When I went to
college, Carroll invited our parents to come for an orientation. My dad went
because this sort of thing falls under his purview of responsibilities. Not a
dis on my mom, but not her thing. My dad told me after
that they had a rape orientation which was essentially, Catholic school, door
open, feet on floor, which much like abstinence only education is fool proof,
and they warned our parents that a lot of kids have trouble with the close
quarters in the beginning. This was promptly followed by a tour. Now, I too had
the rape lecture and found it as useless as my dad, but his response to the
dorm living I’ll never forget. He said to the tour guide, my girls (J and
myself) share a room not even half this size. It was true. J and I shared a ridiculously
and comically small room growing up. It really prepared us for living in a surveillance
state because there was no privacy. When I moved to DC I had a closet larger
than my childhood bedroom—I measured it, because that is something I’m neurotic
enough to do. I didn’t actually have my own room until I moved out of the dorms my senior year and into a brothel (not really, but according to the restrictions in South Euclid,
houses with more than 3 unmarried women…).
My parents’ home is
one floor located about half way down our street (our current vacant lot count is 18); growing up it was always
white, inside, outside, all the walls, white, always white. It didn’t have a
basement just a crawl space or much of an attic, which was only accessible through
a trap door in the hallway ceiling. A hallway that two people can’t really fit
side by side in, which I’ve mentioned before and completely responsible for my
sisters and my belief that basketball should be a full contact sport. I’m
trying to paint a picture here of simple, and that word is important because of
an article I read last week talking about the appropriation of poverty. We were
working poor and by no means that bad off. My parents put us through private
school so we could go to college, and while I don’t know if it was their
intention without Trinity I would never have been able to assimilate into
Carroll or the rest of my life and not just because of the Catholic part. Trinity
was a college prep school, and with its shortcomings, and there were some,
Trinity taught us how to pass with kids who there was never any questions about
whether they’d attend college. Trinity gave me the patience women stereotypically have and along with those shortcomings the realizations that there are consequences for everything and the price is pretty steep for people who don't intrinsically belong.
The article, “The
troubling trendiness of poverty appropriation” by July Westhale published
on the Establishment, left me with a lot of feelings and thoughts. Westhale and
I have very different experiences, and her’s definitely lends itself more to the
“simple living” trends, but mine, well mine is the gentrification that
displaces and erases poor people, mostly poor people of color from urban
neighborhoods. Westhale says, “And it’s not the Tiny House Movement that
incites my discontent. From dumpster diving to trailer-themed bars to haute
cuisine in the form of poor-household staples, it’s become trendy for those
with money to appropriate the poverty lifestyle—and it troubles me for one
simple reason. Choice.” Preach. The article is broken out into three major
sections: space/things, entitlements, and food.
Women in general are
hyper aware of space, please see manspreading for more information. Women are
told not to take up space by everything, and poor women should take up even
less after all they haven’t earned it. So when people start talking about
wanting to living small spaces or take back spaces relegated to the poor what
they are saying is I can choose this and those
people still don’t deserve space. It has always been this way; the poor
living on top of each other in tiny spaces slums, “ghettos”, trailer parks, or
even further back the tenements. As for things, when you think back to being a
kid, think back to saving for something, remember saving your allowance or
birthday money or whatever, and then you buy whatever it is, and it is just
stuff, a thing, which can’t make you happy or anything, but it is yours. That is
kind of what poverty is like. So everything you have you had to earn. People
don’t think about that when they think about the poor. We think people with
money earn things, but people who always have access just have things; they don't earn things. Things and space are the right of the those in privilege.
Westhale also shares
an anecdote about hipsters rejecting capitalism through welfare. Once in
Portland I became so irate with the idea that people would suggest people who
could work, white, educated people who could obtain jobs without the same biases people
of color and the poor have to face, who opt out, that I yelled at friends and strangers
alike. I was not at my healthiest mental state. I yelled about how block grants get fixed sums of money and when the
money is gone most states don’t comp the people it won’t cover. Really, hipsters
are taking welfare from poor people; this is the reason to hate hipsters. I still want to hit something. It isn’t
just hipsters in Portland who join welfare to opt out of capitalism. A group of
people I deeply respect participate in “voluntary poverty,” and as I told them,
there is nothing voluntary about poverty. If you can opt in you can opt out
again. They don’t use welfare to counter their costs, and they see it as
participating with the population they serve. See for real people, poverty is
super expensive. It is juggling bills and late fees with what gets paid this
month, or opting for a parking ticket instead of paying for parking because you
don’t have the cash now, and the ticket won’t be due till after you get paid.
Being poor comes with a ton of fees. Opting out of capitalism is like opting
out of the patriarchy. It isn’t possible, and if someone does think they are
doing it they are blinded by their privilege.
Finally, the food. I
love fast food fries. As a kid my dad and I had a rating system. See I’d go
with him to get takeout usually on Fridays, and we’d rate fries by whether they required ketchup.
Really good fries like Red Barn (Slavic Village, what!) fries required little to
no ketchup, but Burger King fries need ketchup, all the ketchup. But poor
people food isn’t just fast food, through it is a lot of it, right? You can tell
what kind of neighborhood you’re in by the fast food places…Popeye’s, you know
where you are compared to a Panera. You don’t even need to think about the
actual amenities of these places like the bullet proof glass that separates
your server from you in some take out places in the hood or accidentally ordering
drugs through a drive thru. But kidding
aside, I can’t eat peanut butter. Westhale talks about rice, but for me it is
peanut butter. I don’t know why. I mean we ate it all the time in school. It
got to the point where I would only take carrots for lunch because I couldn’t
eat the peanut butter. My mom and dad still eat peanut butter sandwiches for
lunch every day, every day. My maternal grandma (Nanny, as we called her) couldn’t eat
pumpkin. There were times when it was the only thing they had to eat during the Depression so she
refused to eat it later in life. And this is the side of things where you consume something so much you can’t
anymore, let’s talk about exposure. I never had eggplant, mushrooms, a variety
of foods that either my mom didn’t like or didn’t know how to prepare. I
remember the first time I ate a kiwi, and the first time I ate a mango. Surprise, poor people don’t have access
to a full range of foods or any idea how to prepare some of it. I still have no
idea how to prepare eggplant. No clue, and I have the internet. That said
mushrooms are gross and always will be. *shudder*
I’m torn on how to
end this post because Westhale ends with this quote, “Because, let me tell you,
there is nothing simple about being poor.” Truth. Being poor is hard. People
have some idea that it is easy or poor people are lazy, but anecdotally, it has
been my experience that poor people have hella work histories. They work all
the time. Additionally, they have stress and anxiety and are more likely to suffer from depression and usually don't have access to mental health care. To opt into poverty or opt into poverty appropriation is just a slap in the
face and reeks of privilege. That might be it, my big peeve about all this: people I know, me, my friends, worked really hard to get out and pass, and because we
were lucky and made few mistakes we did or we didn't (and a lot of us didn't) so when these little privileged kids
want to play poor for a minute I want to punch them in the face. They don't want to improve things for those in poverty. Instead these people want to mock the poor, and things that have been part of the impoverished lives.
Aside: My roommate is
studying hipsters, and this quote exemplifies everything:
“It’s but one example
of an entire hipster moment—can it be called a movement when it’s a subculture
rooted not in political consciousness, but in capitalism?—that has brought with
it an ethos of poor-culture appropriation and the “re-invention” of things that
have largely been tools of survival for the poor, disabled, working class,
and/or communities of color for decades.”
