I have absolutely no sympathy. She has babies while living in a weekly motel with no husband and she’s on WIC? She says she has an urge to procreate just like rich people, so now I should feel guilty and pay for her actions? She talks about the differences in decision making. Well, how about her decision to have babies? Her decision not to find a life partner to help her?
The decision I’m most sad about is the decision of taxpayers to use my money to pay for her decisions. Take away consequences and people will make worse decisions. No one who is on government assistance should be having more babies.
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This is an interesting point, although I wonder to what extent it’s a privilege issue and to what extent it’s a self-segregation issue. I’m CERTAINLY not saying that privilege doesn’t play a big role, or that privilege isn’t a driver of self-segregation. But (from my admittedly very privileged perspective) it also seems that there are many people who aren’t terribly interested in “moving up.”
In my corner of Manhattan, for example, everybody has an equal shot at getting into any of the 17 elementary schools in our district. But almost all of the wealthier and more highly educated parents (together with a very big chunk of the Chinese immigrant community) send their kids to only six of those 17 schools. Those six schools have very active PTAs that are able to raise significant funds to support enrichment programs like music, sports, art and science that most of the other schools don’t have. And those six schools perform significantly better on almost all academic assessments. At the other 11 schools, well over 80% (in some cases over 95%) of the kids are eligible for free lunch (meaning they’re overwhelmingly poor).
The reasons for this phenomenon are complex. Part of it comes from the fact that if the privileged families don’t get a seat at one of the “better” schools, they have other options (like moving to the suburbs or, if they’re wealthy enough, private school). But part of it also comes from the fact that a significant number of the poorer families aren’t interested in sending their kids to a wealthier, better-performing school. And the reasons for that are even more complex.
Our district could abandon its open “choice” system for school admissions and move to a more arbitrary assignment system to better balance the schools’ populations. But would that be a good thing? It’s really hard to say.
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I feel 'ya. There are some latent mental and emotional processes that kick in when the circumstances are exactly right (meaning bad).
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Makes me think of the people who tell me that I’ve never seen poor people because I’ve been around mostly white people.
Because, you know, white Americans all live the upper-middle-class suburb lifestyle.
Save the pitchforks, though, folks; I’ve seen with my own two eyes the ugly behavior of prejudice and racism, and how much harder it makes life for the victims. Just…don’t be the douchenozzle who grew up middle-class and goes on about how poor white people are just poor because they failed to take advantage of their privilege. Just…don’t, you know nothing.
That piece was written about a county right next to the one my grandpa grew up in. I have cousins that are Nobles. I don’t know that the little boy is a relative, but his hair color looks identical to mine. :-/ Having said all that, they seem to have taken photos of the worst of the worst there.
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Yeah, fuck those babies… let them starve in utero. /snark
It’s all “my tax money shouldn’t pay for others” until it’s your time for help. When she gets knocked up, it’s all her fault. when you lose your job, it’s all someone else’s fault, and of course, since you are a GOOD PERSON, you deserve help. She obviously is a BAD PERSON and deserves to be shit on by a cold system that dehumanizes us.
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S/he also said about vouchers:
They privilege the kids whose parents are already educated/savvy enough to work the system to get them the best possible education under the circumstances anyway. Those aren’t the kids who need help…it’s the kids whose parents don’t speak the dominant language, or are functionally illiterate, or work 3 jobs, or have substance abuse issues, or mental health issues, or just simply don’t know enough about education to understand what is important and how the system works. THOSE are the kids who need all the help they can get.
Oh boy oh boy oh boy I am so all over this. My sister was a teacher is some painfully poor places and the values of the parents are just not the same. And other teachers, too who have worked in these districts will discuss this issue. I know teachers who have REALLY tried to reach out to promising students to almost have the parents bat that opportunity right out of their hands.
My stepson spent a year in a school which was a public school for the problem kids (he needed their approach for his mental health issues) and this was a real ghetto school. I loved their teachers, soooo dedicated. Their principal was a fighter for her kids. But in the end, this school had no resources, kids who were already parents at 15, people who had given up before they had started and no matter how smart or promising they were, without parents there to support them they were losing already. It was so hard to see these teachers tapdancing so hard to try to get these kids to wake up and see the possibilities in their lives.
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My husband and I were married just before he deployed with the Marines to Fallujah.
From her Kickstarter.
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If they did it Survivor style or something that could be televised it’d be like Death Race, but with kids, in a mall. Just think of the ad revenues, glorious.
You know, I thought something along these lines myself before I finished reading the article.And I finished it and found it deeply profound, and meaningful, and well written.
The thing is, it wasn’t a story, not with a beginning, middle and end. In fact, that’s kind of the point, how do you illustrate despair in a well structured story? You don’t, or rather, she didn’t, she gave you a fragmented, stream of consciousness view of poverty as a condition, and despair as a prerequisite for actually being admitted into the “poor people’s club” A demo.
I don’t want to assume anything here, but perhaps you might want to reflect on your statement, its very telling:
“but if poverty is such an important issue it should be discussed by those who have special, profound insights.”
This would automatically discount the majority of the poor and uneducated, wouldn’t it? This is something she addresses in her writing herself, how looking poor, or in this case, “writing poor”
(not poorly), carries its own stigma.
Its my point of view and I offer it in case its useful, but the social problems dividing us are not that hard to understand, but they are really hard to explain because understanding is all on you and explaining is a dialogue, and we don’t know how to have a dialogue. This means that in practice we don’t try to understand and expect people to explain things to us because in the end this makes it so much easier not to change what we do and consequently, who we are. We try so hard not to change.
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I have absolutely no sympathy. She has babies while living in a weekly motel with no husband and she’s on WIC? She says she has an urge to procreate just like rich people, so now I should feel guilty and pay for her actions?
Nobody’s asking you to feel guilty.
And I think she made it fairly clear the difficulty of planned parenthood; Contraception isn’t easy or free in those conditions, condoms rely on the man to take responsibility. And for some people, their religious beliefs might mean it’s not even an option.
I would imagine that when you’re that dirt poor, about the only joy you might have is a good f***. At least it’s free.
God help you if you get pregnant because the only thing more stigmatizing than being poor is getting an abortion.
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LOL - are you me?
Can we also get them to research “food deserts” while they’re at it?
Poor areas are notorious for lack of good+affordable food, ugh.
So many soldiers and retired soldiers are living in poverty that it’s ridiculous. But, you know according to cass there, it’s their own fault.
Also, this person has only commented on this story, so probably a troll.
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So I guess you feel really good about the dollars you spend that supplement all the tax breaks and deferments of the ruling class, who, when they have children, keep their money within their own station in life and repeat the cycle. Good to know. I’m not advocating for multitudes of children within the poverty stricken, but really, go ahead and kick the dog because the master fucked you over.
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We can call it Carousel!
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I’m only 29!!
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Holy shit, we have a football program now. Don’t get me started on how some of that money could be spent on academics.
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As a rather poor person myself (explanation below), I think the choice of buying a crockpot is not as productive as buying a rice and vegetable steamer. A steamer is so much more versatile, and doesn’t cook the nutrients/bejeezus out of everything.
If there’s one thing I think the SNAP program is lacking, it’s the amount of free information and education about home economics and cooking. This is the kind of thing I think is the worst part of the food situation – that the U.S. has fallen into such a trap of ready-made meals, a symptom of even larger problems.
I spend $200 a month on groceries (Kansas prices) and eat pretty well. A 24-ounce soymilk/yogurt/banana/egg/carrot/spinach/juice/berry-of-your-choice smoothie every morning, some sort of rice & bean variation or sandwiches made from leftover chicken which I roast twice a month, and usually some sort of pasta dinner. It’s really cheap and easy to make your own marinara sauce (four pounds of Roma tomatoes yields 2 big jars instead of 1 for only 1 1/2 times the price – oh, and a nice glass of tomato juice left over after you’ve strained the tomatoes. Add a little salt and pepper, delicious!), and the stuffed shells recipe you find on most pasta boxes goes a verrry long way during the week. Fresh vegetables are much cheaper to cook, but there are many ways to prepare them that don’t require cooking at all, unless you count beans and potatoes.
As for vices, it’s amazing how inexpensive it is to bake a cake or cookies from scratch if you have access to an oven, not to mention how good they taste in comparison to pre-made or boxed mixes.
I’m in an odd situation. I sympathize with the blogger about the “image” factor because I suffer from chronic nasal polyposis, and it’s making the job search tougher.
Generally, I sound like I have a bad head cold, my nose drains steadily (and at some most unfortunate times), so I have to stuff tissue up my nostrils for most of the day. I have absolutely no sense of smell, and I get little productive sleep.
I believe when most hiring people see me, they see someone who can’t work in the public view or who could be a possible safety hazard on more than one level (lack of steady sleep, lack of smell, and the dripping nose – not to mention the general disgust at the constant sniffling or the squeaky/shlorpy noises my sinuses make when I’m drinking liquids).
The doctor won’t let me take Prednisone on a regular basis because it’s such a dangerous drug (which sucks because I’ve found it acts sort of like a mind enhancer for me), and topical steroids have no effect. Though certain organizations like the military see this as a disability issue, the SSA does not (does snot, lol), so no support there.
The worst part is, most people see me in the checkout line at the grocery store, but don’t see what’s going on inside my body. They just see an able-bodied person with a bad case of the sniffles. I strongly suspect they’re thinking, “Just an able-bodied person spending my tax dollars to feed his face.”
As much as I’ve come to enjoy cooking, I figured I could work it to my advantage by doing something like starting up a cottage food industry like my uncle-in-law who bakes bread in Pennsylvania. No such luck. Kansas is one of four states that still hasn’t legalized home kitchen food production.
Seeing that my artistic skills are better even than my cooking, I’m currently looking towards the east and west coasts for the possibility of helping with a small business like a cottage food producer, and to be able to try and sell a painting or two on the side in an area where there is enough local support for artists. I figure that could be a solid workaround until I can figure out a permanent solution to the nasal polyps.
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There are malls in the wild! I know where I’m sending my mini-me for summer vacation this coming year! Survival camp-zombie style, here we come!
Honestly, many malls were built in former wildernesses! It’s kind of crazy to think about.
Unfortunately, while plenty of plans spring to mind, they all closely resemble the techniques used to ‘civilize’ various stomped-on aboriginal populations: forcibly remove the children from their family and cultural context, send them to a specialized educational facility where approved culture and conduct are mandatory and displays of behavior, cultural attributes, etc. originating from the child’s place of origin are forbidden, hard.
To the degree that poverty has a self-perpetuating cultural component, that brings to mind techniques for curbing cultural transmission, most of which have an unpleasant history and a well deserved bad reputation.
Also, broccoli can be expensive as hell. We tried to buy some in December in Florida, it was $8 a head.
We tried three grocery stores in the course of a week, it was the same. Port Orange, you got issues!
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