Poor? What Poor? The Invisible Population, Essay Example

There are no poor people in America. This must be true because, if the problem were as extreme as the media claims it is, we would certainly be seeing them every day, no matter what we do or where we go. Families are hungry, according to the news. Grown men and women are joining the ranks of the homeless all the time, as the television reports tell us daily. All of this, however, is clearly a media lie. On one hand, in fact, the media relentlessly tells us that Americans are struggling with obesity in record numbers. Then, we are simultaneously bombarded with stories of hunger. We are obviously being misled. If any of the poverty documentation were true, we would know it because it would affect us, disturb us, and be right in front of our eyes. We would be involved with the poor all the time, if the reported numbers were even remotely accurate. This is not the case. Most of us do not witness any manifestations of poverty, so the poverty we hear of all the time cannot exist.

This is the real tragedy of poverty in America. Perhaps nothing this massive, in fact, has ever been so consistently and perfectly hidden. Poverty is very much real and it is equally nowhere in sight, most of the time. The media certainly exaggerates stories to generate audiences, but they are not playing that sort of game in this case; what they are doing, in fact, is giving us the only chance to really see poverty that we are likely to get, because the inherent nature of poverty is isolation. It causes damage in untold ways, affecting virtually every part of society, but it does it from an arena shut off from most of us. It is painfully real and widespread, but it does not live in our neighborhoods so we have no direct knowledge of it. This permits us the luxury, then, of clapping our hands over our ears, closing our eyes, and going about our own business.

How can this be possible? The better question is: how can it not be? Poverty isolates because – simply and tragically – there is no place for the poor among us. In brutal terms, they cannot afford to be where they can be seen and where their problems can be identified. It is no accident that slum housing is situated in miserably poor parts of town. The homeless or the unemployed take the only accommodations they can, which are, of course, next door to the condemned building or the condemned building itself. It is not a coincidence that the only competition for the cut-rate convenience store is the one across the street, equally scary and just as cheap. There is, not surprisingly, no demographic there to support a decent merchant. Most of all, when the news reports violent crime and drug issues ripping a neighborhood apart, it is a safe assumption that the neighborhood is not very upper-class.

Poverty notoriously feeds on itself, and in ways beyond perpetuating need. Impoverished conditions degenerate, always, unless an outside force steps in to change them. It is bitterly ironic, in fact; prosperity requires energy and effort, but poverty easily sustains and amplifies itself. It also creates victims, and victims with very few means of protecting the little they have. As crime is drawn to the easiest of targets, the cycle is perfectly enabled. So, too, does the despair of having nothing generate the environment ideal for substance abuse, which in turn promotes further crime. The means by which we live do far more than provide us with food, clothing, and shelter. They give us our very identities. Cliché or not, poverty truly is a trap because poverty, ironically, creates its own borders, and they are borders we help to secure. If the poor stumble into it, most of us, through nothing more than a careless reflex, contribute to keeping them nicely tucked away, out of sight, and desperately poor.

If there is a solution in the common mind – assuming the common mind is willing to allow that this mysterious “poverty” exists – it is that poverty can only be overcome by the efforts of those locked inside its walls. They must summon the will and the energy to rise above the walls and forge new and better lives. We admit that this is not easy, but we like this thinking because it reflects all the glories of America. We take responsibility. We make for ourselves the lives we work for, and we then provide wonderful examples to our children. We hold to this remarkably powerfully, in fact, given the inherent flimsiness of the strategy. Is it likely that a poor young woman with no education can secure a decent-paying job? No, but we sort of assume that she will be, or should be, motivated to make the extra efforts needed to obtain both. Is it reasonable to expect that children raised with no supervision will not turn to crime? Maybe not, but a good, poor parent will find a way to instill morals and ambition. Above all, we feel that the poor are poor because, on some level, this is a choice they make. It is a natural consequence of a lack of drive or character. This is the American ethic at, unfortunately, its worst. It is the desperate clinging to ideology in the face of issues too massive to be so neatly overcome. It is another wall hiding the poor.

In the dilemma, however, lies the solution. We cannot expect poverty to end, or even lessen, by providing opportunities outside of it, and trusting that motivation will trigger millions of escapes into normalcy. We cannot anticipate that the same motivations driving us, the non-poor, can be in place in the poor, because they are living lives unknown to us, and lives literally confined to conditions self-perpetuating and defeating. What we must do, before any action is taken, is take our hands from our eyes and be willing to see the complex and grim reality. We must go in ourselves and face the truth behind the social barriers. We must realize that the poor neighborhood is enemy territory, and territory holding our own people inside of it. If we truly commit to working from the “inside,” we can change those sad landscapes, reclaim the occupied regions, and effectively free those of us lost to the outside world. Lost, and invisible.