Sydney Poitier was a pioneer black protagonist in films from the 1960s (Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, To Sir with Love). In an era of gross underrepresentation of people of color, Sydney Poitier became more than just a token black person and became an icon and a hero for many black Americans. However, even though I love his films, it’s always bothered me a little that he always plays a doctor, a professor - always kind, professional, well-dressed - as if, in order to be acceptable to white movie-going audiences in the 1960s, his “blackness” needed to be consistently offset by wholesome, pro-social behavior and credentials.
Black people, I often say, do not deserve equal rights because they are good; they deserve equal rights because they are people. We make no claim as to anyone’s “goodness” or “badness” because that’s frankly irrelevant to how we should treat one another, both legally and interpersonally.
I think we sometimes suffer from the same misunderstanding with those who are poor. As with Sydney Poitier and the movie commentary on race, when we portray the poor as Will Smith does in “The Pursuit of Happyness”, in some ways we actually make the problem worse.
Our society tends to fall into one of two false beliefs about the poor. Some people want to cast the poor as lazy, immoral, irresponsible - “undeserving”, while the other group in society sometimes pretend that everyone who is poor is merely “down on their luck” or simply suffering from “oppression” or “institutional racism” - all things that are beyond their control. Both groups are wrong.
When we moved to Detroit, I was definitely in the second group. I assumed that the only reason the poor struggled was because of factors outside their control, and I was angry at people in group 1 who seemed full of judgment and blame - probably because they couldn’t see all of those obstacles. If we could only fix the environment - provide jobs, shelters, financial resources, education, housing, bring food to “food deserts” - then the poor would spring into the middle class and fulfill the American dream.
Hollywood backed me up. In “The Pursuit of Happyness”, Will Smith emulates this ideal. He plays a good, loving, hardworking, scrappy father who does everything he can to help his son and just finds doors of opportunity shutting around him, unfairly. Once he breaks through those walls and is given the chance to succeed, he does! And they live happily ever after (and again, I feel the need to say I actually really loved the movie).
There was a general understanding throughout much of history that the poor were poor because they deserved to be. Most were by nature “improvident, reckless and intemperate, and with habitual avidity for sensual gratification.” Speaking of the Irish, Friedrich Engels wrote “The facile character of the Irishman, his crudity, which places him but little above the savage, his contempt for all humane enjoyments, in which his very crudeness makes him incapable of sharing, his filth and poverty, all favour drunkenness.” In this framework, there’s not much to be done for the poor - both because they don’t deserve it - pearls before swine etc - and because it probably wouldn’t help much anyway. John Snow “almost uniquely among medical authorities (in the mid 1800’s) he did not blame the poor for their own diseases, but saw that their conditions of living left them vulnerable to influences beyond their control.” (428)
There certainly are obstacles in the lives of the poor that are outside their control. There are many things that we as fellow citizens, local and federal governments, and other institutions and agencies can do to change - unfair laws, inefficient justice and immigration systems, poor schools, gang- and drug- promoting media, lack of childcare options, exorbitant healthcare costs - it’s a huge list. It’s so huge, in fact, that it’s tempting to take away any responsibility from the poor at all, and consider them innocent victims of a society that has done them wrong.
The downside of this more charitable approach is that it may have unintended consequences. That is, we Hollywood-and-college-educated folks may find that when we interact personally with these people, a lot of the stereotypes we have carefully avoided turn out to be true.
When we lived in Detroit, we saw a lot of ugly stereotypes being fulfilled. There was a lot of sexual promiscuity among teenagers. A lot of lower class friends of ours made really stupid financial decisions.
We became close friends with three young single mothers (Hispanic, white, and black, ironically) who received many of the resources designed to remove society’s obstacles. One of them for example got a huge tax return every year, a free therapist who traveled to her home for appointments, donations of clothing and furniture, food stamps, rental assistance, job training, free college tuition, subsidized daycare, and church assistance with meals and other necessities. As a high schooler she had had some of the best-paid teachers in the state, with field trips to inspiring museums and performances. She had access to free public transportation and medical care.
On the one hand, it was nice to see so many things working in their favor. Many wonderful people have found ways to meet the needs of people like our friends, and it’s incredibly encouraging to see.
On the other hand - their situations over the years has remained virtually unchanged.
The uncomfortable realization I had was seeing the ways in which their situations were perpetuated by their actions. They choose to remain with an abusive boyfriend. They choose to beat their child with a hanger/belt/shoe instead of using time out. They choose to stay near family instead of moving to a safer neighborhood. They choose to start a fist fight with a coworker and therefore loses her job. They choose to buy frozen pizza bites instead of apples. They chooses to put their children in front of the TV all day instead of reading books with them. They choose not to take birth control.
Again - it is possible that poor people are arrested more often because police are biased against them, or because of horrible treatment based solely on skin color (I have seen this happen personally). It is crucial that we don’t pretend these events are imaginary.
But what is uglier is the terrible conclusions we come to when we are taught that poor people are all victims and as pure as the driven snow, and then our experience teaches us differently. I look around and see that the black kids in my classroom are the most disorderly and get the worst grades - no one is telling me this, I’m just drawing my own teenager conclusions. I am robbed at gunpoint on my driveway in a neighborhood that was “pretty safe” but definitely lower income. Without providing context, especially for children, we fail to show how a history of bad TREATMENT by society can result in bad CULTURAL changes that result in bad ACTIONS. Instead, kids will think - well, maybe there IS something wrong with that group of people.
Some people deflect even at this point, wanting to say that whether an action is “good” or “bad” is itself a value-laden or even a racist statement. But this isn’t unusual. Our society regularly promotes certain actions and discourages others - We promote quality teachers in schools because we believe that learning effectively is “good”. We create Child Protective Service because we believe that scalding children is “bad”. We fund campaigns for fruits and vegetables because we think eating fruits and vegetables is “good”. Frankly, if we can’t judge actions as good or bad, it’s hard to judge any changes as good or bad either.
I think it is fair to say that, generally, actions that lead to financial self-sufficiency, strong relationships, public safety, healthy bodies and minds and interconnected communities are good. As a member of the Church of Jesus Christ, I’m comfortable listing a whole host of things that are bad (or we may say “wicked”): Addiction is bad. Stealing is bad. Lying and cheating are bad. Killing and hurting are bad. Ignorance is bad. Laziness, gluttony, fornication, adultery, and anarchy are bad. They are bad because they destroy individuals, families, and communities, harm bodies and minds, threaten safety and every kind of well-being.
So, recognizing my bias in this regard, I will identify the framework that makes more sense when understanding the plight of the poor: it is both institutions and personal actions (impacted by said institutions) that lead to the suffering of the poor.
There is a name for this combination of effects in the Book of Mormon. It is called the "wicked traditions of fathers"
There are extensive references to one group of people, the Lamanites, who are considered a “filthy, loathsome people”, full of “violence”, stealing, “idleness” and “idolatry” (Again - taking into account potential bias - the record was kept by a different group of people). Even former Lamanites themselves acknowledged the need to leave behind the negative traits they have inherited from their culture.
“Wicked traditions of fathers” are the negative cultural traits that we unwittingly adopt from our parents and culture and pass on to the next generation because we were taught that they are good, or that they don’t matter. Sometimes we adopt these traits simply because we have never been presented with another option
One prophet, Jacob, tells the Nephites - I know you think you are better than them (because they steal and kill each other and you don’t), but “a commandment I give unto you, which is the word of God, that ye revile no more against them because of their filthiness; but ye shall remember your own filthiness, and remember that their filthiness came because of their fathers.”
My Detroit friend grew up in a society where she was never taught the importance of being financially honest, paying bills on time, or having sexual restraint. No one ever mentioned what a credit score was, or set the expectation that doing well in school was important. Getting off Medicaid and food stamps was never treated as a goal or even seen as something desirable. On a visit to our house she gasped as she had never seen someone jogging. She didn’t know anyone who was actually married. She owned several cars before learning that she needed to get the oil changed occasionally. She had no clue how to vote, budget, write a resume, cook vegetables or use time-out with her kids.
Most of this is due to what she learned from her parents. Her dad was a nonexistent presence in her life and her mom abandoned her at the hospital when she was born. My friend's mom didn’t graduate from high school, had no assets or even a bank account and spent much of my friend's childhood “squatting” in abandoned houses and stealing electricity from neighbors. Her mom either ignored them or beat them when they misbehaved, so there was not a lot of direction or support in many ways. My friend's mom had a reputation in the neighborhood for her promiscuity and neglectful of her children. My friend remembers being hungry enough once that she and her sister ate toothpaste.
This wasn’t from a lack of resources - her mother had food stamps, but she sold them for cigarettes or used them to buy nice food for her boyfriends. She had medicaid but her lifestyle was so unhealthy she developed diabetes and had to have several fingers and toes amputated. TJ’s mom had free transportation and probably similar supports to TJ, but her actions often sabotaged the intent behind these supports and didn’t improve her life.
I don’t know where these “wicked traditions” came from, but I’m guessing many of them were handed down in a similar way, from the previous generations. And where did they originate? We don’t know exactly how certain traditions came to be, whether they were CAUSED by external factors or by “wicked fathers”, but I don’t actually think it matters.
In conclusion, this girl is poor for many reasons, a lot of them are not her fault, some of them are, but the things that are her fault are still in large part due to the “wicked traditions” of her parents. Frankly, whether they are issues of morality or social responsibility or even just living a self-reliant lifestyle - my Detroit friend is impoverished. She needs both institutional change and the personal relationships and mentoring that can help her succeed.
