Understanding Poverty

I read Ruby Payne's book A Framework for Understanding Poverty hoping that it would provide me with some compassionate understanding for people who I see everyday that are other from me (see post from 9/7/05).  Ruby Payne is an educator who married a husband from poverty and has worked in both affluent schools and impoverished schools.  Her book is an in-depth look at the invisible rules separating three cultures that exist simultaneously in America, but are unfortunately looked at as separated only by economic differences:  the poverty culture, the middle-class culture, and the affluent culture.

Payne's book popped up on my radar at the perfect time. I have neighbors who would be classified as in poverty. I want to feel compassion for them, but it's hard not to feel anything besides rage when I have to slam on my brakes to avoid hitting a kid who's parent is on the front porch sucking on a bottle of beer. But I want to understand because although it's harder to see a life in all of it's complexity, it's necessary to feel sympathy for somebody else; to see that there really is a connection between them and me.

Some points I found interesting in Payne's book (these are generalizations but help to put some structure around the intangible qualities of poverty, middle-class, and affluent cultures):

• Situational poverty or affluency is a present circumstance brought on by a change in events and is different from generational poverty or affluency, which has innate cultural rules.

• Living in poverty is quantified by living for the present moment (i.e. buying food for the day, paying only the bills that are being collected on, valuing a person who is entertaining because entertainment is relief from the struggle of the present)

• Middle-class living is often geared toward the future (i.e. buying food for the week, understanding 30 year mortgages and credit ratings, valuing a person's stability/consistency)

• Affluent living has a strong emphasis on the past (i.e. food is a process of refining tastes, family assets are to be maintained and cultivated, value on a person's lineage and status)

The point she made that I keep coming back to in my mind is that in order for a person to make the shift from one class to another, that person will need at least one of four things:

1) To be in a situation that is unbearable.
2) A gift or skill that propels them out of their class.
3) A strong belief in the promise of a better life down the road.
4) A guide/mentor to show them how to live in the new class.

Why is one of those things necessary to make a cultural shift? Because, as a concentration camp survivor once said, humans are capable of getting used to anything. So, even if I grow up in a home with an alcoholic, non-existent father and a mother working two jobs who dresses me in dirty clothes and leaves me to be abused by my cousins, it is the world I know. To leave the world I know and live a middle-class life centered around stability means that, for a year or two, this new life will feel awkward and uncomfortable.

I don't think the four things one needs to switch classes is exclusive to social class. In my experience, I needed two of those things (promise of a better life and a mentor) to make the break from a dysfunctional family into building healthy relationships with my wife and child (an ongoing process). Although it seems to defy logic, for somebody who grew up in chaos, stability and order feel wrong. My wife can testify that I've found myself in phases of stability trying to beat that stability with a bat because it feels wrong and strange.

I've met artists with similar talents, but wildly different abilities to cope with life. Some handle the lean and plenty lifestyle like they were made for it and others flog themselves throught the lean times. I wonder if the difference is a mentor. In my experience, a mentor is not one of those things adopted to suit our lifestyle, like eating organic or taking up yoga, but a mentor is a guide that leads me out of just surviving into a life that is worth living.

Comments

[Brenda]

Good Post! Send me a mentor for living in Brooklyn!!!! talk about a different culture--yeeesh...people in Michigan care about what schools their kids go to but here it goes up about 10 notches ...and then to be unschooling...it's like saying "I believe oxygen is optional, " what I'm trying to say is unschooling makes no sense to people here, (not that it did in Michigan either)

[Kevmo]

Unfortunately the crap has to overwhelm us before we're willing to change. I pray that I'm able to make the changes before the crap gets too deep.

I think I need to read that book too.

[Kate]

nice, friend...very nice commentary. thanks

[Jane Wolterstorff]

Great job getting this message out... understanding helps lead to compassion. Noone wakes up in the morning and says "I think I'll live in poverty, or marry someone who will beat me, or maybe I should be a drug addict or alchoholic; or I bet I'd make a great serial killer." People travel long journeys of tiny steps to get to those places and if we can see the person at the core, we can get past some of the other stuff and that's when the 'Kingdom is near'.

[alex beh]

i think it has to do with these things, i think if we try to 'escape our class' we've already missed our purpose. i dont think its as much about escape but progress. we, like you said, can get really antsy and frustrated about our current situation, i win the award for that. i cant stand waiting tables and staying at my parents house. the routine has done me in, im used to packing up my bag every weekend and driving somewhere usually to avoid my problems in an act of resistance also from doing things like sitting down and writing. something i love. but if we look at our situation, perhaps for this example, one who is in poverty, they must first focus on their surroundings and how to grow there. i think escaping seems more like someone who wants to jump a barbed-wire fence and will only find themselves stuck and cut up at the top, falling to the ground, in too much pain to try again. but you can progress this way too i think, let your wounds from your surroundings (or your recent escape attempt, driving and missing obligations, getting sober, mending relationships) heal, learn from them and see how those end up helping you to progress to the next level. perhaps the class you were gifted for.

[Janet]

Yep and more yep. I would love to have a conversation with ya'll about this. Having been in poverty,gotten out of poverty and have worked for poverty 8+ years- it is wierd. I have been compassionate, angry, cynical, bitter, and now I am over it, making peace with it. But I can never sever it from my life. It has developed who I am. Love this blog and your other. I will look for that book and read it.