The Vicious Circle of Poverty: A Response to Barbara Ehrenreich

The Vicious Circle of Poverty: A Response to Barbara Ehrenreich

Alec Harrington: The Vicious Circle of Poverty – A Response to Barbara Ehrenreich

Barbara Ehrenreich has published an article in the Nation titled, ?Michael Harrington and the ?Culture of Poverty.?? In it, she quotes a passage from my father?s book The Other America in order to argue that he ?offered a view of poverty that seemed designed to comfort the already comfortable.? ??We??the always presumably affluent readers?needed to find some way to help the poor,? writes Ehrenreich, ?but we also needed to understand that there was something wrong with them.?

This is the passage Ehrenreich cites: ?There is?a language of the poor, a psychology of the poor, a worldview of the poor. To be impoverished is to be an internal alien, to grow up in a culture that is radically different from the one that dominates the society.? This has been taken out of the context of the subchapter in which it appeared, and the context of the book as a whole. My father introduced the idea that economic circumstances make a class of people different from others by retelling the famous (and apocryphal) exchange between F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway. ?The rich are different than you and me,? said Fitzgerald. Hemingway replied, ?Yes, they have more money.? My father then wrote:

Fitzgerald had the much better of the exchange. He understood that being rich was not a simple fact of life, like a large bank account, but a way of looking at reality, a series of attitudes, a special type of life. If this is true of the rich, it is ten times truer of the poor?And this is sometimes a hard idea for a Hemingway-like middle-class America to comprehend.

He was not arguing that economic circumstances have made the poor alone different from and inferior to a virtuous middle class, but that economic circumstances shape every aspect of the lives of every member of every social class. And the reason, according to The Other America, why Fitzgerald?s assertion is ?ten times truer for the poor? is that their circumstances are so brutal.

But the social vision of the ?Hemingway-like middle-class? is also limited by that class?s economic circumstances. Indeed, rather than ?comforting the middle class,? The Other America repeatedly criticized it for applying its values to circumstances in which they do not apply: ?The definition makers, the social scientists, and the moralists come from the middle class?; ?The middle class does not understand the narrowness of its judgments?; ?The middle class looks upon this process and sees ?lazy? people ?who just don?t want to get ahead.??

Ehrenreich argues that the idea that something was wrong with the poor stems from my father?s use of the concept of the ?culture of poverty.? She correctly points out that the term was later used by conservative opponents of the welfare state, and that they used it to mean ?bad attitudes and faulty lifestyles.? It is clear, however, that my father did not see the ?culture of poverty? as a set of ?bad attitudes and faulty lifestyles,? but argued that such attitudes and lifestyles resulted from the ?culture of poverty.? In his introduction to the fiftieth-anniversary edition of The Other America, Maurice Isserman, author of the major biography of my father, rightly faults him for using the term ambiguously. Isserman points out that he uses it interchangeably with the term ?vicious circle,? an example of which my father explained as follows:

The poor get sick more than anyone else in the society. That is because they live in slums, jammed together under unhygienic conditions; they have inadequate diets, and cannot get decent medical care. When they become sick, they are sick longer than any other group in society. Because they are sick more often and longer than anyone else, they lose wages and work, and find it difficult to hold a steady job. And because of this, they cannot pay for good housing, for a nutritious diet, for doctors.

Later, he provided this definition of the ?culture of poverty?: ?poverty is a culture in the sense that the mechanism of impoverishment is the same in every part of the system. The vicious circle is a basic pattern….There are people in the affluent society who are poor because they are poor; and who stay poor because they are poor.? The ?culture of poverty? is an encompassing web of circumstances and not a pattern of behavior.

Nonetheless, in the chapter ?The Twisted Spirit,? my father did argue that this web of circumstances results in behavior that makes it harder to break the vicious circle. For example, economic deprivation leads multiple generations to live together in one cramped slum apartment, packed together in an overcrowded building with other multigenerational families. The close quarters and the generational differences breed conflict. Even when these conflicts subside and there is peace in a given apartment, the proximity to other families means that fights, music, and television programs bleed into the quiet household. And so children and teens escape to the streets, where there are violent gangs.

My father also cited studies that revealed a sense of hopelessness among the poor. One showed that only 19 percent of poor semi-skilled and unskilled workers surveyed thought their jobs were safe. A 1959 Gallup poll showed that the most economically deprived group surveyed was more likely than the other groups to believe that World War III would occur, that a recession was about to hit, and that they would not take a vacation in the coming year. This, my father argued, accounts for the tendency to opt for immediate gratification over saving. ?The smug theorist of the middle class,? he wrote, ?would probably deplore this as showing a lack of traditional American virtues. Actually, it is the logical and natural pattern of behavior for one living in a part of American life without a future. It is, sad to say, a piece of realism, not of vice.?

Despite arguing that improvident behavior and ?vice? (as defined by the middle class) result from the vicious circle, my father also told a story that demonstrates that the affluent are not immune to such ?vices?: a girl from a wealthy family and a girl from a poor family were both arrested on charges stemming from sexually promiscuous behavior. The wealthy girl was provided with bail and psychotherapy, and the poor girl was sent to reform school.

My father used the concepts of the ?culture of poverty? and the ?vicious circle? to argue for comprehensive, rather than piecemeal, federal action. It is not enough that new, sanitary low-income housing projects be built in slums; these projects need to be built outside of the slums where the culture of poverty is prevalent, and need to contain both low- and middle-income housing. These projects need resident social workers to help the poor?who are often unused to asserting themselves in the face of authority?navigate the bureaucracy of public housing. In another example, he argued that economic assistance to African Americans is not enough, for they will still be kept at a disadvantage based on race; therefore, civil rights legislation needed to be passed. Conversely, civil rights legislation would leave economic segregation intact if the government did not tackle issues of poverty. Universal programs, like national health care, are needed. As Isserman points out, when my father was brought on by Sargent Shriver as a consultant for the ?War on Poverty,? he recommended a massive federal jobs program.

Even if Ehrenreich had not distorted The Other America, her dismissal of the possibility of behavioral factors contributing to poverty is detrimental to the poor and to welfare-state advocates. The Right has used issues like teenage pregnancy, drug use, violence, financial irresponsibility, and welfare fraud to attack anti-poverty programs. I have spoken to some good-hearted, intelligent people who worked hard to survive the Depression yet, because of the issues mentioned above, have little sympathy for today?s long-term poor. Stopping one?s ears to discussion of counterproductive behavior among the poor is going to win no victories for the welfare state. And if some of these problems are keeping people in poverty, then it is in the interests of the poor to address these problems.

Unlike my father and Ehrenreich, I have not spent time studying poverty; however, a friend of mine and I do have experience with the abovementioned behaviors. Our experiences are, of course, anecdotal, and may or may not represent widespread trends. If these are only isolated cases, then anti-poverty advocates need to engage with those who use such anecdotes and refute them. If the individual stories are indicative of larger problems, then anti-poverty policy that addresses these problems must be formulated.

I teach writing at a college in the South Bronx for students who have been out of school for some years. Many of them are simultaneously studying for their GEDs and bachelor?s degrees; almost all of my students receive financial assistance to cover tuition and books; the majority of them are African American or Latino. In a journal writing class, I assign them a narrative essay about an event that changed their lives. The majority of female students?yes, the majority?write about having a child in their teens. I don?t think anyone would argue with the notion that teenage motherhood makes it hard to overcome poverty. Additionally, a shocking number of essays told of family and friends being shot to death.

A friend of mine teaches at a New York City public middle school. Many of her students live in public housing; many of them brag of having multiple flat screen TVs at home and of wearing $200 sneakers. My friend often advises the parents of children who do not do their homework to take the TVs out of their children?s bedrooms both as a punishment and to remove a distraction. The parents often balk at doing anything that would upset the children. My friend nominates academically strong students for a program that gives middle-schoolers scholarships to private high schools and then scholarships to college if the students graduate the high school with a certain GPA. My friend?s greatest challenge in getting students into this program, which requires parental participation, is getting the parents to attend the necessary meetings.

Finally, a story that goes a long way toward explaining Republican stereotypes: when I was teaching theater in South Carolina, I knew a white man who was on food stamps. He would offer to buy people groceries with his benefits card if they would buy him cigarettes and alcohol. His father and brother were on disability and ran an under-the-table contracting business, which they did not report to SSA. His sisters were both single mothers receiving assistance; both their rents were paid by boyfriends, but this fact was not reported to the agency from which they were receiving assistance.

Even if these instances are isolated, such anecdotes (and statistics to back them up) have been used by the Right as weapons against welfare. If these stories are representative, then anti-poverty advocates must wrestle with these problems. The Other America did. It argued that they are outcomes of the vicious circle of poverty, and therefore advocated for comprehensive action.