This initially obscure blog post went completely viral, especially after it was picked up by the Huffington Post. It’s written by a woman who claims to be poor. She has two jobs (one as a cook), two kids, and takes a full load of college classes. The essay is about what it is like to live in poverty and why poor people often make terrible decisions that seem nonsensical to outsiders and which seldom elicit much sympathy. It’s hard to explain why it touched off such a nerve with people, but it is strangely compelling. Maybe it is because it is very well-written, which is not what you would expect considering the life she describes herself living.
Here’s a sample paragraph that, unlike most of the piece, doesn’t seem quite autobiographical.
Poverty is bleak and cuts off your long-term brain. It’s why you see people with four different babydaddies instead of one. You grab a bit of connection wherever you can to survive. You have no idea how strong the pull to feel worthwhile is. It’s more basic than food. You go to these people who make you feel lovely for an hour that one time, and that’s all you get. You’re probably not compatible with them for anything long-term, but right this minute they can make you feel powerful and valuable. It does not matter what will happen in a month. Whatever happens in a month is probably going to be just about as indifferent as whatever happened today or last week. None of it matters. We don’t plan long-term because if we do we’ll just get our hearts broken. It’s best not to hope. You just take what you can get as you spot it.
As you might expect, the essay made a lot of people angry. Why complain about the gas it takes to drive three hours to the nearest Planned Parenthood when you’re wasting your money and your health on cigarettes? Why take such a defeatist attitude and complain about your plight?
But most people don’t have conservative lizard brains and understood that the essay was supposed to explain what it is like to be poor, not to justify bad or irresponsible decisions. The outpouring of support was so strong that she drew in the equivalent of her annual income in PayPal donations.
I am not sure what to make of that, but it is an interesting thing to read.
strikes me as a con. maybe modeled on the TPM essay about why the TPM author buys expensive items [necessary to look the part to get work, so employers can relate to her, ultimately affects being hired]. I may be wrong, of course, but this writer depicts herself living in a vaccuum. I get no sense of friends, family, associates. husband and kids mentioned but seem like an abstraction. that’s contrary to everything I’ve seen in real life
Yes, in my personal observation, poor people have considerable social interaction with their peers, i.e. neighbors in a trailer park. It’s all they have.
yes, mine also. my response to the essay was “where are the people?” [ppl with whom author has an emotional connection]. author’s tone is one of defiant hostility to the reader.
There have been numerous essays like this, purporting to be written by people in a particular difficult situation, on many blogs over the years, that turned out to be false. Daily Kos is particularly infamous for this sort of thing. It becomes a form of tourism/creative writing where someone tries on the persona of someone less fortunate. Makes it hard to tell who really is speaking truth and who’s not. The ones I’ve seen that turned out to be false were characterized by having too many good talking points lined up, a detached and polished tone, and an overabundance of examples of their situation.
This kind of fits that profile, to be honest. I can think of a real life example that happened in Minnesota last week that is more compelling to me: a young, low income woman with 5 kids had only a learner’s permit, but needed to get to work and drive her kids to school, and she couldn’t find anyone to drive with her. So she drove on her own with the kids. The car got out of her control on an exit which is known to have design flaws resulting in fatal crashes (in fact the exit is designated for rebuild in the next couple of years for this reason). The car flies off the road into a frigid pond. She gets out, but all five kids remain underwater 20 minutes before emergency crews can pull them out. Looks like 2 will survive, the rest are gone. If she’d been wealthier, guaranteed she’d have had more driving experience by then, she’d have a more convenient arrangement for the kids, she’d have a safer, newer car, etc.
also, the “long term brain” is being discussed because of Paul Ryan, some interesting comments at the orange place
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/11/24/1256843/–You-don-t-dream-when-you-ve-got-food-stamps-Reall
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Her explanation/description of how she as a poor person thinks is valid and wouldn’t quarrel with her that she sees the same way of being among other poor people that she knows/encounters, not all low income people think/behave as she does nor is such a way of being limited to poor people. It may be more common and/or more obvious among poor people than those with higher income/wealth but that may be more a function of having much less margin for error. Or we could be seeing the adults that as children failed the Marshmallow test and didn’t have a home or school environment from which they could learn.
An interesting test. From what I can remember of Kindergarten, I certainly would have passed. OTOH, my youngest grandson (19) still would not pass.
It’s one part the natural maturation of the brain — somewhere between four and five years old. However, it’s unclear to what extent a child’s environment facilitates or interferes with this development. IOW can it be taught to those children that seem not to develop this function before age 6? If yes, and for a variety of reasons I tend to think it is for almost all, it could be incorporated into kindergarten curriculum.
Your grandson isn’t alone. There seems to be less and less in “our way of life” that requires the natural unfolding of this development and more and more that encourages instant gratification.
jwbrahan
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Just to be clear here. This is not her life. She has rolled up a lot of problems poor people face and written a powerful essay. People felt so bad for her situation they started sending her money to help her out. She’s up to $55,000 in 10 days. Only yesterday did she post an update disclosing that this is not literally her life. If you want to send a fledgling writer money to further her career, fine. But don’t be deceived that you are sending your money to the person described in this article because this article represents a fictional, composite working poor person. I’m not saying it doesn’t open important dialog about class and poverty, but there is a bit of the old flim-flam going on.
24 NOV 8:56 PM
This time it’s a TNR profile by Julia Ioffe, “… Think Republicans have been making fools of themselves? Blame Michael Needham”:
I know this is on Cracked.com and it is suppose to be funny, but its the best thing I’ve read on poverty and the counter intuitive choices that poor people make.
http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-things-nobody-tells-you-about-being-poor/
You should read Orwell’s The Road to Wigan Pier, which is eloquent on this subject and remains timely.
I’ve read several insightful essays on cracked.com.
My liberal Macroeconomics 101 professor said:
I don’t know if the post is a con or not. This line from you:
Poor people with low education aren’t allowed to be well-spoken or well-written? That’s a rather elitist point of view.
Tell that to Johnny Cash or Maya Angelou. Or any number of people from dirt-poor backgrounds. Heck, I knew people like this when I was in community college. I may actually know people like this right now.
yes, – anyway she does have education, she’s in college. For me it’s not about how she verbalizes it’s about what she writes about her context, specifically relationships with people.
I know a number of poor people who work two jobs. A few are also fitting in school, family, domestic and other responsibilities. Who has time for relationships with non-family under those circumstances?
Your persistent concern in this thread about the writer working a “flim-flam” and other forms of deception feels completely misplaced. The writer specifically asked for no sympathy, and it was clear in the writing that the experiences were composites.
I really, really don’t get the hostility to this writer. Perhaps it’s a desperate need to avoid feeling any sympathy. To me, the hostility supplements one of the essay’s subthemes very well: people will go out of their way to track a poor person down just so they can project their maladjustments all over
It’s what Voice in the Wilderness writes above; in my experience ppl who are poor (of which I have some direct experience) are deeply embedded in a human social context with many emotional ties, source of support and obligations. none of that comes across in the writing. The higher up the economic scale you go, the more humanly isolated – think Mitt Romney who showed himself to be completely isolated emotionally from everyone around and is able to buy himself plenty of physical isolation.
My hostility to the writer – which I guess I have to some degree, is for misleading the readers. All the people of good will who contributed to that writer, who may not need it. Those good hearted well meaning people could have contributed to people in need, of which there are many, and furthermore, may feel burned and taken advantage of. The writer could have prefaced with: “based on my experience of people around me, my relatives, people I know, whatever, I depict the following character …”
Man, you are taking your suppositions based on your own reasoning and turning them into “fact”. Neither one of us know this person’s circumstance; it disappoints me that you pretend you DO know. And making this person comparable to Romney is just plain offensive. That simile is absolutely inappropriate.
See, you go from this admission of uncertainty:
“All the people of good will who contributed to that writer, who may not need it.”
to this claim of certainty, in the very next sentence:
“Those good hearted well meaning people could have contributed to people in need, of which there are many, and furthermore, may feel burned and taken advantage of.”
How would ANYONE “feel burned and taken advantage of” if there is no real evidence that the writer’s circumstance is stated falsely?
I’ll just say in conclusion that the writer’s own representation of her personal circumstance IS “deeply embedded in a human social context with many emotional ties, source of support and obligations.” For example, from the writer’s personal representation:
“I get up at 6AM, go to school (I have a full courseload, but I only have to go to two in-person classes) then work, then I get the kids, then I pick up my husband, then I have half an hour to change and go to Job 2. I get home from that at around 1230AM, then I have the rest of my classes and work to tend to. I’m in bed by 3. This isn’t every day, I have two days off a week from each of my obligations. I use that time to clean the house and soothe Mr. Martini and see the kids for longer than an hour and catch up on schoolwork.”
This reads as VERY deeply embedded in a human social context to me.
well, sorry my reply didn’t come across as I intended and it’s probably impossible to explain in a comment. I do have experience of what I speak and this is something I observed from that experience. and from my observation a person as isolated as Romney would not do well without wealth to cushion him; I’m certainly not saying everyone in the economic stratosphere is like him. But I read the writer’s description of interactions with child, husband and school as “tasks”, lacking the emotional element. I’ll find some links with which to compare if you like. glad you replied though because I was unhappy with my initial response
Don’t know if you’ll read this, but here’s someone who researched her;
http://otherviewsfromhere.wordpress.com/2013/11/24/new-thoughts-on-being-poor/
I read it. Not much there about the writer.
So, here’s the thing: if a person’s online writing moves another so much that it causes them to send the writer money, it seems strange for others to speculatively intervene in that transaction by worrying that the contributor is being taken advantage of.
Here’s a parallel that we’ve probably all experienced: the panhandler. My own personal view is that the more detailed the panhandler’s story, the more likely it is that they’re lying to me, and my view is definitely a product of experience. Now, does that make it more likely that I don’t give money to the panhandler with the elaborate story? No, I’m just as likely to give to the person who may be snowing me.
The reason for that is I’m not paying them for their story. I’m contributing to them because if they’re desperate enough FOR WHATEVER REASON to ask strangers for money, they need my help. It appears to me in this culture that it’s terrifically damaging to a person’s pride to panhandle.
The parallel between panhandling and the successful fundraising from this writer is not tight. But I just can’t identify with people who fret about whether someone else is getting “ripped off” when they voluntarily contribute to a stranger. It’s not our business.
I guess I mind because people really do give a lot in proportion to what they have. For me it’s important to know that what I give is going for what I think it’s going for. I’ve read the statistics but don’t recall the numbers, but here in the US a very large % of philanthropy is from individuals who are not wealthy. and there are so many people in need.
have you ever read the NYTimes neediest cases? they run it around this time of year, a different story every day, for end of year donations. I find all of these stories compelling, how the ppl talk about themselves and the people close to them for me contrasts sharply with the essay we were discussing. anyway, here’s a link to todays
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/28/nyregion/when-the-first-hurdle-is-remembering.html?ref=nyregion
I appreciate your article, BooMan. I hadn’t seen it before and I thought it important enough to send the website address to several Outcomes researchers. Unfortunately, you have a large number of crass, cynical twits who comment.
I read the article and KNEW that the woman was not describing her circumstances. No one who writes that succintly, has a definitive style of words, and uses 3rd person could possibly be documenting her/his current circumstances. Too much education. Too much introspection. Too much a sense of the future and what it means to have a future.
I was raised white trash. The Marines got me out of the Trailer Park, my wife got me out of that mindset, and UNM taught me to use the English language.
Poverty DOES cut off your long-term brain. Generational poverty KILLS it. The future is two weeks from now, and it will look almost exactly like now … just like two weeks ago did. When your future is next sunday’s football game, it is difficult (to say the least) to have a five year economic plan.
Are all people in poverty afflicted in this way? No. Are all people in Generational Poverty afflicted this way? Yes, but not all to the same degree. Those that pull themselves up “by their bootstraps” have managed to gain a sense that there is a future beyond what they can see. Those that do not are similar to 5 year olds: what is today will always be.
Many people seem to be very worried about the $$$ sent to this person. Presumably she is not “worthy poor”. I saw nothing in her essay that requested money. I saw nothing in her essay that made me want to praise god and send money to Joel Osteen. I saw nothing that indicated she would use the money to foist bad loans on poor people. That privilege is reserved for worthy rich.
I saw a truth that has to be expressed in many different ways to protect it from RightWing Haters, Xtian fundamentalist ideologues, and knee jerk liberals concerned with appearnces.
her writing style has nothing to do with it except that, imo it is too abstract (lifeless prose) to be personal in my judgement. she should have made it clear she was writing a composite and it wasn’t her life. we don’t know anything about her circumstance, btw. I don’t say this out of cynicism – we don’t know her circumstances, and there are plenty of ppl who are truly indigent.
Here’s a link to a Science article on poverty and cognitive function from July.
I would add that people make bad decisions all the time. Those of us that are well-off, or at least financially secure, rarely have to face the consequences for them.
Another pair of links, these for the Internets Celebrities, who did a pair of brilliant satires on urban poverty in New York: Checkmate and bodega.
Jill Balte Taylor on the teenage brain.
Note the prefrontal cortex (critical for planning) doesn’t complete its maturation until we’re in our mid-twenties. After many people have dropped out of school, taken low skill and poor paying jobs with no future, and had children.
OT, but Taylor also has quite an intriguing personal story.