When reflecting on poverty in America generally the image of a poor shirtless bloated child drinking unsanitary water is far from being imagined. That is because the effects of poverty in an industrialized society such as America are better off than developing countries. Instead a homeless scruffy adult sleeping in the streets is the image that comes to mind. According to Katharine Ritz Battistoni, a journalist for the Nation, there are “37 million Americans living below the poverty line…” That is a number that continues to grow as time progresses, especially in this shit economy we face today. There are a lot of misconceptions about being poor which is the result of poor media coverage and political ploys to justify policies that hurt those in need such as Welfare Reform. The poor, the social outcast of America are the bud of every negative connotation connected to poverty, including me gasping at the lady who decides to pay with her Lone Star the day that I’m in a hurry and want to check out fast. But its that type of behavior and thinking that fuel the negative connotation of blaming the poor for their situation. (Trust me I have shammed myself, hence the cause of this redemption blog) The reality is, not all of those who suffer from poverty come from an urban community, not all of them are black or Hispanic, not all of them are single women, or adults and not all of them are poor because they refuse to find jobs. The fact is there are many myths concerning the poverty community and a lot of those myths refuse to aid the situation and better those who need it.
There are two ways of looking at Americas poor, the deserving and the undeserving. The deserving poor include children and elderly, even those who are mentally or physically incapable of working (Iceland 2006). The undeserving poor are those society generally pictures when they think of poor they are the ones that society blames for draining America's resources because they refuse to find work. They are the drug addicts or alcoholics or they are associated as being lazy and those who refuse to get jobs. Battistoni states in her article, “It is much easier to dismiss poor people as undeserving unsavory, crackheads, welfare queens- not like respectable middle class Americans- than to acknowledge the enormous problems that continue to plague our society.” Which is what we tend to do, especially after 1996 with Clinton’s Welfare Reform Act which enabled a platform for the stereotypes of those in poverty to be inflamed justifying restrictions enforced for those in need. In an article for the Star newspaper in Canada, Judith McCormack writes,
“The myths about poverty often serve other political purposes as well. Defining the poor as lazy or irresponsible creates popular villains for the rest of us to condemn. It panders to a human weakness to feel superior to someone, and provides a handy target for complaints about tax dollars.” (p.2)
For example, during hurricane Katrina, the effects of poverty displayed on every media coverage in America was racially disproportionate. It was not the poor white receiving their “five minutes of fame,” but rather the blacks that populated the lower wards of New Orleans. It is not just with New Orleans; generally media coverage of the poor depicts the single black ghetto mother. All this does is shift the sympathy many should have for the poor.
It is generally believed that America’s poor are a big government economic nightmare. They are the ones that abuse and drain the system. When in fact most welfare programs are designed to keep people in poverty rather than help them out of it. Garkovich, Hansen, and Dyk say, "Programs designed to increase a poor person's educational attainment or work skills represent about ten cents of every dollar spent on means-tested welfare benefits. The reality is that welfare was not intended to ‘solve’ the problem of poverty, merely to maintain eligible persons until their economic circumstances improved. ‘{Nationally} means-tested government cash benefits lifted about 3 million people out of poverty in 1994, lowering the poverty rate by one percentage point over what it would have been’ (O'Hare, 1996:35).”
In fact less than a third of America’s poor do not receive government handouts (Garkovich, Hansen, and Dyk 1997). The fact is that the majority of government funds, or tax expenditures, are spent on social security and Medicaid rather than other welfare funds (Iceland 2006). In “Without a Safety Net, Barbra Ehrenreich and Frances Fox Piven write:
“In the past, poor single mothers had their own from of unemployment insurance-welfare. Contrary to the stereotype, most welfare recipients worked at least intermittently, falling back on public assistance when a child got sick or a car broke down. But in their zeal to save the poor from their supposed sins of laziness, irresponsibly, ad promiscuity, the reformer entirely overlooked the role of welfare as a safety net for working mothers…Whatever sense this made in the boom years when welfare reform was devised, it makes none now.”
When minimum wage is unbearable to live off of more will turn to the government for help. The average income for a family of four to survive is $25,000 which is less than the income made with today’s minimum wage, now add a couple of children to that and the cost of living is unattainable. The way in which poverty is measured is the result of such broken attempts to fix poverty. Poverty is measured by multiplying 3 times the amount of food spent to the pretax income of individuals. This is quite controversial even for Molly Orshansky, the person who invented this formula because it does not take into consideration other attributing factors that could contribute to the poverty line.
Gender, race and education are amongst the common stereotypes of the lower class in America. These common misconstructions add to the notion that the unfortunate in America do not deserve sympathy. It is hard to visualize a society where all people are required equal distribution of the basic necessities of life including food, shelter, clothing and even education when equality for all is seen as a utopian idea by when envisioning the extinction of poverty. America, the land of the free, of which all men are created equal, is likely to turn her back than lend out a hand to her unlucky citizens. That is the unfortunate reality of a country so proud of its celebrated individuality. Especially since individual driven people do not have the public’s self-interest at heart, instead the driven individual will aim to advantage himself. As long as poverty is seen as a choice to be frowned upon rather than a fault the path to eroding poverty is unlikely. So I encourage all to think before judging any person on government assistance.
Bibliography
• Battistoni, Katharine R. "The Reality of Poverty." The Nation 1 Jan. 2007. http://www.thenation.com/doc/20071022/ritz_battistoni, New York, NY. 22 Apr. 2008. .
• Ehrenriech, Barbra, and Piven Frances Fox. "Without a Safety Net." Mother Jones 2002May/June, 2002 03 April 2008
.
• Iceland, John. 2006. Poverty in America. 2nd edition. Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press.
• Garkovich, Lori, Gary Hansen, and Patricia Dyk. "Implications of Welfare Reform for Poor Kentucky Families." Foresight 4 .2 (1 1997): 22 Apr. 2008 .
• Ginsky, Jake. "high-Income Poverty." Mother Jones [San Fransico, CA] 17 Dec. 1999. 24 Apr. 2008. .
• McCormack, Judith. "Scapegoating Needy Justifies Scoiety's faiure to Find Political Solutions." The Star [Tronato, Canada, 2 Mar. 2007. 1 Jan. .
