The Newly Discovered Poor

In the wake of Katrina, America has learned that there are poor and impoverished people living in their midst. This from today's Washington Post:

"All of a sudden the poor have emerged from the shadows of invisibility, lifted onto a temporary pedestal by natural disaster. Whether it is because of guilt, pity or the nation's generosity in times of crisis, those who lost everything -- many of whom had little to begin with -- find themselves in a strange wonderland of recognition.

The destitute people sent fleeing by Katrina have been offered free housing, free clothing, free cars, free toys, special admission to universities and preferential job treatment. Athletes come to them , bestowing jerseys and autographs. Entertainers sing for them, and Bennigan's restaurants here and in Houston announced Katrina's kids could eat without paying for a while.

This is what it's like for the celebrity poor, a new subculture created by Hurricane Katrina."

There's no doubt that Americans, whatever their political/religious beliefs and backgrounds, have been overwhelmingly generous to the survivors of Katrina and the flooding in New Orleans. Such generosity should never be mocked. But one can't help but feel bitter disappointment, even in the face of acts of stunning kindness, that such generosity comes to the poor only after they've lost what little they had, and that it takes a natural disaster to raise their profile and lower their circumstances such that most Americans will take pity on them. Even Republicans are rushing to make up for decades of hostility to the poor in general (and blacks specifically):

"In his plan to rebuild the Gulf Coast, Bush has called for tax breaks to encourage small- and minority-business development and individual accounts of as much as $5,000 to help storm victims with job training, transportation, child care and other needs. He proposed that the federal government give poor victims its unused property, including foreclosed homes and vacant lots on which they could build their houses."

The question that must be asked is, where was this aid before Katrina? Why does it take a natural disaster sufficient enough to destroy an entire city before Republicans in the federal government feel that it's their responsibility to do something about the people mired in poverty?

If you've been scanning the papers and blogs, or watching the TV, for the last two weeks, you've seen other people wondering about the same thing, wondering how long this attention will last, wondering if the disaster was enough to motivate us to take some long term steps towards alleviating poverty.

Don't hold your breath.

The poor have been with us all along. The history of the world is a history of a minority of those who have, and a vast majorty of those who have-not. America is the richest nation on Earth, a nation blessed with natural resources, land, peaceful borders, and economic opportunity. Yet we still have our own underclass of people born into povery, who live in poverty, bear their children into poverty, and die in poverty. And that underclass has only grown in the last ten years, as more and more wealth has shifted into the hands of those who are already rich beyond measure, aided by economic circumstance and abetted by those Republicans in power who both are of the upperclasses and represent them.

The fact of that matter is that while Americans can be overwhelmingly generous in times of crisis, they, like people everywhere, can be amazingly unaware of what they do not see or hear about on TV. Most Americans enjoy a degree of prosperity unknown in the world. Most of us live in the middle class(for now at least)and whatever our political background, content ourselves to believe that we are secure and that our children will be secure. We do not see the poor, we do not hear the poor, and we certainly cannot know what it is like to wake up in poverty everyday, knowing that the chances of escape are nil. If we think of the poor at all, it is to pity them enough to hope that our taxes or gifts to charity are helping them, or to wish that our taxes would stop helping them so they would help themselves, or both. I believe sincerely that Democrats would do many great things for the poor, while I believe that Republicans only concern themselves with the poor so long as it doesn't hamper their tax cuts or their pro-business agenda, and yet most of us seem content to let our political leaders battle these issues out while we go about our daily lives.

No hurricane will change this. Sincere commentators wonder if the scale of the disaster in New Orleans will prompt serious changes in policy. The answer is yes...but only for those who suffered in the disaster. For the millions more out there who live in poverty, it will change nothing. Nothing short of a vast, magical transformation in the American heart will change our attitudes towards the poor overnight.

But it can change a little bit at a time, one person at a time. You've seen the people in New Orleans drown because they were poor and mostly black, and you know (even if you don't think about it) that the poor die everyday because they can't afford health care, or to eat well, or to live somewhere that's not dangerous for them. That this is so is because of the very real results of actions our governments take or fail to take at all levels, from the city to the state to the federal government of the nation. This is something that we can change, something you can change. Doing something about this poverty is as easy as going out to vote for every election you are eligible to vote in, or it can be as complicated as personally involving yourself in politics or the efforts of charity. None of us by ourselves can do much, but we owe it to the poor of our nation, who are our fellow citizens whatever their background, to do as much as we can in the hopes that together, we can make real and substantial change.

Poverty won't disappear overnight. In all liklihood we can never eradicate it entirely. But we can reduce the number of those who live in poverty, and we can dimish the effects poverty has on those who are stranded in it, and we can give them the means by which to escape poverty if they wish. This we can do. This you can do. We owe it to them, to ourselves, and to our nation, to try.