News came out last week that the U.S. poverty rate is higher than it has been in years. And the working age poor have snagged the record share of that percentage. Unemployment has something to do with that. It must be noted that the majority of the 8 plus million families in poverty in the U.S. have a member of the household working full time. In one of the articles I read, an interviewee noted that the working poor will be with us for a long time. The trend will not fall away; it will gain momentum.
Underemployment is a stealthy and deadly predator of families.
My current position has me in direct relationship with many families who fall into this category. I hear stories of how the American dream is out of reach for a certain group of grasping women in Syracuse, New York. In another blog I write, I asterisk potentially controversial posts. Asterisking now applied.
*I cannot count how many times I have heard biting criticism of single, African American mothers who live in urban areas and are on public assistance. Some nasty adjectives are swung around, and sweeping conclusions. "Why don't they just get a job," is a favorite expression of many. "Lazy" is a mean word I hear too often.
We attack other women ... why? To make us feel better about ourselves? "Look how hard I work! Look what a successful woman I am!" Is there some comfort in thinking we have the answer as to why another mother has trouble feeding her children on her income? If we can assign it to that woman's flaws, do we feel safer from the big scary system that could knock us off our feet too?
Feminism cannot be only a movement of professional women who want to arrange the world so it more comfortably makes room for their careers. And Christians, if Jesus walked among us again he would choose to sit next to that lady with 5 kids, no husband, in debt, and on food stamps and TANF. We need to occasionally remind ourselves that "middle class" is an abnormal blip in the realm of human history. Most of the time, there's poor and there's very wealthy. And there's a whole lot more poor than very wealthy. We also need to understand that if the entire world population lived at the current middle class American standard, we would need to colonize 6 other Earth-type planets to provide the raw resources to sustain that. How many missed paychecks stand between any of us and poverty? How protective is our psychological insulation?
Is life, then, about being as comfortable and financially secure as possible? Would we be better served sealing ourselves off in our middle class elevator to the top or allowing ourselves to enter into a sisterhood of all kind of women?
Another thing I hear a lot is that there always have and always will be poor people: why work to end poverty? From a feminist standpoint, the bottom line is that we are not satisfied with any kind of status quo where oppression exists, where our fellow humans are suffering. Jesus, who understands the scope of human poverty better than any other, explicitly addresses the way we treat our brothers and sisters in poverty; however we treat them, consider it how we are treating him.
What does Jesus say when someone asks him why he just can't get a job?
Great post, T. I especially like the point about middle class being a recent phenomenon. I love to read your thoughts.
ReplyDeleteLoved the line where you say if we blame other women's poverty on their flaws, it makes us feel safer. It is scary. To know that, without support systems, "small" happenings in our middle class lifestyle (like a wrecked car, for instance) could snowball, leaving us in the place we feared.
ReplyDeleteI liked how Rob Bell put it. (My paraphrase:) In the world to come, the restored earth, there won't be poverty. So shouldn't we work toward it's end in this world? (At least that was my takeaway of what he said.)