Culture of Poverty
Culture of Poverty (or “Out from Under?”)
Recently I’ve had a lot of conversations with people in terms of etiquette, morals, culture and the basic social circumstances thus trying to educate, and become more informed of myself, and in total strengthen not just my own awareness, but the awareness of others. I’m not going to lie, some interactions were strongly [I mean...STRONGLY] informative of my own personal brand of crude interjection into the world; There’s something about having someone literally step on your toes, and not noting that the event occurred. One, I regret not being informative. Yet, there were a few others (actually, all the others I’m thinking of…) there came a point, where the conversation became not butting head, not circles, but frustration, not necessarily with the other person or persons involved but with the fact that the only conclusions we came from were that we were pretty powerless because of the system that’s in place, and that we have to live with these systems. Compound this to the different articles, news stories and blogs that I subscribe to, and well, I don’t know what to do, when I see both sides, make informed choices, listen to my heart, strive, sometimes (most times lately, actually) fail and try to attain some sense of closure while remaining realistic about getting up at some point tomorrow.
The overall hierarchy of my unease stems from feeling some sort of pressure from an omnipresent “system” that is spoken of in hush rumors from the “hood” of Buffalo, NY, mentioned in the hallways of NYC schools, and quite possibly confirmed of in hidden underground chambers below IVY league campuses. The problem I have with this rationalization of “systemic opposition” is that it is the opposition is plausibly amorphous. Often I’ve felt like just when I think that I’ve figured out how to remove myself out from under its overwhelming weight, it just gets heavier, and if I don’t break (into pieces, or have a breakdown) and even if I do, the floor under me probably isn’t too happy to have to have their ceiling endangered radically because of my fight.
Being amorphous this “systemic opposition” might be different for someone else. The system or systems I see influencing me or my cultures isn’t necessarily the same for ever. In a blog written by Chris Norwood, she gives examples of the systemic oppositions that can occur in her experience as a social worker dealing with HIV/AIDS infected women and their families. The blog speaks to how the allotment or rather dis-allotment of federal funds has (well to cheat my own vocabulary) “screwed” these families and quite possibly left bacteria that possibly could grown into an infection that breeds negative media images, or arkward experiences that we have with some young adults on the subway. One heartbreaking statement she makes is
“Since 2005, the percentage of Bronx women among New York City women’s HIV/AIDS deaths has risen from 28% to 32%; we don’t know how many AIDS orphans these women have left behind-even with the well known Bloomberg Administration data obsession — that extends to having scooter patrols to count up potholes –”
How many children are out there grieving, acting out or in need of social services that exist somewhere? I suppose that such is a generic question that can be applied cross culturally, objectively. I think of an episode of “Law and Order:SVU” in which child protective services misplaced a child in their care. The social worker in charge of that case was neither altruistic nor stoic and while her actions were the definition of neglectful, she felt remorses but was still obviously overworked even though she probably needn’t be because of a lack of funding. How many news stories have we read of in the past few months about children under their umbrella that have been abused or have died? Yet, cases of abused low-income/lower-income children have become altogether too rote after they break and once the initial public outrage (read:interest) in the story, coverage of it or its follow-up often receives byline (if that) mentioning. Yet, if a middle to white collar child is treated in the same manner, a front page newspaper article and ongoing reports of the search are sent in seemingly hourly. Hell, I shudder to mention this idea because of its triteness, and how distasteful it feels to compose the sentence;the queasiness continues when thinking of the number of federal laws that are passed that are named after or were inspired because of missing children of higher incoming earning adults.
While Norwood’s examples speak of just one specific population, it still makes me think of the serial unfair situations where I’ve thought to myself that I could feel what was happening, and yet, despite that awareness, something kept urging me down the road. I mean, I’m here. However, where exactly is “here?” It certainly is not Shang-ra-la.
In my own life, I think of the opportunities I’ve had and the ones that just were and aren’t feasible because of decisions made before me. I wish I were at liberty to share some of the things I think that have negatively influenced me in my life, but that’s not really fair to the other people who were there, and our existence. I wish I could sum up every experience into a wonderful feeling like Nikki Giovanni does in her poem “Nikki-Rosa” For instance, take the lines
“because they never understand
Black love is Black wealth and they’ll
probably talk about my hard childhood
and never understand that
all the while I was quite happy”
because love isn’t necessarily the kind of wealth that pays the bills, and the energy I spend trying to dodge my quite realistic fear of a growing a debt……ABRUPT ENDING. See my working notes.
Repost of links-
“Those Bronx Bad Boys” by Chris Norwood. “Huffington Post” “http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-norwood/those-bad-bronx-boys_b_766366.html”
“Nikki-Rosa” by Nikki Giovanni. Reposted from the Poetry Foundation.
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=177827
Working Notes – Not finished. I’m still trying to organize parts two and three in relation to this format. I think that any actual discourse might be too heavy thus weakened by presenting it all at once. I’m not even sure why I felt the need to lead with Norwood’s blog. Also I know I didn’t do real MLA citations. I’m tired.
[Chester Kent]
[Get in the Rye.com]
10..20.10
