Politics and discourse

[rivkat]

If you don’t want to read about these two things, scroll on.

The thing that I kept thinking about the post I mentioned last night is how listing examples of what it’s like to be poor in America served to enrage some of the (conservative) people who responded – they objected, it appeared, to even talking about why it sucks to be poor. That is, poor people have only themselves to blame, and describing what it is that they might blame themselves for might lead to support for liberal causes.

I want to bracket for the moment the idea that poverty is an individual fault. What’s curious to me is the idea that describing the consequences of fault obscures responsibility for that fault.

Presumably, conservatives of this type want poverty to suck; otherwise there wouldn’t be an incentive to not be poor. So what’s wrong (or inherently liberal) about describing that suckiness? There are a number of circumstances in which listing examples of “why X sucks” is not supposed to elicit sympathy or a desire for broad-based social change. Scared Straight and other programs that expose students to horrific descriptions of what prison is like are not assumed to create prison reformers. Rather, the operating theory is that people who know what prison is really like will take steps to keep themselves out of it. Likewise, conservative Hell Houses showing the horrible fates of abortionists and gays are designed to use suckiness as aversion therapy.

The reason that describing the suckiness of poverty comes across as inherently liberal and thus threatening to conservative views, I think, is that so many of the incidents described revolve around children. No matter how plucky and self-reliant a 2-year-old is, she isn’t going to get anywhere without help. Sure, in 15 or 7 or however many years it takes until she’s old enough to work for a living according to your philosophy, she can give it a try, but right now she is stuck and no choice she makes will change whether she is poor. In the comments to the poverty post, the conservative objectors talked a lot about the poor judgment of poor people in having children, but not at all about the poor judgment of poor people in being children. (And I’m not even talking about the guy near the end of the second page who has some bizarre fixation with “crack whores pumping out children,” as if that population could explain the millions of uninsured and hungry kids in this country; if you seriously advocate mandatory sterilization for people you describe as worthless, does Godwin’s law apply?)

Comments

[mecurtin.livejournal.com]

I didn't read through all the comments carefully, but I wonder -- were there any comments from conservatives who are currently poor? Who have ever been poor? I *know* there are poor people who vote Republican; did any of them comment?

[rivkat.livejournal.com]

Well, there's no way to tell the politics of the people who just added "being poor is ..." entries -- some of them may well have been conservative and poor or formerly poor. I think some people, identifying as conservatives and as liberals, did say they'd been poor.

[norah.livejournal.com]

What I found slightly more bizarre were the responses of those who seemed to feel that misery was a one-upmanship game, and kept pointing out that bad things happen to rich people too. I mean, yes, a hierarchy of suffering ultimately serves no end, but it was strange to see people's inability to step out of their own circumstances empathetically or imaginatively to react to what was being said.

[harriet-spy.livejournal.com]

I think you're being a little too fair. ;)

The ideology here--not the ideology of all conservatives, or even really most conservatives, I think--is that people deserve the consequences of their behavior, and yet most of the time, such conservatives don't have to confront what that really means, in concrete, humiliating terms. The poor are freaks on street corners or just statistics. I would argue that it's their native sense of compassion doing battle with an at least equally strong sense that if they don't find some way to distinguish themselves morally from the poor, why, that might mean poverty could happen to them.

I mean, people generally regard social Darwinism as an ideology of complacence, but to me it seems equally to work as an ideology of anxiety: "I worked hard to earn my precarious place, I'm not like them, this couldn't happen to me!"

[harriet-spy.livejournal.com]

(Ah, I actually do think people often deserve the consequences of their behavior, but I don't think poverty is adequately described as receiving and deserving the consequences of one's behavior.)

[vivwiley.livejournal.com]

I'm with you in finding it odd that the mere listing of some of the horrible aspects of poverty is threatening to certain ideological viewpoints. Your speculation that part of it is that many issues deal with children certainly seems plausible. I do, however, think that there is also an aspect that is rooted in the great "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" mentality that is so inherently American. If being poor is your own fault - for not trying hard enough, not getting enough education, etc. - then it follows that you are not allowed to complain about this condition.

I think there is also (unfortunately) a long-running Lady (or Lord) Bountiful tradition of the Upper Middle class providing "relief" for the poor, who are supposed to be silent and grateful. Emphasis on silent.

[rivkat.livejournal.com]

Good point. The Hell Houses are other people speaking for the suffering of sinners; while Scared Straight involves convicts speaking directly, they are organized and controlled by others. This is different because it's people taking the initiative to speak about what poverty is/was like for them.

[meret.livejournal.com]

Conservatives think poor people are poor because they're lazy and won't work. Fundamentalists have added a a religious element to the conservative social darwinism, by beleiving that if someone is poor, it's a reflection of their moral state. That if they were good christians, they wouldn't be poor. Since they are poor, they're obviously not good christians, and are therefore not good people.

Talking about poor children exposes one of the many flaws in their logic, since even they have a hrad time saying a child is a bad person.

They also totally ignore the fact that working a full time job at minimum wage isn't enough to earn above the poverty line. This country was founded on the idea that anyone who works hard enough can become prosperous. That's no longer true, but conservatives don't want to admit it.