Poverty in the first world
Just finished reading Random Family by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc. It has been out for a while already (published in 2003) and elaborately reviewed and commented. Still, it is a grim tale of what systematic poverty does to a person and a community.
LeBlanc followed two Puerto-Rican teenagers in the South Bronx from the age of roughly 15 for a good ten years. In these years, one went to prison, both had several children. None finished their highschool education and both kept their hopes up even though the reader can immediately see that there is no chance in hell that they could get out.
LeBlanc writes really well and she shows, without moralizing, just how hard life for these two women is. They are in a violent environment, where it seems that all men between 18 en 30 are unemployed except if they deal drugs or are criminals. Many of them get killed. The violence surrounding and permeating the life of the girls and their families is just staggering. Domestic abuse is the rule rather than an exception. All the women seem to have been abused as a child. None seem to use contraception, yet they all have sex. Educational success is rare. Appartments are over-crowded, often filled with people on the move from one to the other place because they do not have housing of their own. Children forced to watch TV all day or ride a bicycle in the kitchen. The women have to spend entire days in waiting rooms accompanied by their children to have 10 minute interview.
Theirs is a culture of shame. The public image neighbors and friends have of you is all-important. Somebody doing cocaine in her own appartment in front of her children is better than a person using crack cocaine in a derelict house who has no children to care for or watching. Conspicuous spending is the ideal for many of the men (and women). There is a story how a $10,000 windfall gets spent on take-out food, leather jackets for everyone and a large tv set. The economic conditions are so critical that a $o.50 donated to a homeless person could result in not being able to take the bus to the welfare office to have your interview in which your eligibility for continuation is assessed.
What really comes through though is just how different a culture the cultures of povety are. LeBlanc herself never judges on some of the choices that the people whom she describes make. She says that in all her years of 'immersion' she quickly lost the intuitions that make me, for example, highly critical of the idea to spend a $10,000 on leather jackets for your wife, siblings and children, if you live in a broom closet of an appartment, surrounded by violent gang-bangers. LeBlanc suggests that growing up in these circumstances make you loose somehow a long-term perspective in the sense that all your energy goes to immediate and mid-term concerns and projects. In short, these poor girls are screwed. Screwed in many ways, some of which literal.
LeBlanc herself says in interviews that it is no rocket science to help these people and mentions several things which all have been cancelled since, first under Clinton and then under Bush. It seems like the US has given up on these people by arguing that they make so many wrong choices and should be held responsible for these choice. However, LeBlanc convincingly shows (not argues) that to make the right choices is extremely hard in such a world. Many, including I, would not have the courage, the stomache and the sheer dogged persistence that her characters have to go on. It is also clear that what LeBlanc describes is not restricted to the South Bronx in the nineties. It clearly is the story of poverty in any contemporary society. In short, I recommend the book. It really was a sort of eye-opener to me.
What I learnt philosophically from it is that we should really re-think the liberal mantra to hold people accountable and responsible for their own free choices. The characters in LeBlanc's book all have a choice. Yet it is wrong to suppose that there is nothing wrong with the fact that they are offered these choices with these consequences: e.g., hold a badly paying job and leave your children with your unstable drug-dealing boyfriend or stay at home and live off welfare. Life is so hard and deprived that it seems callous to hold the girls fully accountable for all the consequences of their choices, even though they did choose to drop out of school, have several children and live off welfare. We owe the poor more than our contempt for the quality of their choices.
LeBlanc followed two Puerto-Rican teenagers in the South Bronx from the age of roughly 15 for a good ten years. In these years, one went to prison, both had several children. None finished their highschool education and both kept their hopes up even though the reader can immediately see that there is no chance in hell that they could get out.
LeBlanc writes really well and she shows, without moralizing, just how hard life for these two women is. They are in a violent environment, where it seems that all men between 18 en 30 are unemployed except if they deal drugs or are criminals. Many of them get killed. The violence surrounding and permeating the life of the girls and their families is just staggering. Domestic abuse is the rule rather than an exception. All the women seem to have been abused as a child. None seem to use contraception, yet they all have sex. Educational success is rare. Appartments are over-crowded, often filled with people on the move from one to the other place because they do not have housing of their own. Children forced to watch TV all day or ride a bicycle in the kitchen. The women have to spend entire days in waiting rooms accompanied by their children to have 10 minute interview.
Theirs is a culture of shame. The public image neighbors and friends have of you is all-important. Somebody doing cocaine in her own appartment in front of her children is better than a person using crack cocaine in a derelict house who has no children to care for or watching. Conspicuous spending is the ideal for many of the men (and women). There is a story how a $10,000 windfall gets spent on take-out food, leather jackets for everyone and a large tv set. The economic conditions are so critical that a $o.50 donated to a homeless person could result in not being able to take the bus to the welfare office to have your interview in which your eligibility for continuation is assessed.
What really comes through though is just how different a culture the cultures of povety are. LeBlanc herself never judges on some of the choices that the people whom she describes make. She says that in all her years of 'immersion' she quickly lost the intuitions that make me, for example, highly critical of the idea to spend a $10,000 on leather jackets for your wife, siblings and children, if you live in a broom closet of an appartment, surrounded by violent gang-bangers. LeBlanc suggests that growing up in these circumstances make you loose somehow a long-term perspective in the sense that all your energy goes to immediate and mid-term concerns and projects. In short, these poor girls are screwed. Screwed in many ways, some of which literal.
LeBlanc herself says in interviews that it is no rocket science to help these people and mentions several things which all have been cancelled since, first under Clinton and then under Bush. It seems like the US has given up on these people by arguing that they make so many wrong choices and should be held responsible for these choice. However, LeBlanc convincingly shows (not argues) that to make the right choices is extremely hard in such a world. Many, including I, would not have the courage, the stomache and the sheer dogged persistence that her characters have to go on. It is also clear that what LeBlanc describes is not restricted to the South Bronx in the nineties. It clearly is the story of poverty in any contemporary society. In short, I recommend the book. It really was a sort of eye-opener to me.
What I learnt philosophically from it is that we should really re-think the liberal mantra to hold people accountable and responsible for their own free choices. The characters in LeBlanc's book all have a choice. Yet it is wrong to suppose that there is nothing wrong with the fact that they are offered these choices with these consequences: e.g., hold a badly paying job and leave your children with your unstable drug-dealing boyfriend or stay at home and live off welfare. Life is so hard and deprived that it seems callous to hold the girls fully accountable for all the consequences of their choices, even though they did choose to drop out of school, have several children and live off welfare. We owe the poor more than our contempt for the quality of their choices.
posted by Bruno at Monday, November 14, 2005
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