COMPASSION’S OUT OF FASHION
Why this irrational hatred toward those less fortunate? Most poor people I know do not spend their days rich-bashing. They’re too busy focusing on day-to-day survival issues. I don’t see poor people waging full-scale riots, so where is this coming from? At what point did the right thing to do become the wrong thing to do? When did we decide, as a nation, that running away from our problems was better than confronting them?
I don’t pretend to have all the answers.
Some of these answers have been so overintellectualized and so over-burdened with statistics that basic common sense has been lost. The saddest part about all this is that there is obviously plenty of resources and manpower to resolve the issues surrounding poverty. We simply choose not to use them. Or, we choose to pretend to care, to pretend to be saviors, in order to have access to that lovely government money.
The lower class, on the other hand, know that they are much more a part of the solution than the problem. They did not voluntarily put themselves on the streets. They did not consciously pick out a patch of concrete and say, “Gee, this looks comfy. Think I’ll stay awhile.”
We know society as a whole is to blame. The sad and ugly truth is that our knowledge of the situation has come from The School of Hard Knocks. I’ve taken the classes. Shelter 101. Beginning and Intermediate Chow Hall. Food Stamp Shop. I’ve earned my degree. I’m simply waiting for the parchment.
We, as a country, have this ugly habit of not respecting anyone’s intellect unless they have that sheepskin. Well, I have letters after my name. GA, SSI, AFDC. I’m sure I can come up with more acronyms — the system’s lousy with them. Who knows more about Civil Rights — the people with their degrees in law, or the people who marched in Selma and Montgomery? Why is it that we spend so much time giving weight to what “officials” say about homelessness, when they’ve never experienced its unique horrors? Why do we allow those who care so little to have so much control? Because we have to. They hold the purse strings.
I love how the powers that be blame the poor for the mistakes of the welfare system. That’s like blaming the bat boy for the outcome of a baseball game. When I was born, there was a welfare system in place. I did not assist in its design at that time. When my father was born, there was a welfare system in place. Now, does that mean that when I was growing up, my father said to me, “Son, some day, this will all be yours?” Actually, it was quite the opposite. My father was a cement mason. A union man. A hard-core Democrat. He hated going on strike, because it meant going on the dole, which he also hated. He would rather earn his keep. That’s what was passed down to me — a work ethic. Not a lazy ethic. Not a “Get Out Of Work Free” card.
That’s the thing about poor folk. They don’t know what it is to have a feeling of entitlement. The world is your oyster; anything you want — it’s yours. They only know the scraping and the struggling. The living from paycheck to paycheck. The kissing of the boss’ behind even when, especially when you don’t want to do so.
It is in these, and many, many other ways, that the workplace resembles a plantation, and employees indentured servants. People will deny this slave mentality. Having been a recipient of this behavior, I can tell you with certainty that most bosses do not treat you like an equal, because they do not want you to believe that you are equal. Pettiness, selfishness, back-stabbing, gossip, superiority complexes — these are all tools of the trade in the modern-day workplace. We say we live in a democracy, but if you walk into some of these businesses, they are most definitely run like monarchies, if not out-and-out dictatorships. If you don’t fall into lockstep with them — no room for ideas, unless there’s profit in it (for them, not you) — and devote the entirety of your life to them, including off-hours, you won’t last long. Look at someone funny, say the wrong word with the wrong inflection, and you’re outta there.
Why go on about the workplace? For all its problems (and there are many), the welfare system is ten times, twenty times, a hundred times worse. Full of people who really seem to enjoy denying you services. Passing you from agency to agency, always professing to not have the information you need, and promptly sending you somewhere across town that is also without solutions, to get you out of their hair.
It’s like a game of Three-Card Monte. For those of you not in the know, this is a street-level con game designed to fleece you of your hardearned cash. Three cards in a row, one card is yours. Shuffle them around face down. You pick your card, you win. Being a con game and all, your chances of coming out on top are slim and none. So let’s call your card “care.” No matter which card you look at, “care” isn’t there. Simplistic, I know, but the point to be made here is that a governmental system that I am entrusting with my life is gambling with it without my permission.
Classism is the new “ism” in this country. The more that our government insists on scapegoating the poor for all of society’s ills instead of looking in a mirror and admitting its mistakes, the more I will insist that we are looking at human rights issues, not political ones. The more resources we expend in starting wars overseas, the less we are taking care of our fellow countrymen domestically. Why should I care about the obsession to build democracy elsewhere when my constitutional rights have been denied me here?”
Randall
