Classism And Poverty

The issue of poverty is an ever-present one – classism shows itself through all of history, the uneven distribution of wealth rearing its head as soon as wealth became available in human civilization. It’s a tenacious condition, and often a hereditary one, latching itself onto those unlucky enough to fall into its trap and not letting go for generations, even after centuries. The institutional discrimination that so much of our country’s government and economy are built on must constantly be fed with poverty, and while the victims of poverty are consumed by discrimination, the victims of discrimination are likewise consumed by the seemingly inevitable poverty promised to them by their own identities. But what constitutes poverty? It has many
faces, and can be seen anywhere there is hardship with money to a stronger-than-average degree. The fuel for poverty includes all sorts of oppressive situations; sexism, racism, ableism. The real question, then, is this: Why is poverty so difficult to escape? To find the answer, it is important to understand the key factors in imposing and upholding this condition, and one doesn’t need to look any further than to the tenets of the wealthy, powerful, and prejudiced in human society. The continued oppression of marginalized groups by the rich is what poverty relies on, and at the same time, poverty creates certain parts of this very oppression. Before anything else, let’s clarify the ways you can be considered “poor”.
In the United States and other first-world countries, poverty becomes a problem as soon as you’re unable to pay rent, or when you are forced simplify your diet beyond what’s healthy in order to afford other necessities. It can manifest in the form of sacrificing a month of fresh food in order to pay rent, or eschewing transportation in favor of food, or foregoing several of these necessities at once because this month you really, really need to replace your year-old toothbrush and your three-year-old pillows and sheets. For those with dependents, poverty can mean ignoring your own needs to make your children comfortable. Still, as distressing poverty is no matter what form it takes, many are of the mindset that poverty isn’t a problem until you’re starving to death or living on the streets. The middle- and upper-class in wealthy countries habitually deny poor people the ability to call themselves poor, and will attack any institution or service created to assist the poor. Welfare, for instance, allows anyone whose income is less than a certain amount yearly to request help buying food, paying energy bills and insurance premiums, and in some cases as much as assistance paying rent on a monthly basis. These services are much needed and appreciated by those who are able to use them, but the controversy they raise is ridiculous. Welfare, to those above it – those who hold enough wealth to be unqualified
to receive such assistance – is “too much”. The meager amount of an individual’s taxes per year that go towards welfare programs, in the eyes of the well-off, is a fortune. To many, poverty appears as an excuse for the lazy to continue being lazy, and it becomes some conspiracy by the poor to leech of the rich. Outright lies by Fox News and its ilk about the use of food stamps for electronics and dog food become fodder for the insistence by the wealthy to remove the option of welfare, to make the struggling struggle harder. As outlandish as it is, poor people have even been criticized by major news sources for having refrigerators in their households. The unspoken issue most white Americans above the poverty line seem to have with welfare, though – and with poor people in general – actually has much to do with race, gender, and ability.
Let’s start with the most obvious and oft-addressed: Race. There is a misconception amongst those opposed to welfare that the majority of people using it are black (this goes along with the assumption that they also live in a “ghetto” area. In reality, actually, the majority of welfare recipients are actually white – being 37% of welfare recipients in America, white people make up 15% more of the population on welfare than black people, according to the 2013 Nutritional Assistance Program Report from the USDA. Yet, the myth of the average welfare recipient being an uneducated black person in the ghetto persists – and why? The short answer is “racism.” There is a leftover stereotype of the black person, as decided by slavery and its offshoots all the way until the civil rights movement of the 1960’s, as a lazy, unintelligent person with no work ethic, and often a violent or criminal nature. This stereotype condemns the human being behind it to poverty in more ways than one – having been significantly disadvantaged by outright institutional racism in this country’s economy as recently as half a century ago, it’s incredibly difficult for any one black individual, much less an entire family, to pull themselves out of poverty in the modern day. The fact is that stigmas against the poor black
American are still held by many white employers, white judges, white politicians; in short, white people in places of power who have been raised with racist values that they are now capable of exerting over anyone lower in the system than they are. And so, with the power to give an employee fewer hours or more difficult tasks, or deciding not to hire a qualified person because their skin color evokes stereotypical images of an uncultured or dangerous “thug”, a racist employer becomes a part of the systematic process of keeping the poor, poor.