Warning: This is not very spiritual, but it is truthful. I am working on being more graceful and accepting.
I was promised the American dream.
I’ve been told I should write about my experiences with
poverty, but I don’t think I can yet.
It’s too hard. It’s too
embarrassing. And it makes me too angry.
There is a woman I’ve known a long time who lives in my head
and who holds me in such contempt—there must be something wrong with me if I’m
poor. After all, she is a nurse who
married a hard-working man who gave her everything financially. What’s wrong with me that I couldn’t do
that? She mocks me at every turn. Not
just in my head, but literally. I had to
defriend her on Facebook because she made nasty open comments about me—about
how anyone can have a Master’s degree and still not find a job?! You could hear her lip curling. Stupid, hateful bitch. (She also grew up wealthy, had college paid
for, and has never had to struggle for anything in her life.)
And no matter how much I tell myself that people like her
are the problem with the world—a world that seems to lack compassion,
understanding, or anything remotely resembling social justice—no matter how
many times I say it or write it or think it, I can still be made to feel small
and ashamed by just being broke-just by being me. She lives like a hideous specter in my mind
and in the world—in the faces and personas of every human who thrives on the
backs of the poor and then condemns them for their condition. She has become a symbolic representation of all the economic injustice in the world.
I often feel like the little boy in the story who recognizes
that the Emperor is naked. And has the
nerve to say so. What the story doesn’t
tell is how that boy afterward is ostracized, categorized, labeled, rejected,
disliked, mocked and/or treated for mental illness for not agreeing with the
powers-that-be and the sheep-who-follow.
Is it possible to love your country and hate your
culture? Because I do. They say you can judge what a culture values
most by the size of the buildings they produce.
The ancient Egyptians built the pyramids—although despite all the
speculation, nobody really knows what that represents. (I think it had something to do with the
spiritual alignment of the universe.)
The Romans built the Coliseum; Middle Ages Europe built cathedrals. We build shopping malls, business buildings
and banks. Our core cultural value is the accumulation of wealth at any cost.
It’s disgusting.
Now the question becomes, “Is it possible to be financially
successful in a system that one holds fundamentally disgusting?” How can I embrace prosperity in my culture
without selling out my values? How can I
embrace prosperity without hating myself for being wealthy?
I think I could if I could find a community that supports
the success of people in all income levels.
Where the poor aren’t punished simply for their poverty. Where people are valued for their talent,
their kindness or innovation, their compassion for their neighbors. If I could find a place like that I believe I
could embrace prosperity.
For me, prosperity isn’t unlimited riches. It is an income that is both adequate and a
little more. It is enough income to live
in a decent and spacious house, to have enough to eat and nice quality
clothing. It is enough to indulge my
love of antiques and art, to express my creativity through painting and writing
and taking classes. It is enough to
travel as I please—not necessarily in luxury (nobody really needs a $500 a
night hotel room!) but in relative comfort.
It is the income level that everyone deserves. The income level where people can be happy
and spend time having fun with their families, where folks can travel and learn
and share and celebrate. And I don’t
just want this for myself--although I desperately want this for myself!—I want
it for everyone.
I watched a documentary this morning on PBS that enraged,
saddened and depressed me. It was called
“My Brooklyn” and it was about
the “development” of downtown Brooklyn and how the powers-that-be had
unilaterally decided that the working class neighborhood of the area had to go,
and made and implemented a plan to both oust the existing community members and
develop the remaining space into upscale (read ultra-wealthy) commercial and
residential space. Small business were
given 30 days’ notice to vacate. People
were pushed out of their affordable housing with no compensation. The people of this neighborhood (and a
million other neighborhoods like it) had their entire lives stripped away from
them—their homes, their businesses, their friends and community—without so much
as an “I’m sorry” from the wealthy, white, male developers who gained grotesque
profits at their expense. And the smarmy
politicians who glibly joked about how much revenue this would generate and how
the existing culture of small business, ethnic businesses, and foot traffic
wasn’t a truly substantial asset to the City.
Its presence, in fact, was labeled as distasteful and lower-class.
It is my thought that much of what looks like racism in this
country (and indeed may also be racism) is in reality a virulent form of
classism. We vilify the poor. They wouldn’t be poor, after all, if they
just followed the rules and worked hard.
Which could not be further from the truth. Because the vast majority of the poor and
working-class Americans do play by the rules, they buy into the idea of the
American dream and strive for it, until they are outlawed simply for the fact
that they fall below a certain income level.
Racism is perhaps one factor, but ask any poor white person—especially a
woman—if they feel any sense of social justice, any kind of “equal” opportunity.
And like them, I was promised the American dream, only to
have it stripped away or to be denied access to it in the first place because
of my “inferior” position in the economic hierarchy. And I’m angry. And I can’t be the only one. I still want my American dream.
Everyone should read
at least the first few pages of this:
And if you think I’m
just whining, please consider the facts here:
