Poverty is more complex than you think...

I've been reading Jonathan Kozol's book Amazing Grace: The Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation here recently, and I have been blindsided by the daily reality of poverty as well as the complexity of the problem. As a middle-class white male, I often find myself seeking to give easy answers for poverty like "if they worked harder, they wouldn't be poor," and "the system of welfare only perpetuates the cycle of poverty" or some other disconnected theoretical BS. Kozol refuses to allow me to stay in that coolly disconnected state. Here's an excerpt...a real story of poverty that just may wake you up like it has me.


"'If poor people behaved rationally,' says Lawrence Mead, a professor of political science at NYU, ' they would seldom be poor for long in the first place.' Many social scientists today appear to hold this point of view and argue that the largest portion of the suffering poor people undergo has to be blamed upon their own 'behaviors,' a word they tend to pluralize.

Alice Washington was born in 1944 in New York City. She grew up in Harlem and the Bronx and went to segregated public schools, not something of her choosing, nor that of her mother and her father. She finished high school, studied bookkeeping at a secretarial college, and went to work, beginning at 19. When she married, at the age of 25, she had to choose her husband from that segregated 'marriage pool' to which our social scientists sometimes quite icily refer of frequently unemployable black men, some of whom have been involved in drugs or spent some time in prison. From her husband, after many years of what she thought to be monogamous matrimony, she contracted the AIDS virus.

She left her husband shortly after he began to beat her. Cancer of her fallopian tubes was detected at this time, then cancer of her uterus. She had three operations. Too frail to keep on with the second of two jobs that she had held, in all, for nearly 20 years, she was forced to turn for mercy to the City of New York.

In 1983, at the age of 39, she landed with her children in a homeless shelter two blocks from Times Square, an old hotel in which the plumbing did not work and from which she and David and his sister had to carry buckets to a bar across the street in order to get water. After spending close to four years in three shelters in Manhattan, she was moved by the city to the neighborhood where she now lives in the South Bronx. It was at this time that she learned she carried the AIDS virus. Since the time that I met Mrs. Washington, I have spent hundreds of hours talking with her in her kitchen. I have yet to figure out what she has done that was irrational."
(from pages 21-22 of Kozol's book)




Now don't be deceived. In posting this excerpt of reality, I'm not seeking to occupy the opposite extreme of my cool detached classism and racism where every person in poverty is a helpless victim of the system, because that is just as false as saying the poor "just need to work harder." The reality in this mess is a need for both individual and systemic accountability for action. But I did post it for this reason.

The situation is complex, and if we are to speak of the poor and pursue concrete solutions to poverty, we must embrace the complexity, we must hear the stories from across the spectrum, and we must prepare ourselves to seek the truth in the tension erected between the poles of individual and system responsibility.

At this point in history, we have to deal with the reality, in my view, that the system should carry a heavy disproportionate weight of responsibility to provide help for the poverty-stricken, especially because urban poverty is often minority-heavy, and for over 80% of the existence of the United States of America, the purported "land of the free," African-Americans were considered (socially and by law) to be second-class citizens...sub-human. We're fooling ourselves to suggest that the last forty years has erased this disgusting reality.

Some thoughts (maybe some interaction with others?)

My friend Matt Murphy is a prolific blogger over on Myspace; I wish I had the work ethic to be as disciplined on mine (blogging helps me sort out my scattered thoughts). Matt about a half a month or so ago posted a blog I found interesting. I'll attach both his thoughts and mine, but before doing that, I've got a bit of a preface that's been rolling through my head recently (most directly related to Matt's approach).

Matt is not your typical evangelical American Christian. How do I define typical evangelical American Christian? Most often, I find them to be hypocritical in belief and lifestyle and logically incoherent. Keep in mind I'm saying this as a Christian too (and that I, from time to time, am both hypocritical and logically incoherent, but work with me). I continually find myself intrigued that Christians can in one breath talk about love, forgiveness, and God's grace and in the next talk of folks next-door or across the globe as if their lives are nothing more than dirt. It seems to me the prevailing message we get in our churches is typically something that leads to a split in us; as if you or I could "love" someone in our hearts but beat to a different drum in our actions. As a simple example, somehow we've been taught that we can "love" God and others and "forgive" others while simultaneously serving in the military and killing those who disagree with us (using the most obvious case) in the name of "justice." This logic goes further for those who don't serve directly in the military but engage in the cult worship of military "heroes" or our American governmental leaders that usually takes place the Sunday closest to every Memorial Day, Veterans' Day, or Independence Day where we celebrate their sacrifice to maintain our "freedom." Acknowledging that reality could spawn some more writing here on that subject, but I think it's important to focus here on the false presumption that we can "believe" certain things while our lives and primary motivations completely contradict what we say we believe in. It's wickedly humorous to me how supposedly mature Christians in times of relative peace and comfort say all the right things, yet when things happen that destabilize the norm, they line up with all the other good American citizens and toe the line of uncritically accepting the decisions of G.W. because he's a "praying man" or the nation at large as if we're the pure, perfect light of freedom and justice in the world or some other such nonsense. This applies to any modern nation-state (especially in the West) where fealty to the state usurps faithfulness to Christ as Lord.

What has "love" become in our society? What about "justice" and "peacemaking" and "discipleship"? It's manifestly obvious to me we value Jeremy Bentham, George W. Bush, or H. Richard Niebuhr's opinions on these subjects more than Jesus or Paul. Is that a problem? (tongue planted firmly in cheek) I say all this because Matt (as a relatively "new" Christian) has a deeper awareness of the aforementioned concepts of love, discipleship, justice, etc than 99.9% of my friends or acquaintances that call themselves Christian. How has this hit Matt between the eyes and not them? My deeper question is: how can we recover a reading of the teachings of Jesus with a plain understanding that they are intended to be the center of what it means for you and I to be disciples? Call me crazy, but love doesn't make sense if we don't define it by Jesus' example, teachings, and further (second-level) New Testament musings. The proper pursuit of justice doesn't make sense if we don't define it by Jesus' example, teachings, and further (second-level) New Testament musings, etc etc. Matt seems to have this awareness (along with a willingness to be dynamic in dialogue about the secondary issues that stem from his pursuit of discipleship in the way of Christ). I think that should be applauded.

Anyways, here's what he said on his blog (keep in mind my perception of Matt's approach comes not from this post alone, but from reading multiple posts that seem to reflect a consistent motivation):

I have opinions that my friends don't like.

Soldiers go door to door killing. For what? Are the citizens of Iraq suddenly going to come to my house and try to kill me or my family? Probably not. Its a good thing we have a constitution here that generally prevents the killing of malcontents. Have any weapons of mass distruction definitively been found? No. Did Iraq threaten us prior to our invasion of their country? Depends on who you talk to. Have we rooted out any Al Qaeda members in Iraq? Not definitively. When we did invade, for the purpose of human rights, did we assist refugees? Not really. Is the US Government moving to make more strict laws against torture of prisoners? Negative. Wait, isn't torture of Americans one of the things we are upset about? How many innocent have died? A lot. How many American soldiers have died just from being over there (vehicular accidents, friendly fire, etc.)? A lot. In the first Iraq war, more Americans died from just being over there than in the war. Is Matt ever going to vote Republican? My sources say no."

And my response:

"Some further questions I think are important:

How does a secular sense of justice match up with a Biblical sense of justice 1)in general and 2)specifically in the case of Iraq?

How do we as the church maintain a distance from the actions of the state and take action in our own unique way that provides an alternative witness in times where the actions of the state are clearly unjust?

In recognizing the ultimate futility of staking our complete interest in the actions of the state (empires rise and fall, right?), how do we move beyond secular political pigeonholing (liberal/conservative, Democrat/Republican/Green/Libertarian) to recognize that the Politics of Jesus will make some label us as conservative in some areas and liberal in others?

In connection with another of your blogs, it seems to me we always have the temptation to make the easiest move towards the most comfort in our lives. I think that relates to:
1) our politics...its easier to toe the line of whatever party we agree most with and we end up defending their entire platform because we think they're "right" and the other "wrong", and
2) how we relate to the society as the church...we've passed off much of the responsibility of the church to impact the society for good (who started widespread education and the helping profession of medicine?) on the state; that way we don't have to do much other than go to church on Sunday and sit on our hands the rest of the time.

That makes it a heck of a lot easier to sit in our armchairs and talk about why the poor just need to quit being lazy and do something about their lives when we don't have any direct connection to those who are poverty stricken; or talk about why single mothers shouldn't get abortions without actually working directly in their lives so they know not only their lives are important, but the lives of their unborn children, etc etc. I'm continually frustrated by how selfish I am in this respect (in a vacuum, I'd choose the armchair), and how much potential we have for grassroots change as the church that's being wasted in front of televisions between the four walls of our residences."

Penny for your thoughts (and willingness to read this longish post)