died. Margaret had been in foster care since her own parents had died in a car wreck when she was 8. At thirteen Margaret was impregnated by her foster father thus giving birth to Sarah. Sarah was born early and without prenatal care. Her disability occurred during the home birth. Because of the complications, the 2 ended up in a hospital and a social worker was involved. She was then, due to a quirk of the law, able to obtain legal emancipation--because motherhood makes you an adult. The social worker helped her obtain housing after offering adoption for the baby--which she declined--as far as she knew, this was the only person on earth related to her by blood.
In her new home, she soon discovered that in addition to molesting foster fathers there were raping neighbors and folks that would watch her baby while she made a little money over her check--by selling sexual favors. Getting paid for doing what she had been forced to do seemed a better deal. Some of them paid in drugs instead of cash.
Margaret loved her daughter and she loved her heroin--her little way of escaping. Her life was all about both.
When Sarah was 4, she was found wondering in the courtyard of the apartments they lived in. Her mother had overdosed sometime in the previous 3 days. It had taken her several days to figure out how to get the door open with her poor motor skills.
Sarah, because of her disability, spent the next 14 years in a group home with other children with disabilities. In there, she was amazingly intact. She finished high school but had a hard time reading and because she had always been on disability, it continued. No one had every expected anything else.
At 18, Sarah was allowed to get her own place as she was able to take care of her own grooming, cooking and eating, and could walk safely with only a mildly stiff gait. She could also read at a 3rd grade level, so a case worker maintained her rent and utilities, and gave her an allowance for food and clothes. On her own, once again in a giant section 8 housing complex, Sarah met people without disabilities. She also met people that didn't recognize her as disabled. She discovered fun, parties, and love.
Sarah had John when she was 23. She adored him. She stopped the fun and parties. By 5 he was helping her with remembering her medication. By 8 he helped with grocery shopping, lists, read her his books, and told her about what he learned in school. They could read the same books equally well. By 12, his school work was a mystery to her.
At 16 he started working in food service. His grades, always good enough by his mother's standards, started slipping when he spent more time at work and no time on school work.
His graduation was her proudest moment.
After high school, he worked more and sometimes hung out with friends. He spent less time making sure his mother was taking her seizure medicine like she should, so when he came home to find her down and call the ambulance, "a seizure did it" they said at the Emergency Room, no one pointed a finger at him--except himself. A nice little packet of guilt to add to his life.
John is not likely to change his lifestyle. Maybe he will meet and marry a woman with more lifeskills--more likely he will meet and lose her as she gets tired of trying to teach him how to be successful. Or maybe his packet of guilt will start requiring drugs or alcohol to let him sleep at night--maybe it already is.
This is how people get into poverty.
Now, here are the questions I want you to answer for yourself:
1. Is this all John's fault? Should he have worked harder? Should he have done something different?
and why would that have happened?
2. Is this all Sarah's fault? Was she being punished for her very birth?
3. Is this all Margaret's fault?
4. Maybe we should blame Margaret's parents for having a child then dying without her in the car to die with them
So, are you now asking--why didn't someone intervene????
How?
By sterilizing Sarah against her will?
By aborting Margaret's pregnancy against her will?
By Taking John from Sarah and having him adopted by more capable parents?
All of these people could have used better opportunities, not more punishment.
If you are now thinking--OMG, that is a terrible story. No one has every really had such a horrible life.
Wrong.
Social Workers, Nurses and Teachers hear these stories all the time---unless they have developed the coping skill of "don't ask and don't let them tell" to keep their own sanity.
Now, to see how you are handling this, with these very Anglo-saxon names: try calling them Whitney, Shameka, and Tyrell, or Maria, Angela and Juan, or maybe Imani, Dalelah and Mohammed?
Does that change anything?
How about if Margaret's parents were immigrants? Undocumented immigrants?
My own parent's were quite conflicted about their feeling about poor people.
I witnessed them taking people clothes or food--not as part of a group but on an individual basis repeatedly in my childhood. My father would fix things free of charge or find them some needed appliance or furniture if they desperately needed it.
My mother would make someone clothes or send them vegetables from the garden.
And both of them would complain about poor people being lazy, stupid, and "ought to be sterilized".
I've seen pictures that made it obvious that sometimes they were pretty darn poor themselves. At those times, if they had been sterilized, my sister and I would not have been born. They were doing OK--never great but OK when we were born.
I've seen teacher's trying hard to fight poverty from the classroom and then give up--because there is a level of stress; of hunger or horror or fear in which the only thing on a person's mind is to escape from the hunger or horror or fear.
When you tell a 12 year old that he needs to learn about how the planets revolve around the sun and he hasn't eaten since last Friday and he got chased out of his hidey hole in the park where he was sleeping; when the father that shot the mother is rumored to be getting out, when you know you needed to do your homework but you are in the bathroom trying to wash the smell of dirty diapers out of your one dress so you don't get made fun of, suddenly that well dressed person at the front of the room just seems like a clueless fool.
We can't just treat people living in poverty like middle class students. All that stuff about inaccurate testing due to culture bias--so then we change the names to more ethnic names and put some of the math stories in the 'hood--that is not getting rid of the bias. Living in poverty has a whole other skill set for survival. Sure, poor kids want the same toys that are advertised on the TV as the rest of the kids sitting in front of a TV. But they also have frequently never had a meal that included fresh produce. They may or may not ever have meat that isn't processed. They may not have soap or toothpaste or a toothbrush.
And while we can't teach away poverty until we stop the fight or flight level response to living in it, we have long had the ability to stop people from living in that level of poverty.
Poverty is caused by a lack of resources. When I was little and people talked about "eat your food, children in china are starving" even I knew that me gorging myself did nothing for those starving children.
When we sent food to Bangladesh and Ethiopia, thinking we were feeding poor people, it never dawned on us that there was food, but they couldn't afford it, and the food we sent went to the government who then charged people for it, so those without money still starved.
But there are countries that have found ways to stop poverty. They have figured out ways to make everyone have the ability to have adequate healthy food sources and safe housing and resources for illness both acute and chronic.
There are places that recognize poverty as--not the moral ineptitude of the poor but the moral corruption of the culture itself.
Someone will always be poorer than average. Someone will always have more than they need. But no one needs to live in constant want with fear and hopelessness. We--all of us in this country-- and in this world--can do better than that.
Or, we can keep repeating--"the poor you will always have with you." and just ignore the fact that poor is a relative thing and doesn't have to mean hopelessly left behind. (while secretly thinking, they deserve it, they deserve it and I don't so I'm better than them)
Eliminating poverty would make all of us better.
