On strawmen, privilege, and the “deserving” poor

Last updated on: March 18, 2017 at 11:27 am by Kate Cousino

On strawmen, privilege, and the “deserving” poor 2017-03-18T11:27:47-04:00 Kate Cousino

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If you want to look down your noses at people who rely on government assistance, I don’t want to be treated as exempt from your disdain simply because I don’t fit the image in your mind.

Image via Flickr, https://www.flickr.com/photos/robinellis/6034919721

I don’t want to answer your (rhetorical, I guess) question about why poor people do or don’t do something and then be told that you don’t mean people like me, you mean those other people.

I don’t want to be excused because I come from an intact family, I grew up on a farm in the country, I’m white and well-educated, attend church weekly, because I had my children within wedlock, or because I express myself well.

Here’s how I see it, when I step out of my subsidized-rent home and see the other “poor” people around me. I see that with all of the advantages listed above, many of which, yes, my economic peers do not have, we are all at this moment in the same place.

I have incredible, incredible respect for men and women who keep striving in the face of no advantages, few privileges, less education, and/or dysfunctional family dynamics. I am in no way superior to them. I didn’t earn any of my advantages.

So stop telling me that you just mean those *other* poor people, the ones who aren’t trying as hard as I am. Because I can assure you, nothing I have came from “trying harder.”

And maybe, maybe, you might consider whether poor people might not mostly just be…people…doing what they know to do, trying to get by, some virtuous, some silly, some selfish, some amazingly generous, no different in essentials from any other segment of society.

Maybe they aren’t so alien after all.

(Originally posted on FB, in response to some interactions there.)

ETA: Related reading from Melinda Selmys. http://www.patheos.com/blogs/catholicauthenticity/2016/03/youre-not-pro-life-if-youre-not-pro-child/

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