For nearly 50 years, America has been at war against poverty. Actually, the battle has been raging for much longer than that, I was merely thinking back to Lyndon Johnson’s bold Great Society initiative, which was launched in 1964, mainly to address issues of racism and systemic inequality.
Actually, much of the social safety net was assembled 30 years prior, during the administration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and the enactment of New Deal programs like the Social Security Act, the Works Progress Administration (WPA), and a host of others that were a direct response to the crushing economic collapse caused by the Great Depression. Historians refer to Roosevelt’s focus being on the “3 Rs”: Relief for the unemployed and poor, Recovery of the economy to normal levels, and Reform of the financial and banking system in order to prevent a repeat of the depression.
This might be an over-simplification, but most of the efforts of conservatives over the past 30 years, since the days of Reagan, have been in rolling back programs enacted by Johnson, and even Roosevelt, with the onus for being poor being directed at those forced to live in poverty.
I have written about C-SPAN’s Book TV before on this blog. Weekends on C-SPAN are taken up with 48 hours of the best in nonfiction books and the authors that write them.
My television viewing in the summer is mainly given over to baseball and reruns of The Waltons most evenings, so I don’t watch much Book TV during the summer months. That’s why it was rather odd that I happened to tune in just as John Hope Bryant was readying to discuss his latest book, How the Poor Can Save Capitalism: Rebuilding The Path To The Middle Class. A provocative title for a book to be sure!
In our binary state of debate in America, where everything is either black, or white, it’s always difficult to present new ideas, especially if they don’t fall within the narrow parameters of what passes for political debate at the moment. Maine’s politics are a microcosm of this, with our current governor’s cynical attempts to curry favor with the far right base of his party by demonizing poor people.
In fact, on Sunday, hours before I happened to catch Bryant talking about his groundbreaking book, I read the Maine Sunday Telegram’s particularly galling (in my opinion) profile of Mr. LePage. The profile, written by staff writer Matt Byrne, was yet another take on the hackneyed Horatio Alger myth and the classic “rags to riches” tale that all of us have been treated to now for more than four years relative to LePage. Personally, I’m not buying the narrative and its many inconsistencies.
What bothers me the most about this rehash of LePage’s early years, is the lack of any pushback coming from Maine’s journalistic community—such as, asking the governor why it was ok for him to receive significant support in the form of housing, tuition, and mentoring from a host of well-connected community members, and yet, his plan for those in a similar place is simply, “pull yourself up by your own bootstraps,” basically. It smacks of hypocrisy at its worst, and shoddy reporting at the very least. LePage’s regular haranguing of Maine’s poor for being poor does nothing to move the ball in addressing the issue. In fact, if you follow our governor and his advisers, they’re always short on details related to implementation.
The issue facing the poor in the 21st century is economic immobility. The poor—a category that includes many classified as “working poor”—is a significant cross-section of our consumer economy. What Bryant is proposing and has been since founding Operation HOPE, Inc. shortly after the Rodney King riots, is that current arguments about poverty are unproductive. He believes that we need a broader “reimagining of what it means to be poor.” This is often missed in a mere quantitative assessment.
Because Bryant is able to expand the definition of poverty to what he calls our “teetering class”—people that are nearly poor, almost poor, could be poor, was poor, really poor, etc.—basically, a large swath of America living paycheck to paycheck, and it extends across traditional class, race, and economic lines, he moves the debate from demonizing people to showing that this is the group that has the potential to turn America around.
Many in the middle class (and I’d include myself with this group) are not too far removed from being poor. As jobs disappear and the nature of work changes, the old ways and rules of success have shifted, and many no longer have a road map. The poor, Bryant states, “never got the memo.”
One of the most powerful parts of the book for me, was Bryant’s delineation of how being in the “teetering class” exacts an emotional and psychological toll. First, it robs people of self-esteem and confidence. Bryant says that people that don’t feel good about themselves are “screwed in America.” If you don’t believe in yourself, no one else will. Second, poverty robs people of positive role models, and usually puts them in a “crappy environment” in the community where they are forced to live. Bryant makes his third point that, “poverty produces a lack of opportunity in education, educational quality, and educational attainment; a lack of relationship wealth, or ‘who you know’; and a lack of access to capital and knowledge, financial or otherwise.”
Bryant’s point is that a person can possibly weather two of these situations and still survive and possibly rise above it. However, people experiencing all three are dead in the water—basically, a slim to none chance of succeeding.
Governor LePage didn’t have to overcome any of these three, because people stepped in and mitigated what was a negative situation for him. Yet, he doesn’t offer any solutions to others, except to offer his angry pronouncements of “I did it and so can you,” which is basically a lie.
It’s unlikely that hard-core right-wingers will ever be able to get their narrow ideological minds around any of Bryant’s prescriptions. However, conservatives with compassion, who are able to recognize that trading one form of subsistence for another—a welfare check for a crappy, dead-end minimum wage job working in a convenience store—does nothing to address that a consumer economy won’t ever pull out the doldrums if most Americans don’t have any disposable income. Better to work with progressives and liberals to “increase levels of aspiration, hope, engagement, well-being,” and following from that, comes increased economic energy, with increased gross domestic product to follow.
Bryant’s book isn’t a long or difficult read—it’s a mere 176 pages and can be read in a few nights. It’s one that should be read by anyone that wants to move beyond demonizing poor people and blaming them, and moving the debate forward, into positive territory, where hope and aspiration are the drivers, not kicking people when they’re down.
I’m urging anyone who wants to move beyond ideological gridlock to invest time in reading Bryant’s book, and then, get busy providing hope, mentoring, and opportunities, as Bryant espouses.
Lest people think my criticism of our governor, and my lauding of Bryant is just another “business as usual” appeal for more handouts, let me be as unequivocal as I can be, “it is not!!”
While I’m guessing that my reasons for citing the failure of public assistance and welfare programs would certainly be different than my friends on the right, I would concur that “giving a man a fish” doesn’t work—we need to “teach the man how to fish.”
Bryant is a big proponent of raising aspirations, which I noted in my blog post. He also is touting a massive nationwide focus on entrepreneurship and small business creation. In poor communities (and in rural communities in Maine!), he believes that even if this doesn’t create large numbers of entrepreneurs, it will create in young people an “entrepreneurial, can-do, glass is half full, let’s figure-out-what-we-are-for mind-set.”
And this is the key point and where I believe those on the right, the left, and in the middle can come together—around the belief that empowerment, rather than entitlement is what we need to transform lives and help people rise up out of poverty.
Read the book!!
Excellent Jimmy..I love it. Seems the whole country is in an uproar over a sick America. How can we turn all this griping and blaming into something productive to create positive change. I don’t know, but it’s a good question, I think.
I’ll read the book..I want a copy of your book as well. How can I order it?
I live in Texas where we are surrounded by illegal immigrants. Just one of America’s many current issues. It’s a hard call. It would take massive power to stop it..Once they are here, they often slip through…work for less, etc…It’s hard to come up with a solution. What, do you look at a 10 year old and say, “go back home”. Many are saying yes, send them back, but it’s more complicated than that. I don’t have the answers.
We need strong “American committed” leadership to address America’s homeland problems. That’s all I know. By the way, I am opinionated but am not a writer..lol.
Carrie,
I love to hear from old friends from back in the day. Thanks for your comment.
There are a host of issues related to what’s happening on our southern border with Mexico. One of them is neoliberalism, a term that hardly anyone seems to be paying much attention to. I’m no expert on the subject, but to live in these times and not know what neoliberalism is leaves you in the dark when jobs disappear, governments wage endless wars in far-away lands, and hometowns crumble before our eyes. It’s what frames my final essay in the new book, “Goin’ Back,” about Lisbon Falls. It was the last essay I wrote for the book and the hardest one to write.
If you don’t know the work and writing of Charles Bowden, he’s a great place to start, in getting oriented around Mexico’s drug cartels, narco-capitalism, the fallout from all of this, which is that people want to escape this charnel house, or “house of death.”
Another book about the so-called “war on drugs” (which is a lie) is “Narcoland” by Anabel Hernández. Unfortunately, none of this information is coming to us via either the left or right-wing media organs in the U.S.
I’ll shoot you an email with ordering info for the book, Carrie. Thanks for asking. I’m very excited about it, as it’s the best writing I’ve done and the most honest and personal.
I think your last line, “Read the Book!” before one reacts is the key to this blog.
What is confusing to me is that Governor LePage constantly brings up the abuse/homelessness that he suffered as a child yet the cuts in programs for the poor appears to be at the top of his list.
I do believe that “raising aspirations” is the key and it must start with our young people who are from poor homes and it must start before birth.
Parenting programs, involvement in library literacy programs, proper healthcare etc., an education or vocation etc. could be made available. I know we have all heard the phrase about giving a hand up not a hand out.
I guess the main pt. I want to make and I think about this all of the time, is I never want to assume that I know a person’s exact situation. I try not to label anyone by what I am told about them or what the current political view is on a group.
I think as people and as a nation we need to start going more with “our gut” and really look at people and see them…not what we think we see or what someone else tells us we see. It is frustrating to see how much communication and the natural art of simply talking to someone with respect and care has broken down.
Thank you Jim for being brave enough to write this article. Bravery brings about change I believe.
By the way I just finished Jim’s new book of essays and stories entitled, The Perfect Number. It is a fast and interesting read.
Great points, Sally.
Raising aspirations is truly the key. Yes, there’s so much data about early education, and how much needs to happen before kids even start school and prior to that. No wonder so many struggle—they get to the starting line already at a disadvantage.
It is about “giving a hand up not a hand out.”
Not sure how “brave” I am. Some things need to be said, talked about, and as a writer, I feel a responsibility to write about some of this. Too bad there weren’t more options to do more investigative work for newspapers and other publications as a freelancer—oh for another Maine Times in our state!
I recently looked a Border Patrol position in the Allagash. Oddly, it said that “Spanish” was a big plus to anyone wanting to get hired for that position. Mexicans everywhere, literally everywhere, is the fruit of NAFTA. We took away their livings in Mexico and replaced it with our corporate structures, then get angry at them for coming here looking for work. And as for lower wages and the complete lack of insurance/retirement/FICA the employer isn’t paying, wasn’t that the goal of NAFTA’s corporate backers in the first place–to create a class of workers who would break the backs of our unions and pension systems, huge corporate costs, by their desperate willingness to work for less?
My nephew works in construction and has mixed opinions of this, but noted this as well: the illegals stick together. If one is at the side of the road working on a broken truck, others will be there in minutes to help him. If one of us anglos is at the side of the road, we’re on our own.
Last word on our use/abuse of illegal immigrants: Victor Davis Hanson wrote about the gross immorality of using these workers until they are broken men and then telling them to go back to Mexico in his book Mexifornia. His thoughts on the subject are well worth reading.
Horatio Alger. Has anyone actually read any of his books? Just like Darwin, everyone claims to know what he wrote, but no one has actually read his books. Alger’s characters NEVER make it by pulling up their bootstraps. They always make it by becoming the best corporate toadies they can until the big bosses or owners recognize their innate talents (that is, willingness to sell themselves out heart, soul and mind for another’s profit) and arrange a marriage with the owner’s daughter or somesuch.
Which points out the biggest problem in what you describe, and the biggest problem with the poor: no one is free, no one is independent, no one is self-reliant, no one is wealthy so long as he relies on a paycheck from another man. The obverse of that coin, though, is that freedom is dangerous and failure can be disastrous, so we Americans have willingly taken the yoke that was offered over a century ago to accept a paycheck in exchange for true freedom, or the true wealth of owning one’s one shop or trade.
Gatto, baby. John Taylor Gatto, The Underground History of American Education. It’s all there if the reader is willing to take the time and carefully consider the implications of every sentence he writes.