When Is Poverty Poverty?

Posted by: Noel Jones


This post started out as a comment in response to Tim Pickel's post from Haiti below, and went over the word limit, so I decided it might be better as a post of it's own.

While living in Salvador, Bahia in Brazil, I witnessed poverty on a scale that I had never encountered before in person. People lived in handmade one or two-room shacks with dirt floors on the sides of hills in neighborhoods called refavelas, where middle-class homes lined the tops of each hill, and each major hill was a different neighborhood in the city of Salvador.

One thing that struck me was how many amputees there were among the poor--primarily because of untreated or poorly maintained diabetes. I saw hospitals and orphanages that made me want to cry. The sheer scope of the poverty there was overwhelming, and yet Brazil is not among the most poverty-stricken countries by far--on the contrary, they have a small but thriving middle class there, and although it has a reputation for being a dangerous country, it is not nearly as dangerous as many African countries. While I was there I translated for a delegation of Indian professionals from the Rotary Club, who had come to meet with professionals in Brazil about the common effects of poverty in their two countries, especially where health was concerned, since their climates have similarities. It was a real eye-opener.  

That said, I get annoyed when people talk about poverty in America as if it's really not that bad, compared to these other countries, as if we shouldn't worry about it unless it gets that bad. As if 1 in 5 Americans below the poverty line is acceptable.
As if it's ok that we have millions of children and adults in this country without health insurance, or proper education. As if domestic violence is acceptable if someone has a big TV in their apartment, because they should have spent their money better. As if we should turn our backs on abused and neglected children and judge them for the adults they become, because "their parents should have raised them better."  

The biggest obstacles to eradicating poverty in America are, in my opinion, psychology, under-education and racism, in that order. I base that perspective on having spent the first seven years of my life growing up in poverty, and then by what I've observed living in Spanish Harlem and Brazil.  

All the handouts in the world (and all of the mottos like "pull yourself up by your bootstraps!") are not going to help the poor until the issue of psychology is addressed. And anyone who has gone through therapy at all can tell you that it takes more than a few weeks of counseling to unravel the compelling effects of child abuse and neglect during a human's most developmental years--zero to 3 years old, compounded by any traumatic events, abuses and resulting depression that follow. All of these things affect one's ability to hold down a job, maintain their finances, choose healthy relationships and properly care for children. Regardless of the behavior of a parent, every child deserves to start at the same starting line in life--at least in terms of health care and education. Until that is the case, our work as a community is not done.  

And for those who constantly claim that America is the greatest country in the world and try to make us feel like we are doing the best that can be done and should just feel lucky compared to the poverty-levels of third-world countries, I say this: Why should we be comparing ourselves to third-world countries, rather than first-world countries? Scandinavian countries have eradicated poverty, so why can't we? If we're The Greatest Country in the World, and other countries have eliminated poverty, than shouldn't we have eliminated poverty by now too?  

Still, it's always a good idea to count one's blessings, and I'm grateful for Tim Pickel's posts from Haiti, as they certainly help keep things in perspective and remind us where we don't want our statistics to go from here.  

I'm interested to hear about other neighbor's experiences with poverty--whether your own, or someone else's. And what do you think that can be done here? One interesting debate that isn't held enough, is the idea of welfare vs. job creation, which is typically a Left vs. Right argument. I think both sides have valuable points to make, and too often the result is a polarized finger-pointing fest where one side gets labeled "irresponsible spenders" and the other gets labeled "those who don't care about poor people," which is really too bad, and not at all accurate.  

This blog is a forum for political and philosophical debate, where hopefully we can consider each others points and adjust our points of view, until the best instances of vision and creative problem solving filter to the top and we solve our problems together as a community of different perspectives. This is what real listening is, and what does not happen enough in this country, in my opinion. What's your opinion?

Yours,
Noel Jones
Neighbors of Easton