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?
Ah…perspective. Thanks. I needed to read this!
I remember several of these–and could add more of my own. Yet, as I read them, I am awed by other memories. We were poor, without question. But, self-pity wasn’t acceptable in my house, and hope was never absent. Looking at this as an adult, I’m not sure how my parents pulled that off, but I’m forever grateful.
For my benefit as much as anyone reading this, these are the things I need to remember and appreciate:
* My parents both getting up at 4am and working non-stop until 10pm every day for as many years as I can remember.
* My dad going back to work after being declared “permanently, medically disabled” with a severe back injury.
* My mom’s expertise and HOURS spent altering patterns to make home-made approximations of the clothes my friends were buying.
* My parents ALWAYS inviting people for Sunday dinner and coming up with something to cook, even when most of our food was subsistence. Likewise, always finding something to give to those “less fortunate.”
* Always knowing that I would go to college (it never occurred to me that NOT going was an option).
Guess I should add an addendum about “always knowing I would go to college.” There was no savings account. No funds were set aside. I always knew I would go to college SOMEHOW…it was a matter of faith and hope, not of known resources.
It’d be good to know how you/your family managed some of that, because in my experience it is a far outlier from the norm! Maybe it’s partially a matter of degree, and a lot a matter of context.
I agree…I wish I understood more. As well as I can analyze it, my parents simply never accepted a poverty mentality.
Perhaps it was their age and life experience: they both lived through the great depression and dustbowl days in Oklahoma. Perhaps it was their faith, or the way they were raised, or some combination of all these. Maybe it WAS partly context: we lived in a place where they could grow a garden, and hunt and fish for meat. They were both very resourceful and determined. Regardless, I recognize that I am incredibly fortunate. My life would be much different if my parents had exhibited a different outlook on their situation. I value that, even if I don’t completely understand it.
What bothered me most as I read your post (and the link to “being poor”) was how poorly I respond to financial stress today, when the “hardships” I’m facing are nothing in comparison. That’s why I felt compelled to respond to your post…not so much for others to read…I simply felt a need to acknowledge my own past and be thankful.
I guess what makes me even a little bit resentful is that the “poverty mentality” covers a range of emotions and thoughts that are not all necessarily in one’s control… and having a poverty mentality or not doesn’t change the math tht you can’t divide nothing into multiple parts. My parents worked hard, but “coming up with something” and “giving to those less fortunate” means there’s something to divide. It’s a lot easier to talk about that when there is something rather than nothing.
In one sense, maybe the real difference is that we are at points talking about different things. You are talking about not having much. I am talking about often not having anything at all.
This is probably not something I’m going to be good at discussing in text. I know you didn’t mean your comment in the way it made me feel!
It’s good that you know me outside of these posts. I didn’t mean to make you or anyone else feel badly!
I obviously used words that were emotionally charged for you, and probably for others as well. That wasn’t my intent. I just didn’t know how to articulate it any better.
I think the thing that gets me is that your words can be read, in part, to support a myth about poverty that is akin to the underlying myth that many people have about obese people: that if they just worked harder and had a better mental approach they wouldn’t have that problem, just as if those fat people weren’t so piggish they wouldn’t be overweight.
And sometimes it’s true. Just as sometimes obese people do eat more than the person thinking (if not saying) it. But sometimes it isn’t. And it isn’t easy to untangle which is which.
An impoverished intellect or lack of ambition or, perhaps most accurately, a non-understanding of ambition and lack of belief that you are part of that group that is good enough and intended to have and do things, is definitely a part of the problem as it is happening… but even more it’s a part of the legacy. I’d match my mom– and my step-father’s– work ethic with anyone’s. And their charity when there was anything to give.
But the bottom line is, my parents having children as children, coming from abusive, heavy drug and alcohol using homes, struggling with their own addictions, with no models of good parents and with at least one of them suffering from untreated mental illness… there was not much chance of pulling themselves up by their bootstraps and what dictated that wasn’t the amount of effort.
Different people, different times, different situations, I know. And I guess what prompted my thinking in the original post was, anyway, less about what could have been different then as it is understanding how to deal with the effects now and hoping to give people some insight into one possible result of poverty. The result of yours is another, but I’m sure not without its own troubling aspects.
As Jen remarked on my blog– maybe there is a kind of prejudice or bias against those who are *over*-privileged (maybe that term is suspect, even). Kind of the way people can talk about how hard it is to be considered beautiful in our culture. But the concept is like a color that I can’t see. I can theorize about it, but I can’t see it. Which leaves me feeling unable to deal with it myself as an educator (or anything else).
I wouldn’t say uninvited, but this post did in fact strike a chord with me as it is something I think introspectively about often.
I did grow up poor also, classic story: my ‘being poor was’…a single mom with 2 children, dad not around. Latchkey. Lots of time at the grandparents. Babysitting my little sister when I was too young to be babysitting. Free lunch, food stamps. Poor public city schools. Sinking down in the back seat of the car with no muffler so my friends wouldnt see me. Lying to my coach that I had a ride and walking home from sports practice because my Mom had to work over. Crappy hand me down banana seat bicycle, working non-stop since I was 15..the nine yards…
But what was even harder for me is that somehow I managed to do well in school, and even more importantly (to some), on tests, and thus was put in gifted classes. So here is where it really starts to suck… None of the other gifted students are poor, They are well off. It is immediately apparent they aren’t like me at all. And none of the poor kids I hang out with in my neighborhood are gifted, or even getting above average grades, and in fact are somewhat deviant. So I adapt some interesting social techniques as a result. I become a sort of social gypsy. Not really pretending, just adapting to my surroundings on a constant real time daily cycle. The real motivation being almost literally…survival. My main superpower…being resourceful.
I could have sat around and felt sorry for myself, (poor, poor me) but I didn’t have the time. I had things to do and an escape plan to make. I got to go to college with scholarships from my grades and my art class portfolio, and, what?…grants because we were poor…Thanks Mom! (not being sarcastic, really). I wrote my own essays, I filled out my own paperwork. I was out of there, but it wasn’t quite the escape I had imagined.
So I get to college, live in the dorms, and I still had to work full-time, and it was a struggle, sure. But I realize soon, that none of my friends who live in the dorms with me there know how to do anything for themselves. I am amazed! Your parents do your taxes? Fill out your FAFSA? Schedule your oil changes? bought your car? send you how much per month? wow. I don’t know how many students I saw that didn’t work and were pushed to go to college by their parents that I saw drop out. i even knew a few people who’s parents thought they were in school still and they weren’t, and they were still getting money from them!
It was then I had a self-realization…I know how to be independent, on my own. I can do things for myself, and maybe my success thus far was in fact out of how hard I had to work. Well, I felt pretty proud of that. I felt it invaluable.
The question then becomes quite circular… has my success thus far been because I have had to be so resourceful and hard-working? If I would’ve had time to study more and work less through developing years, and had more nurturing parental guidance and financial support, would I have excelled farther, had more time to be ‘gifted’? Or would that have stagnated my resourcefulness, independence, work ethic and time management skills?
So I especially pondered on the listing…
“Being poor is knowing how hard it is to stop being poor.”
In my case, I have a theory that I will never stop being poor. It is a lifestyle, and I don’t mean physically.Its like an alcoholic who hasn’t drank for 12 years but still calls themselves an alcoholic, because they know they have those characteristics. Yes I make money now and take care of myself and have good job. But I don’t think I could ever stop constantly finding ways to make things easier on myself and using those survival techniques that were instilled in me from the get go. Doing things because I have to. And in some ways that makes me OCD about money, paying bills, and control over my own affairs. But I am ok with that. I also have a long list of rules I set for myself to obide by…. Those “My kids will never have to…” rules. I think we all have those.
So when I think about students in our society growing up poor and underprivileged, I think they continue living with that struggle if they have been fortunate enough to pursue higher education. But these also might be the students that given the chance could really excel. These are the students that truly want to to be there. Are probably grateful to be there.
Should educators consider that when developing course content, course load, and busywork? weighing out quality and quantity? absolutely. Are they? That’s a good question. Its seems, especially in Alaska, with a good number of “non-traditional” students, that would and should be a something to consider, even if the educator or administration has no insight into what being underprivileged is like.
And,(to be more obectivive), at the same time, isn’t a a dollar still a dollar? Is it worth more coming from someone who has worked harder? whether it is coming from a full-time student slash full time waitress paying her own way through through school with no help, or if it is coming from the pockets of the parents of a fratboy with no job, or it is coming from the federal government. Someone flipped the bill somewhere. The effort to make a quality course with a realistic work load and valuable outcomes that’s worth that dollar should be the consideration, it seems.
A lot to digest there. I don’t have any answers, which is in the grand tradition of philosophy I guess. That I don’t have any answers and that the reasoning not only *can* turn circular but– for people who go through the kind of changes that cause introspection or are cursed with the solipsistic gift of ceaseless self-talk (which I was surprised to find, relatively early on, wasn’t the norm at all)– almost inevitably *does* can be part of the problem.
Anyway, this part made me wince: “But what was even harder for me is that somehow I managed to do well in school, and even more importantly (to some), on tests, and thus was put in gifted classes. So here is where it really starts to suck…” I hated, hated, hated that my ability to get good grades and ace tests– which came naturally and meant nothing to me– not only was praised constantly (might as well praise me for being tall or something… oh wait, they did that when I hit 6 foot in 8th grade) but then thrust into situations with people I did not understand and who made me miserable.
I do wish, though, that our counselor hadn’t been involved in a sexual scandal at the one time that those high scores meant something and I would have understood the mechanics of applying to and paying for college. My route there was less than optimal.
There are definitely some positive lessons that can come from hardship. My sister– who suffers intensely from the aspirational myopia that I talked about and somehow I got away from (thanks in part, ironically, to the most mundane ability to get good grades in feeble schooling and to my narcissism in being willing to cut myself loose from almost everyone I knew, most particularly almost all of my well-intending but doomed family) has developed survival skills far beyond any I have. The tragedy, and what I mean when I say she is myopic, is that she can’t believe the possibility that those skills and talents could be used for more than sustaining the life she has. Guess she’s an uncured poverty-holic.
P.S. *I* don’t think a dollar is just a dollar. But maybe it’s not important as long as I pretend I do?