What Poverty Looks Like, 2019 Version

I recently saw a meme on Facebook so hostile and ugly (I know, I know, you're thinking "You only saw one that fits that category?") that it made me take a step back and comment to Warren that I was having a very hard time with the post because this is someone in our immediate family, not just someone I can delete from my life, who thought it appropriate.

Now, a couple of comments before you start jumping to conclusions. The person posting is not particularly political; the meme had no mention, pro or con, of the current administration, Congress, the upcoming 2020 Democratic primary candidates, or the Supreme Court.

The meme was not about race.

It was not about immigration.

It was not about the environment.

The meme was about entitlement and privilege, which is something I often talk about. The twist was that the meme was about the "privileged" poor and how they (the poor) have to get over their special sense of entitlement.

Really? Really? 

The meme was particularly timely because just this week at work we had a real life (no meme here),  graphic demonstration of the gulf between privilege and poverty. At work right now, we (all County employees, not just our Court) are having to verify to the overarching benefits provider that the family members we carry on our health insurance are indeed entitled to be there by virtue of marriage, birth, or whatever. This has caused a lot of grumbling ("If my five year old was my birth child three years ago when we last did this, chances are good he is still my child") and a lot of faxing.

In the midst of this, a coworker shared with me two birth certificates as a demonstration of what a hard life does even to the young.

The first birth certificate is that of her stepson's and it looks like that (she photographed the backs of them for me):

That is the birth certificate of a child who was raised in stable circumstances, with food on the table, clean clothes to wear, a roof over his head, and the other benefits of an economically sustainable household. When my coworker asked her stepson for his birth certificate so that she could fax it in, his initial response was uncertainty as to where it was. The paper the birth certificate is printed on is unblemished; it has been kept in a nice, thick plastic sleeve.

The second birth certificate is that of a young adult, also male, of whom she was awarded custody (out of a Juvenile Court proceeding in another county) when he was still a teenager. She gained custody, even though there is no biological connection, so that this youth would have a roof over his head and someone to help him navigate a harsh world. Because he had essentially been raising himself from his early teens on, he and not a parent was always responsible for knowing where essential papers were at any given time. When my coworker asked him last week if he had his birth certificate for the verification requirements, this young man knew immediately where it was and handed it over. It was in his wallet. It looks like this:

Those creases and wear marks are from it being carried in a wallet for several years. The certificate is paper thin from wear; you can hold it to the light and see through it. (Take my word for it, you cannot see through the first one.)

This is what poverty looks like. It is not about privilege and it is not about entitlement. It is about surviving. Yes, sometimes there is government help when and if it is available (and if varies wildly from state to state, incidentally). But that is not a given ever. Poverty is about figuring out how to eat maybe once a day (more if you're lucky), stay warm in the winter, and make it to work or school no matter how far that may be, whether you have any gasoline, or whether you have a car at all. It is about staying safe under circumstances that many of us never have to imagine, let alone experience.

Poverty is about a battered birth certificate that a 20-year-old carries in his wallet so he can prove who he is when he has to.

My coworker and I talked for several minutes about these two certificates and the different stories they told. I mentioned a book I read several years ago by a sociologist who spent months traveling Greyhound buses and talking to riders, examining the lives of those riders. The author made a striking observation about how most of us who do not live in poverty have a general idea of how much money (cash, not debit or credit cards) we have on us at any given time, but how when you are poor, you know down to the penny exactly how much money you have on you, because that is likely the only money you have and you have to spend it carefully. (Economists have made similar observations and many conclude that people who live in poverty are far more intelligent consumers because every dollar has real, immediate value to them.)

My coworker immediately agreed. The young man with the tattered birth certificate? He can always tell you how much money he has on him at any given time. A young woman I know who lives in deep poverty? The same.

In the end, the ugly meme reminded me of the Ghost of Christmas Present turning on Scrooge in anger for Scrooge's earlier callousness about the poor dying so as to decrease the surplus population. When Scrooge reacts emotionally to the Ghost's pronouncement that Tiny Tim will die if nothing else changes, the Ghost throws his words back at him, concluding: "It may be, that in the sight of Heaven, you are more worthless and less fit to live than millions like this poor man's child."

I know. It's just a meme. And I also know that Facebook is a cesspool of viciousness on many, many fronts. But I'll let the Ghost have the final word.

"Forbear that wicked cant until you have discovered What the surplus is, and Where it is."