Attitudes About Poverty Need to Change

For the vast majority of my life, I have lived in communities dominated by caucasian, upper-middle class and white-collar individuals.  Growing up in a small New England town, the only poverty I ever experienced personally was seeing the homeless on the streets of Hartford and New Haven, Connecticut. 

It really wasn't until I was 17-years-old and took a two-week trip to Anniston, Alabama with Habitat for Humanity that I truly began to understand and appreciate the plight of the less fortunate.

I think that the problem of perception is a significant barrier to addressing the tragedy of wide-spread poverty in the U.S.  For many people like myself who have been fortunate enough to never experience poverty directly, opinions about the poor are often based on assumptions, stereotypes and media portrayal.

In some communities around the country, social service workers are noticing a sort of ambivalence toward the poor.  Sociologists contend that these attitudes are based on life experiences and lessons learned through parents and friends growing up, and often times reflect ingrained viewpoints that don't represent the reality of those living in poverty.

Dr. Bruce MacMurray, a sociology professor at Anderson College in South Carolina, offers an opinion on why many people feel the need to cling to their misguided views on poverty:

To suggest that the poor are poor because they are lazy or can't save money or they are dumb is somewhat self-serving.  Those views allow those of us who don't live in that environment to dismiss it as their problem rather than our problem--to say that they're responsible for their own failure rather than to say that it stems from the problems of our society.  Those experiences that fit our mindset, we point out.  Those that don't, we dismiss.  That way we can be content with our sense of what the world is without having to change it, even if the reality doesn't correspond to that.

As with other stereotypes based on race, religion or sexual orientation, many people hold views about the poor that group everyone suffering through poverty in the same neat little package. 

However, being or becoming poor doesn't work like that because there are both individual and structural causes of poverty.  The old mantra of "work hard and get ahead" simply does not apply equally to all people.  It's a lot easier to get ahead if you have stable housing, medical insurance and enough food to eat, and for many people in this country, that is simply not the reality of their everyday lives.

As the article I link to above notes, the only way to truly understand poverty (short of living through it) is to volunteer with organizations that work directly with the poor.  It is what opened my eyes, and is what I think can cure some of the misconceptions about our country's poor.

What we all must understand is that any one of us could have been born into poverty.  Simply because we were born into different circumstances does not mean we deserve happiness and success anymore than someone who was born in an urban slum or poor rural community.  Poverty is one of the greatest blights on American society, and it is up to everyone of us to realize that this injustice is not "their" problem but "our" problem to fix.

(Photo credit: psd on Flickr)