Poor, Poor Us
Being poor is hoping the toothache goes away.
A few years ago a friend sent me a version of this ‘Being Poor’ list via email. “Really makes you think, doesn’t it?” he said, “Can you imagine?”
Being poor is going to the restroom before you get in the school lunch line so your friends will be ahead of you and won’t hear you say “I get free lunch” when you get to the cashier.
I could more than imagine… many of the items in the list I could remember.
Being poor is people surprised to discover you’re not actually lazy.
I can remember a lot of the feelings and experiences from that list and add a few more of my own: claiming apathy to avoid field trips that would cost even a few dollars, paying for a meal out with the class using change (not to mention the concept of “small” change), simply not eating at all on a sports trip, working from 3:30a-6:3a before two-a-day practices and homework until 11p, blocks of free cheese, the looks you get bringing out food stamps (and, worse, when you are loudly informed that “welfare doesn’t cover” an item and asked if you want it put back), having someone in school recognize the grab-bag shirt you are wearing that used to be theirs…
But the worst part by a mile is the cultural claustrophobia and aspirational myopia that come with material poverty which, after all, is quite often accompanied by– if it doesn’t necessitate– intellectual poverty. I can tell you how it feels to be the first in the family to make it through high school; among other things it’s the feeling of thinking “that’s it! I did it!” and being absolutely clueless about the next step. I can tell you how it feels to discover years into an undergraduate degree at the only place I thought I could afford, after feigning disinterest in a flood of offers based on high test scores and straight-A high school grades, that when tuition is advertised as X dollars per year you can still get that education even if you don’t have X dollars in your pocket in cash when you arrive; it’s nauseating. I can share with you to this moment how a profound lack of understanding of handling money and credit can perpetuate a cycle of constant fiscal near-drowning the same way academic knowledge of swimming leaves you (if you are lucky) barely able to keep your head above water when you go overboard.
Physical hunger gnaws at the stomach and chest, intellectual hunger gnaws at the head and heart, and in both cases too much desire, too much necessity, too much static in the form of the whispering “need, need, need” makes them inordinately important and ultimately, no matter what you achieve or receive, turns them into demands that can never be met. The insatiable need and the inability to believe in achievement and self-worth– the constant perception of being a fraud– is a constant static, a kind of psychological tinnitus that one can learn to ignore but is always on, waiting to be noticed– and intruding– at the worst possible times.
Last night, a friend Twittered about a book she was reading, The Price of Privilege, which is:
A critical look at America’s culture of affluence explores the epidemic of emotional and psychological problems crippling America’s privileged youth
I don’t doubt her judgment. I don’t doubt that the book is discussing real problems. But I really can’t comprehend it. More importantly, I can’t feel it. I’m sure there’s a price for privilege… I just haven’t been privileged enough to get a chance to pay it.
A few weeks ago I was reading a voyeuristic profile of George Clooney in the New Yorker in which, at one point, he warns the interviewer after discussion of some recent troubling incident that he has to keep it in perspective and that he’s aware how ridiculous and outlandish it can be to hear celebrities complaining about their miserable lives. Even George Clooney suffers! I know it’s true, but it’s more fantastic than quantum mechanics and harder to really internalize than 6th and 7th dimensions.
But it made me think about educators… in particular “my circle” of friends and colleagues and influential acquaintances. How many of them, I wonder, have experienced poverty themselves? For how many of them would the Being Poor post strike a resonant, uninvited chord? And what does that mean to our efforts? “We” are already a select group in this context: college educated, most teaching college undergraduates or higher, working with or in academic institutions. But many of us are teaching or influencing the teaching of students who are struggling to escape circumstances of poverty and lack of privilege. Do we allow for that? Can we? If someone who comes from relative privilege is as clueless about the needy as I am about the wealthy classes, how do we teach?
October 23rd, 2008 at 9:45 am
I identify so wholly with everything you just wrote that it would take me all day to form a proper response, which would only leave me feeling terrifically depressed, on account of all the opportunities I subconsciously sabotaged (because I couldn’t wrap my head around the idea that it was even possible for someone like me to succeed in meeting the challenge at hand).
I will say, however, that I once took several friends out to lunch using student loan money because I wanted to be someone who could ever take anyone out to lunch. (And that after college, which I had to quit in my fourth year because I was homeless and couldn’t go another quarter in that situation, borrowing rather than buying my books and trying to catnap whenever/wherever I could, I had $20,000+ in loans to repay for the degree I would never get.)
If there were an emoticon for a working-class fist bump I’d put it right here –>
October 23rd, 2008 at 12:20 pm
Chris, this is an important and timely message. I was actually thinking about this topic during my drive this morning. My dryer broke a few days ago. It made me angry and frustrated. I wasn’t mad to have a broken dryer, but that I was so dependent on this luxury. As I tried to figure out what to do with the wet clothes, and then noticed the mounting pile of dirty clothes, I started to think of all the other luxuries that take over my life.
I spent a good part of my drive this morning trying to figure out if I knew a way to get clothes dry without them being too wrinkled or stinky. People do it! I didn’t want to google it. I wanted to have the skill and knowledge to just do it. I considered calling my grandmothers to ask them. I’m realizing how much I don’t know about basic life skills, and it scares me.
I picked up that book out of curiosity when it showed up on the library site next to some others I had reserved. I remembered a few days earlier when I had told my daughter about a bad camping experience I had as a child. She said, “That wouldn’t happen to me. As long as you have money, you can get the stuff you need.” I couldn’t believe she said it. I didn’t know where it came from. We don’t talk about finances or status. She’s not spoiled, except by grandparents. I decided it must have come from watching too much of the Disney channel, and reading books beyond her level of maturity.
When I saw that book, I just had to get it and see what it is all about. What it has done, is open my eyes to a whole new world of questions I had never considered. Going through college, for which I will spend the rest of my life paying off, I remember so many discussions about at-risk kids and the underprivileged. At-risk schools do heavy recruiting, and teachers and administrators in those areas are seen as heroes. We are taught to look for abuse, neglect, and risky behaviors of the underprivileged.
I don’t remember a single discussion about wealthy children. When I started to consider it, I almost felt guilty for going down that path. I now feel completely differently, based on a few points in the book, and some I realized on my own. I’m not finished with the book yet, so I can’t necessarily recommend it, but I am learning. The first thing I realized, is that poor children aren’t more deserving of learning than wealthy children. It’s a hard pill to swallow. I wrestled with it for a few days, and decided I am not qualified to judge who deserves to learn. All children deserve it. I absolutely acknowledge the unique problems of the underprivileged and that more intervention is needed to bring them learning. This isn’t about that.
The scariest thing I’m learning from the book is that these children are essentially growing up without a soul. They have no self-efficacy. Their parents protect them to the point that they don’t have to make any decisions. They make it to adulthood with no understanding of what it means to be a human and a citizen. Many of them turn to drugs or are deeply depressed. Many of them, by virtue of our class systems, will be our future leaders. This is a startling reality, and one I’m still trying to comprehend.
I think everything you discuss is important in regards to not knowing the true meaning of poverty. I don’t think it’s even possible for some of us to understand it. But while I’m considering the implications of a very different world to come, I’m also extremely fascinated by the fact that there are a growing number of American youth who will never understand how to make value decisions.
October 27th, 2008 at 3:38 pm
I really tried, but I couldn’t reply well to this post in writing–the issue is too multi-faceted. I did respond to a number of these memories, though I had forgotten them during my family’s past 15 years of prosperity.
I will say “being poor” is relative, and when I was living “middle-class” in rurualurban China I would have been considered poor here in the States. The idea of drying clothes there was simple: your balcony has a clothesline. At my apartment complex the cleaning lady’s monthly salary was not enough to cover a French resident artist’s sweater that had been stolen while she was laundering it. I remember being laughed at by staff when I wanted to photocopy something for my students the first day on the job. I was reprimanded for breaking chalk in the classroom. When I was hospitalized I managed to demand a new, unused needle for the IV–and was harshly criticized by the attending doctor for “wasting”. And this is ruralurban China. Rural China, India, and Africa have it far worse.
But as I said, it’s all relative, so I can’t in honesty be too critical of whining. In our economy we have different standards and different daily milestones to prove success. I latched onto and strongly agree with the statement, “a profound lack of understanding of handling money and credit can perpetuate a cycle of constant fiscal near-drowning”. This resonates with the teachings of financial counselor Dave Ramsey, one of the few radio talk show hosts who I admire and respect.