Da’rell Calvin
English 102
Professor DeWit
29 May 2014
Poverty
and Community
The United States is among the richest nations
in the world yet the poverty rate is still extremely high. Many marginalized
groups - such as Native Americans, African Americans, and Mexican Americans -
continue to be shut out from middle and upper class communities leaving them in
lower, impoverished areas. While the one and only "positive" outcome
of such high levels of poverty is the increased level of kinship and community
within these areas, the negative outcomes are much more extreme and range from
increased levels of homelessness, alcoholism, dropout rates, incarceration, and
so forth, that result from an overall low quality of life. The United States
has created situations and increased the levels of poverty throughout America
for centuries, while marginalized groups face poverty the rich just seem to get
richer; the level of community established in impoverished areas is evident and,
if used correctly, it could be a vantage point to reducing the poverty levels
and increasing the overall quality of life in the United States. By closing the
gaps between the rich and poor areas of cities, communities can come together
to reach a middle ground of strength and solidarity.
American’s have created a divisive
nation from the very start of its formation. One of the greatest examples of
this action was the treatment of the Native Americans. In his TED Talk, titled “America’s Native
Prisoners of War,” Aaron Huey chronicles the history of the Lakota Indians. He
begins by mentioning the creation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1824 and
continues to mention a variety of treaties that were created and broken as well
as massacres of Native Americans that were disguised as battles in war over the
course of the next two centuries. Following the more distant history of the
Lakota Nation, Huey discusses the statistics of poverty and its effects within
the Lakota tribe. Huey mentions that in 2010 the unemployment rate on the Pine
Ridge Reservation was 85 percent and many people were left homeless or packed
into rotting buildings with other families. Huey discusses the fact that over a
third of the reservation was without electricity and 80 percent of the
population is below the federal poverty line. Alongside the high levels of
poverty there was also a high rate of tuberculosis, alcoholism, cancer,
drop-outs, and infant mortality. Huey then challenges viewers to think about
what he just said, “How should you feel about the statistics I mentioned? What is the
connection between these images of suffering and the history I read to you? And
how much of the history do you need to own, even? Is any of this your responsibility
today?” (Aaron Huey, “America’s Native Prisoners of War).
Another aspect of the history of
poverty within the United States is evident during and after economic
downturns. Tavis Smiley and Cornel
West discuss “ten lies about poverty that America can no longer afford,” one of
these lies is the idea that the Great Recession has ended. Smiley and West said
that, “while 60 percent of the jobs lost during the
economic downturn were in mid-wage occupations, 73 percent of the jobs added
have been in lower-wage occupations such as cashiers, stock clerks, and food
preparations workers” (173). With the creation of low-wage jobs and the loss of
middle-wage jobs workers who once held middle-wage jobs were left with either a
lower-wage job, or no job at all. This left more people in worse-off positions
than before the Great Recession and increased the level of poverty by putting
more people at or below the federal poverty line.
When communities face increased
levels of poverty, there is often an increase in high-school drop-out, disease,
alcoholism, incarceration and mortality rates. In the novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie,
the narrator Arnold Spirit, aka Junior, was upset after his dad’s best friend,
Eugene, was shot to death at a 7-11 on the reservation as a result of a drunken
argument over the last drink of a bottle of alcohol. As a way to keep his
spirits alive, so to speak, Junior said that “[he] kept making lists after list of the things
that made me feel joy. And [he] kept drawing cartoons of the things that made
me angry. [He kept] writing and rewriting, drawing and redrawing, and
rethinking and revising and reediting. It became [his] grieving ceremony”
(Alexie, 178). This grieving ceremony is
but one example of the ways people are affected by poverty in and around their
homes. Perhaps the most empowering, and only positive, effect of such high
levels of poverty tends to be the increased levels of kinship and community
within impoverished areas of cities.
When communities face poverty, the
people within the community often come together to develop a strong bond and
kinship. One of the places where people
come together within their communities is the church. An example of people
coming together as a community in the church can be found in Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless
Compassion. In this autobiography, Pastor Gregory Boyle talks of a time
when a Latino man who used to attend the church but is now doing well for
himself states, “This used to be a
church.” Pastor G responded by saying, “You know, most people around here think
it’s finally a church” (73, author’s
emphasis). The now-well-off Latino man felt that Pastor G’s church was no
longer a church because it had become a community filled with people from all
walks of life – gangsters, drug addicts, homeless people, et cetera. Pastor G,
on the other hand, felt that this was the reason it was finally a church, because it had become a place where all people
were loved and accepted, but more than that, it was a place where they were
taken care of. While G had that discussion with the Latino man, he had another
one with people inside the church about what the church smelled like, it went
like this
‘What’s the church smell
like?’ People are mortified, eye contact ceases, women are searching inside
their purses for they know not what. ‘Come on now,’ I throw back at them,
‘what’s the church smell like?’ ‘Huele a
patas,’ (Smells like feet), Don Rafael booms out. He was old and never
cared what people thought. ‘Excellent. But why does it smell like feet?’ ‘Cuz
many homeless men slept here last night?’ says a woman. ‘Well, why do we let
that happen here?’ ‘Es nuestro
compromiso’ (It’s what we’ve committed to do) says another (74).
What the church people are saying is that
commitment will bring together and build up a community. If you have the right
people, people who want to help others in need or who need help, then you need
commitment to bring those people together to build up each other and, in turn,
turn their community around. Following this excerpt Pastor G and the church
continue to talk about how they do not have to leave their church open to the
people who are lesser off in their community, but they do it anyways because as
a church they feel it is what should be done. Following this story, Pastor G
writes, “Compassion isn’t just about feeling the pain of others; it’s about
bringing then in toward yourself. If we love what God loves, then, in
compassion, margins get erased. ‘Be compassionate as God is compassionate,’
means the dismantling of barriers that exclude” (75). When thinking about poverty
and community, and the ways to bring communities out of poverty, this concept
is incredibly important. Regardless of religion, it is important to point out
that being compassionate helps to blur boundaries. When there are no boundaries
between groups and communities then no one group is marginalized from the rest.
By bringing communities together in compassion, the communities can begin to
build up themselves and each other, thus raising the overall quality of life
and reducing the harsh effects of poverty.
There are many
types of communities that come together in the face of poverty; Pastor G’s
church community is one example. Another group that came together in
less-than-ideal circumstances was Junior and his classmates. Junior went to
school off the reservation, so he was placed into a community that wasn’t
necessarily his own. After Junior missed school for about 15 to 20 days his
teacher Mrs. Jeremy start picking on him for missing a lot of classes. Junior
felt weak, he wanted to defend himself but couldn’t bring himself to do it,
Junior said, “instead, it was Gordy who defended me. He stood with his
textbooks and dropped it. Whomp! He
looked so strong. He looked like a warrior. He was protecting me like Rowdy
used to protect me” (Alexie 175). The fact that Gordy was protecting Junior
made Junior feel good, but more than that, the rest of the class followed suit,
they all stood and dropped their books in solidarity. After they dropped their
books they walked out, this made Junior laugh. When Junior started laughing,
his teacher asked him what was funny and he responded with “‘I used to think
the world was broken down by tribes… By black and white. By Indian and white.
But I know that isn’t true. The world is only broken into two tribes: The
people who are assholes and the people who are not’” (Alexie 176). Junior realize that it doesn’t matter about
race or if you’re rich or poor, he realized that differences don’t matter; what
should matter is how you treat others within your community and outside it as
well. I can relate to how Junior was feeling, in our society today so many
groups of people are marginalized and pushed to the side as if race, sexuality,
or financial situations should make any group less important or valuable than
the next.
By marginalizing
groups within society, particularly those who are already living in
impoverished communities, we are creating a problem in serious need of being
fixed. Marginalized groups living in poverty are those who often end up being
targeted by the criminal justice system, these groups represent high
percentages of the prison population. Smiley and West discuss this issue in
their book The Rich and the Rest of the
U.S.: A Poverty Manifesto in which they compiled a list titled “From
Poverty to Prosperity: 12 Poverty-changing ideas.” One of these ideas addresses
the prison industrial complex:
“Mass incarceration of
minorities bankrupts the country; creates permanent, second-class citizenship;
and locks formerly incarcerated individuals into on-the-street, economic
concentration camps. Potentially salvageable people have been victims of the
20-year, race-based “War on Drugs” and a criminal
criminal justice system. It’s time for a major overhaul of the prison
industrial complex” (Smiley and West 179).
One of the biggest problems that communities who
are impoverished face is the fact that these communities have higher rates of
high-school drops outs, alcoholism, gang activity and incarceration. This
problem is due to the fact that impoverished communities are often composed of
marginalized groups and minorities who tend to targeted by local police forces.
What this does is put people who are already in less-than-ideal situations into
situations where they are even worse off. One solution to this particular problem
would be to be proactive in the community rather than reactive. Instead of
waiting until people within a community are, for example, reduced to drug use,
or feel they are forced to sell drugs in order to provide for their families as
a result of no jobs and a low-quality of life. Smiley and West had another very
important idea in the list of poverty-changing ideas, this particular idea
deals with the creation of jobs: “We can begin by instituting a 21st century
jobs plan built on providing our nation with services and products that are
essential to our growth and survival. Many of our low-skilled and unskilled
citizens can be trained and immediately put to work on community-based
infrastructure projects if we dare to match aptitudes to opportunities” (Smiley
and West, 178). What it seems Smiley and West are saying is that if cities put
their low- and unskilled workers to work building up community-based
infrastructures, such as a YMCA or Community Recreation Center, then they will
simultaneously build-up impoverished communities within the city by giving them
an income with which to take care of themselves and their communities. Other
ways to build-up communities and, in some situations provide jobs, would be to
encourage community gardens, after-school tutoring programs, Girls and Boys
clubs, and other ideas that would improve the overall quality of life within
communities that face such extreme levels of poverty. It is also important to
recognize that communities cannot always build themselves up from within;
sometimes it requires help from nearby communities that are better off. Take
the city of Hayward, for example, there are many well-off and wealthy
communities in the Hayward hills, if those communities were to take interest in
helping create programs for those in the lesser communities of Hayward then,
together, these communities could improve the overall quality of life within
the entire city.
In
conclusion, it is imperative that we recognize the problems our Nation has
created for many marginalized groups within the United States. It is important
to realize that after centuries of maltreatment the Native Americans has placed
them in such extreme poverty that many are without the resources that much of
America takes for granted. We must also look at the fact that by marginalizing
minorities and other groups we are essentially creating an environment of “us”
and “them,” of “rich” and “poor” and of “good” and “bad.” The problem of
poverty was not created overnight, and it will not go away immediately. But
there are many things that can be done to reverse the problem America has
created within itself. By looking at the level of kinship and community within
the many impoverished communities throughout the United States and by using
that kinship to boost the quality of life within the community it will become
possible to reverse the many negative effects of poverty while also bringing
communities to new level of life.
