This is a flawed blog post. My head was afire with thoughts, and I had to get them down. Many threads are incomplete, many thoughts not fully articulated, but I feel compelled to put this “out there” in this unedited state.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve heard people express their concern and thoughts about those in this country they feel sponge off the system. The assumption seems to be that these are people who have no internal motivation, that there is something very wrong with them. And that one of the roles of government is to protect “We, the People” from “Them” (as if “they” are not also part of “We, The People”). These people do not want to work. We are superior to Them. (Assume quotes around “We” and “Them” or “They” for the next few sentences.) We work hard. They are lazy and don’t want to work. We are responsible. They aren’t and don’t want to be. We are the ones doing all the work. They are looking for any opportunity to get more without giving anything. The unstated part of this is that “We” usually means White, and “Them” usually means black. This notions more than bothers me. It is at the heart of the division in our country.
We aren’t all born with the same stuff. There’s something called Generational Poverty (a nice summary here with some of the same caveats I have about Ruby Payne’s work; more from NYT) that I have seen with my own eyes, and the effects of this are gargantuan yet invisible, certainly to those of us on the outside, but I think even to those on the inside. I can’t imagine that some motivationless thug you found on a street corner would be able to talk to you about this effect, and certainly the wealthy people driving past as they lock their doors are just as unaware of its existence.
Go into a village. Take all the people you can find. Stack them end to end in ships. Do not allow families to stay together. Take these people from their homeland. Sail them to the other side of the world and enslave them. Do not educate them, nor their children, nor their children’s children. Rape them. Do not give them last names or a right to property. Do not allow them to vote. Take away their religion and “civilize” them with yours. So often, we forget that even the founders of this country were racists. Even Ben Franklin spoke of “scouring the planet of darker hued people”. Even though huge strides have been made, think about how recent Brown vs. Board of Education was – separate is NOT equal. Racism hasn’t left us, but it’s gone underground. It’s gotten subtler. I won’t bother going into evidence of racism in modern culture, but if you think it’s gone, your head is in the sand. And I’d say the most troubling brand of it is the uber-subtle feeling that many sheltered white people have that black people (and also poor people in a more general way) want to take “our” money.
I’ve always been of the mind that you should teach a man to fish, rather than give a man a fish. But what I feel like a lot of sheltered middle class are saying is, “Why the fuck don’t you know how to fish like me?” That answer to that is so complex, more than a blog post worth. But I do ask you to consider whether the reason someone is not able to fish for themselves is that they WANT to be helpless -OR- maybe they have never had anyone teach them. Maybe when they have tried to fish before, they didn’t catch anything. Maybe they saw their mothers and father and grandmothers and grandfathers try to fish, and after years of working hard, they didn’t get any bites. Maybe they don’t fish because they have experienced learned helplessness. Maybe playing by the rules has gotten them nowhere. Maybe they tried to play by the rules, but they rules kept changing.
You don’t know. You have not walked a mile in their shoes.
I want to talk about Ogbu’s work on competence. I want to go back and explain all of that history in more detail with and add citations. I want to show you The Color of Fear and talk with you about it. I want to ask you to consider that maybe some assumptions you’ve made aren’t right. I want you to stop for a minute and consider that maybe these people you’ve imagined to be taking your money are doing the very best they can with what they have been given. I want to tell you about all the people I’ve met living in poverty who work themselves silly and never got anywhere. I want to show you how easy you’ve had it. But this is just a blog post, and I have a lot more to do tonight.
I want you to know that “Yes, We Can” is not just a silly slogan. It represents hope and possibility and so much more. Is teaching people to fish really so bad? Can you unclench your fist for just a second? Not to “share the wealth”, but to listen, to consider that another person may be doing their best, to remain open to new possibilities, to consider that maybe a better world for those struggling the most means a better world for all of us.
