Can You Build a Life from $25**
I want you to read this article from the Christian Science Monitor before we go on. It's the prerequisite before today's session of "Nora's Bile: Let Me Show You It."
It's short, and I can wait.
Done? How interesting, right? In the vein of Nickel and Dimed--with its renunciation of one's so-called station to explore how another group lives (or struggles to live)--a young man named Adam Shepard decides to take twenty-five bucks, a rucksack of physical things, and nothing else; leave his home with his parents; and step to "the wrong side of the tracks" in Charleston and "[start] his life from scratch" (sort of) as a homeless man to "test the vivacity of the American Dream."
Right.
The conceit that Adam brought "little else" with him than $25 and the clothes on his back reflects a willful blindness to so much about Adam as a person and American society in general that I don't even know where to begin picking this bit of indulgence apart. It is so full of unacknowledged advantages and self-satisfied "discoveries" about self and life and America that a cranky cultural critic and feminist such as myself feels like a kid in a veritable candy store. A candy store of assumptions.
So I'll start at one of my favorite jumping-in points: white privilege. Recently on an alumni network to which I belong, a white man put forth that he didn't believe in it and that it didn't matter if he believed in it or not, it didn't have any effect on him. And it is indeed difficult to convince someone dead-set against acknowledging something troubling to their personal position of power that there is an unseen aspect of their power. But in my view of the world, white privilege exists whether you want it to or not, and that's all I'm going to say in response to someone who said something ignorant a few months back.
Anyway.
The article/interview doesn't really bring up race at all, but the interviewer does skim the issue of Adam being white, asking "what if you were on probation?" I don't think one can ask this question without the weight of the imprisonment rate of black males in America behind it. The astonishing disparity between white incarceration and black incarceration means that any discussion of Adam's 'ability' to 'succeed' after 'starting' with 'nothing' must acknowledge that not being a black man on probation factors into his success rate. But no such acknowledgment comes. Adam's answer to the interviewer is revealing (emphasis mine): "The question isn't whether I would have been able to succeed. I think it's the attitude that I take in: 'I've got child care. I've got a probation officer. I've got all these bills. Now what am I going to do? Am I going to continue to go out to eat and put rims on my Cadillac? Or am I going to make some things happen in my life...?'" In other words, Adam seems to think that just thinking that he had impediments was enough to give him the psychological burden of those limitations--a burden he shouldered by thinking positively and 'making things happen' for himself. He also puts forth a false dilemma, establishing that his basic choice as he scraped together his earning and made budgets (and therefore the choices of the homeless people around him) was either to eat out and pimp his car or to save money. This is not just reductionist, it's willfully blind. It's blind to the fact that Adam is coming from a socioeconomic world that teaches its children--its college educated children, no less--how to see money and how to consider a future in which success is so likely that it is a sure thing. It's blind to the fact that he had the advantage of lacking certain expenses, including but by no means limited to critical medicine.
Also, what kind of jackass actually says that one of the biggest changes from living home'd to living in the continuum of homeless-to-merely-poor was no longer going out to eat? My rent, student loan bills, and utility bills currently equal just over half of my monthly earnings after tax, and I also pretty much no longer go out to eat. It stopped being a sacrifice or change and started being the way I live now a long, long time ago--before I even had a paycheck in Boston, in fact.
An additional shockingly naive story Adam relates in his interview is that he made up "this great back story" of how he ended up where he 'was.' His excitingly tragic tale is a little flight of fancy, a little indulgent method acting: my mom drugs, my dad booze, me leave her for him and here I am. He takes pride, it seems, in having a "great" story, but his great story is not given the kind of praise or even attention from his 'fellow' homeless people that he seems to feel it warrants (emphasis mine): "The interesting thing is that nobody really cared.... It wasn't so much as where we were coming from, it was where we were going." This is remarkably self-centered. Did it ever occur to him that his story was not interesting to others he met not because they were each so focused on adjusting their individual attitudes to ensure future success ("...but where we were going.") but because, well, his story is real for some and might be seen, by others, as no big fucking deal compared to their problems?
I should acknowledge that Nickel and Dimed, a book I enjoyed, was also incomplete in its analysis. Based on this interview alone, I'd have to argue that that book did not wear blinders as large as Adam's. Barbara actually fights a bit with the advantages that she has whether or not she chooses to use them. Adam, on the other hand, just doesn't see that being white is an advantage in and of itself, or that having the kind of attitude that one gains just by soaking in the stew of college is a tool that you use without knowing it. He even has the gall to say that college was a disadvantage in his experiment with strife: his "thinking was inside the box." Inside the box, apparently, of knowing that saving money is a thing that one should do. It is beyond his imagination to think that there are populations out there who do not see the future the same way that he has been cultured (like a pearl in a shell) to see it. There are people whose futures in America do not have the same potentials that his future does by the simple virtue that he is white, comes from a certain background (two parents, comfort, schooling), speaks English, is male, is not unhealthy chronically or mentally ill, does not have babies. Being white, being male, being born to such parents, speaking native English, being healthy: Adam did not make these choices, yet he benefits from them every day.
(And here also, your humble narrator indulges in a little editorializing: Adam, just try being everything I've just mentioned *except* male, and see how different your experience is. If it's not different, I will eat my hat. Also your hat. Also the hats of anyone who mails me one after I return to my "real life," job, apartment, cat, family. In fact, I think I have my own book deal right there: woman attempts to duplicate success of pretend homeless book writer; finds that his rate of success cannot be duplicated simply by Attitude and Determination and may, in fact, have an element of several aspects of unacknowledged privilege to it; woman bogs down the postal system in her ZIP code with the return shipments of many, many hats sent to her by smug white dudes. But really, the story I'm telling is the story of the can-do attitudes of the mail carriers on my block...)
His book had better be more insightful than the interview he gives. Because he just sounds like a naive, ignorant Pollyanna, here--and beyond that, his uninsightful and unthinking endorsement of the whole "bootstraps" thing is very, very damaging. Forgive my failure to find citations and research to back up the following statement, but this attitude--that the poor just don't work hard enough, that the homeless just have bad attitudes (Adam, emphasis mine: "Then there was this other guy who could walk and everything was good in his life, but he was just kind of bumming around, begging on the street corner. To see the attitudes along the way, that is what my story is about."), that all it takes is just, oh I dunno, Pluck or Moxie or Whathaveyou--has been rejected pretty roundly as a valid base for making public policy.
Does Adam know that the fastest growing population of the homeless is families? Because per American Government and Politics Today, published by Thompson Learning this year and supplemented by yours damned truly, it is and they are. The implication in his interview that these families just need to make better decisions is insulting and dangerous.
It's easy and fun to poke holes in Adam's ideas--he's a regular fraking Candide up in here, except with less critical thinking. But his gloss (ha ha, get it?) can damage more than just my afternoon productivity, and that ain't right. His words live in a public sphere and will be used by readers to inform attitudes, and I wish he'd thought of that before he went out there scrounging for a book deal.
I could be wrong, of course. This interview might not actually reflect the level of insight in his book, and I haven't read the book. For all I know--or am likely to find out, since I don't think I could stand reading more tripe from an indulgent white man--his little book might start with a series of disclaimers: this is the inspirational story of me and only me; at the end of my self-imposed year of living dangerously I'd attained all of my goals and could use my magical get-out-of-homelessness free card; and your mileage may vary!
But I fucking doubt it. I do indeed doubt it.
A note: Standard double quotes in this screed indicate content I am quoting from the article. Single quotes should be read as my own 'air quotes,' implying that I, as the screed's author, find something amiss about the application of the term.
**...if you are white, are male, are in good health, and have an outlook on the proper management of money and the potential of your future that is informed by your unacknowledged class and education advantages. This headline, no doubt, was rejected by the CSM...
+ + +
My thanks go to JS for pointing out the article. My dander had been down for a few days and this puts my recent career setback into a better light: at least I'm not as ignorant as this kid! One advantage I gained just from going to college and growing up with two parents who were educated and lower middle class--even if I don't try to use it everyday--is that I know how to think critically. I hope this satisfies her wish that the young writer receive an atomic wedgie. I assure you that every time I vent my spleen, a douchebag's undies get their wings.
It's short, and I can wait.
Done? How interesting, right? In the vein of Nickel and Dimed--with its renunciation of one's so-called station to explore how another group lives (or struggles to live)--a young man named Adam Shepard decides to take twenty-five bucks, a rucksack of physical things, and nothing else; leave his home with his parents; and step to "the wrong side of the tracks" in Charleston and "[start] his life from scratch" (sort of) as a homeless man to "test the vivacity of the American Dream."
Right.
The conceit that Adam brought "little else" with him than $25 and the clothes on his back reflects a willful blindness to so much about Adam as a person and American society in general that I don't even know where to begin picking this bit of indulgence apart. It is so full of unacknowledged advantages and self-satisfied "discoveries" about self and life and America that a cranky cultural critic and feminist such as myself feels like a kid in a veritable candy store. A candy store of assumptions.
So I'll start at one of my favorite jumping-in points: white privilege. Recently on an alumni network to which I belong, a white man put forth that he didn't believe in it and that it didn't matter if he believed in it or not, it didn't have any effect on him. And it is indeed difficult to convince someone dead-set against acknowledging something troubling to their personal position of power that there is an unseen aspect of their power. But in my view of the world, white privilege exists whether you want it to or not, and that's all I'm going to say in response to someone who said something ignorant a few months back.
Anyway.
The article/interview doesn't really bring up race at all, but the interviewer does skim the issue of Adam being white, asking "what if you were on probation?" I don't think one can ask this question without the weight of the imprisonment rate of black males in America behind it. The astonishing disparity between white incarceration and black incarceration means that any discussion of Adam's 'ability' to 'succeed' after 'starting' with 'nothing' must acknowledge that not being a black man on probation factors into his success rate. But no such acknowledgment comes. Adam's answer to the interviewer is revealing (emphasis mine): "The question isn't whether I would have been able to succeed. I think it's the attitude that I take in: 'I've got child care. I've got a probation officer. I've got all these bills. Now what am I going to do? Am I going to continue to go out to eat and put rims on my Cadillac? Or am I going to make some things happen in my life...?'" In other words, Adam seems to think that just thinking that he had impediments was enough to give him the psychological burden of those limitations--a burden he shouldered by thinking positively and 'making things happen' for himself. He also puts forth a false dilemma, establishing that his basic choice as he scraped together his earning and made budgets (and therefore the choices of the homeless people around him) was either to eat out and pimp his car or to save money. This is not just reductionist, it's willfully blind. It's blind to the fact that Adam is coming from a socioeconomic world that teaches its children--its college educated children, no less--how to see money and how to consider a future in which success is so likely that it is a sure thing. It's blind to the fact that he had the advantage of lacking certain expenses, including but by no means limited to critical medicine.
Also, what kind of jackass actually says that one of the biggest changes from living home'd to living in the continuum of homeless-to-merely-poor was no longer going out to eat? My rent, student loan bills, and utility bills currently equal just over half of my monthly earnings after tax, and I also pretty much no longer go out to eat. It stopped being a sacrifice or change and started being the way I live now a long, long time ago--before I even had a paycheck in Boston, in fact.
An additional shockingly naive story Adam relates in his interview is that he made up "this great back story" of how he ended up where he 'was.' His excitingly tragic tale is a little flight of fancy, a little indulgent method acting: my mom drugs, my dad booze, me leave her for him and here I am. He takes pride, it seems, in having a "great" story, but his great story is not given the kind of praise or even attention from his 'fellow' homeless people that he seems to feel it warrants (emphasis mine): "The interesting thing is that nobody really cared.... It wasn't so much as where we were coming from, it was where we were going." This is remarkably self-centered. Did it ever occur to him that his story was not interesting to others he met not because they were each so focused on adjusting their individual attitudes to ensure future success ("...but where we were going.") but because, well, his story is real for some and might be seen, by others, as no big fucking deal compared to their problems?
I should acknowledge that Nickel and Dimed, a book I enjoyed, was also incomplete in its analysis. Based on this interview alone, I'd have to argue that that book did not wear blinders as large as Adam's. Barbara actually fights a bit with the advantages that she has whether or not she chooses to use them. Adam, on the other hand, just doesn't see that being white is an advantage in and of itself, or that having the kind of attitude that one gains just by soaking in the stew of college is a tool that you use without knowing it. He even has the gall to say that college was a disadvantage in his experiment with strife: his "thinking was inside the box." Inside the box, apparently, of knowing that saving money is a thing that one should do. It is beyond his imagination to think that there are populations out there who do not see the future the same way that he has been cultured (like a pearl in a shell) to see it. There are people whose futures in America do not have the same potentials that his future does by the simple virtue that he is white, comes from a certain background (two parents, comfort, schooling), speaks English, is male, is not unhealthy chronically or mentally ill, does not have babies. Being white, being male, being born to such parents, speaking native English, being healthy: Adam did not make these choices, yet he benefits from them every day.
(And here also, your humble narrator indulges in a little editorializing: Adam, just try being everything I've just mentioned *except* male, and see how different your experience is. If it's not different, I will eat my hat. Also your hat. Also the hats of anyone who mails me one after I return to my "real life," job, apartment, cat, family. In fact, I think I have my own book deal right there: woman attempts to duplicate success of pretend homeless book writer; finds that his rate of success cannot be duplicated simply by Attitude and Determination and may, in fact, have an element of several aspects of unacknowledged privilege to it; woman bogs down the postal system in her ZIP code with the return shipments of many, many hats sent to her by smug white dudes. But really, the story I'm telling is the story of the can-do attitudes of the mail carriers on my block...)
His book had better be more insightful than the interview he gives. Because he just sounds like a naive, ignorant Pollyanna, here--and beyond that, his uninsightful and unthinking endorsement of the whole "bootstraps" thing is very, very damaging. Forgive my failure to find citations and research to back up the following statement, but this attitude--that the poor just don't work hard enough, that the homeless just have bad attitudes (Adam, emphasis mine: "Then there was this other guy who could walk and everything was good in his life, but he was just kind of bumming around, begging on the street corner. To see the attitudes along the way, that is what my story is about."), that all it takes is just, oh I dunno, Pluck or Moxie or Whathaveyou--has been rejected pretty roundly as a valid base for making public policy.
Does Adam know that the fastest growing population of the homeless is families? Because per American Government and Politics Today, published by Thompson Learning this year and supplemented by yours damned truly, it is and they are. The implication in his interview that these families just need to make better decisions is insulting and dangerous.
It's easy and fun to poke holes in Adam's ideas--he's a regular fraking Candide up in here, except with less critical thinking. But his gloss (ha ha, get it?) can damage more than just my afternoon productivity, and that ain't right. His words live in a public sphere and will be used by readers to inform attitudes, and I wish he'd thought of that before he went out there scrounging for a book deal.
I could be wrong, of course. This interview might not actually reflect the level of insight in his book, and I haven't read the book. For all I know--or am likely to find out, since I don't think I could stand reading more tripe from an indulgent white man--his little book might start with a series of disclaimers: this is the inspirational story of me and only me; at the end of my self-imposed year of living dangerously I'd attained all of my goals and could use my magical get-out-of-homelessness free card; and your mileage may vary!
But I fucking doubt it. I do indeed doubt it.
A note: Standard double quotes in this screed indicate content I am quoting from the article. Single quotes should be read as my own 'air quotes,' implying that I, as the screed's author, find something amiss about the application of the term.
**...if you are white, are male, are in good health, and have an outlook on the proper management of money and the potential of your future that is informed by your unacknowledged class and education advantages. This headline, no doubt, was rejected by the CSM...
+ + +
My thanks go to JS for pointing out the article. My dander had been down for a few days and this puts my recent career setback into a better light: at least I'm not as ignorant as this kid! One advantage I gained just from going to college and growing up with two parents who were educated and lower middle class--even if I don't try to use it everyday--is that I know how to think critically. I hope this satisfies her wish that the young writer receive an atomic wedgie. I assure you that every time I vent my spleen, a douchebag's undies get their wings.
Labels: feminism, haaaate, presumption, unalloyed self-indulgence, white privilege, willful ignorance
posted by Nora Rocket at 4:52 PM
17 Comments:
A worthless rant from a worthless person.
What a shame, then, that you chose to read it! In the future, please consider passing my blog by entirely, as it is not required reading as far as I can tell. Thank you for your worthwhile contribution to the discussion of privilege, the American Dream, and getting a book deal.
Hey Nora -- unlike Anonymous McCowardly up there, I think your "rant" was in fact a thorough and lucid takedown of the kind of class tourism that's been fueling many American industries (entertainment of course being the most prominent tip of that Pop iceberg) for a long time. By eliding considerations of race and gender as if they were merely ignorable (or more scarily, negotiable) the author implicitly seems to say "what's keeping all of _you_ guys from grabbing twenty five dollars and a smile and making your way to the real-life Candyland I call America?" It's that kind of mythmaking that keeps the blinders up, and so often gets the green light -- because it exonerates the audience. We don't have to help anyone, you see -- just wait for the disenfranchised to get their damn act together...
anyway, well played, ma'am.
It's never the poor people's fault ... every poor person in America is put down by "the man"
anonymous 9:05 - you bring up a valid point, if I am interpreting your sarcasm correctly: what about people who bear *at least some* of the responsibility for their situation in life? I have indeed left them out of my argument, much like Adam has left people with mental illness out of his argument. I'd consider Adam and me even on this score, and my argument that some people are not as equipped for success in the system of America as a young healty educated white man is not undermined by the existance of exceptions of any race, gender, orientation, or ability. There will always be exceptions for so many reasons that my little (self-acknowledged) screed can fail to take account of them and still be valid, especially since I did not use words like "never" and "every."
dono - I find your mention of "class tourism" here extremely illuminating of the situation, and I plan to apply it in other circumstances as well. Where else are you seeing it called out? I'd naturally point to many reality television shows as prime vehicles for class tourism--if one accepts that class can be reliably read from lifestyle. Certainly the two wife-trading shows participate in this, as well as, I would argue, the joy-porn that is "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition." Look for a blog entry on joy-porn in the future.
Nora-
Sorry to hear about the job. They clearly have no idea what they're missing out on! Joe and I have been locking horns over white privilege and male privilege in regard to the primaries. It's hard to make even the most enlightened men see it sometimes!
-Sara
I have been looking at the statistics of homeless people from various sites and the mentally ill make up ~20% of the population at most. While that is certainly higher than the population as a whole, I don't think Adam's experiment is invalid simply because he is not part of that minority.
Further, the majority of homeless people are single, i.e. no family to care for, white, and between the ages of 25-40.
Anonymous 10:01 -- remember in your statistical analysis to differentiate between long-term and short-term homelessness. The "majority" that you cite, as well as the increasing number of families Nora cites, are likely in the latter category.
I have been searching most of the afternoon for an article I want to include in my comment. I will write tomorrow whether I've found it or not.
You raise some good points here about white privilege. I'd also like to point out the male privilege aspect - and I'm not talking about something as relatively benign as job discrimination. Sexual assault rates against women are astonishingly high, high enough that I would never feel safe taking on Adam Shepherd's project on my own.
I read another interview with Shepherd here that gave me a better overall impression of him - he came across as more thoughtful than in the Christian Science Monitor article you post.
I agree with his critique's of "Nickled and Dimed." That book really bothered me, because so many of Barbara Ehrenreich's problems came down to a bad attitude or short-sighted decisions. Lots of poor people have good excuses for those bad decisions - drug problems, low intelligence, poor educations, cultural background, mental illness, criminal history, etc. Ehrenreich didn't have any of those excuses, and instead she just seemed to be setting out with the express mission of failure.
In the interview I link to, Shepherd says that social welfare programs are helpful, but not really enough to solve problems of poverty. I suspect he limits himself to his personal experience and doesn't go too far into social reform prescriptions in his book, but what do I know.
I do, however, think there's value in his message: the man may get you down, life may treat you like shit, but with hope and effort you can succeed. Shepherd cites other people from less privileged backgrounds who do just that.
People's responses to this book's approach to poverty remind me of centuries-old debate over black American empowerment. Look at the clash between Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois for an example. Washington believed that African Americans needed to take responsibility, to shift from a victim mentality, and to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, and that seeking too much change from the white establishment would set back his cause. Du Bois called for social change first, arguing that to pull oneself up when all of society is pushing back down is an exercise in futility.
I think there's merit in both approaches, and for oppressed people to succeed both must be taken. Without social change, many people will never be able to overcome poverty and other challenges. Without hope, they'll never try.
I can't bring myself to complain about Shepherd's apparent decision to peddle hope.
Nora, I agree that there are so many things wrong with the conclusions he draws from his (blindly) limited premise that it is really hard to critique everything as it deserves to be. The complicated pie that is poverty in America!
Start with the fact that he assumes he left everything else behind, except for a backpack and a bit of cash. Even if he doesn't acknowledge his college education, it's still there. While we may question his critical thinking skills, I'm sure he gained writing and presentation skills, general knowledge, logic and reasoning, literacy, numeracy -- all things which are invaluable on the road to success. Did he stop understanding English, being able to add or balance a checkbook, read or follow a recipe or simple instructions as part of his experiment? These are things some high school graduates can't do.
What else is he carrying in his invisible backpack? Nora already mentions white privilege, so I won't go into that here. She also mentions his middle-class upbringing, which provided him with money management skills, such as not borrowing beyond your means and saving in a bank. This upbringing prepared him to 1) know where resources he might need (homeless shelter, food stamps, bank) were located, 2) have the confidence to ask for those resources, and 3) communicate his need clearly enough to receive those resources. Further, good parenting and what the middle class would call "common sense" kept him from having a criminal history, becoming addicted to drugs or alcohol, having children early or out of wedlock, and from dropping out of school. His health from years of good medical and dental care allowed him to "experiment" for 10 months without the need for even a check-up. Courtney mentions male privilege making this "experiment" even possible; further, the physical job he takes up (mover) would unlikely be offered to a woman in the same situation. There was also a certain amount of luck involved: luck that he could stay at the shelter so long, luck that he wasn't robbed or beaten there, luck that the car he spent his money on didn't break down or get stolen, luck that he never got hurt at work, luck that he didn't get sick when he didn't have insurance, luck that his apartment wasn't robbed, etc.
The list goes on and on, but the point is: this "experiment" can never really work -- whether you're Ehrenreich or Shepard -- because you will always be carrying this invisible backpack of resources many poor people will never, ever have. And as others have written elsewhere, knowing that you have an out is quite different from being trapped in this limited lifestyle forever.
This experiment doesn't show that "anyone" can make it, as he tries to extrapolate -- rather that white folks with "common sense" and a bit of a handout from the government can start, with time, to build a better life for themselves. I don't really see that as a message of "hope" to anyone except people who look a lot like Adam Shepard.
Even ignoring that he starts off with so many more advantages than the other people around him, the role of luck in keeping him on a good path towards his goal was crucial. A $2500 or $5000 buffer is nothing when you can't work or have emergency medical bills to pay. There is no question why most of the other "characters" are older than he -- living this way for more than 10 months, something unlucky is likely to occur which, despite your hard work and good attitude, is going to eat up all the money you set aside. I would like to see his attitude after 10 years of doing everything "right" and still getting nowhere. In this time, he may also get married and have children he "can't afford." Over time, circumstances can just as easily get harder as they can move in a positive direction.
I find his comments on rims and eating out extremely offensive. People go hungry not because they have bling and live the high life, but because they have too many demands on their meagre budget. If they don't get the radiator fixed, they can't drive to work and lose their job. But if they pay the repair costs, then there isn't enough left over for the electricity AND groceries. Where were their savings, he asks? They went to pay the doctor when Susie caught strep throat at school. The kids needed new winter coats. The old car was sideswiped by an uninsured driver, so we had to buy a new one. Yes, sometimes poor people have cable television -- it's far cheaper than a babysitter after school. Sometimes they can't prepare lunches and cook dinner because they work two jobs and don't have the time. They don't have good (or any!) credit histories, so their payments for everything are higher. Adam Shepard makes the mistake of continuing to live his own life (parading as down-on-his-luck) instead of truly living the lives of the people around him.
Sometimes poverty is about bad decisions. Yet for many, poverty is instead about no good choices.
There were a number of articles I reread related to this topic, but I think the one most fitting is the "success story" of a New York woman who overcame years of poverty by becoming a "nurse." It shows not only that her struggle took years, but at what cost to her family. It also shows how many factors were essential to gaining a foothold -- and how precarious it was (and still is).
I just want to add one more thought.
I agree with the critiques of Adam Shepherd's approach and his book that people have posted here. He seems to over-simplify the many issues of poverty and oppression, and to understate - though not completely ignore - the many privileges he enjoys.
It's not fair to dismiss everything he says on this basis, however. There is value in a popular work of nonfiction about poverty, even if it's flawed. There is some truth in his message.
At that same college where one of your peers dismissed the existence of white privilege, Nora, I knew a woman of color who grew up in utter poverty to a single mother with gang-member siblings. She got there, won a full scholarship, earned the first degree in her family, because she worked hard. I believe there's value in that, and in spreading the message that it's possible.
Adam: you cannot be someone else's barometer for success or failure.
Anonymous: mental illness and other invisible disabilities among the homeless, inherited or uninherited, are not fully accounted for in statistical analysis.
Do you really think most everyone homeless is just a lazy son of a bitch? What a dark view of your fellow humans. I am going to try not to come to the conclusion that all anonymous blog commenters are sons of bitches based on you.
Jen: how are mental illnesses and disabilities not fully accounted for? Do you think the statisticians walk around and decide who is mentally ill just by looking at them?
20% sounds like a reasonable, if not generous, estimate.
Dear anonymous,
What I was trying to say is this:
My belief is that in every population (the homeless as well as multi-millionaires) mental illness is under-diagnosed. Especially depression, which is one of the chief obstacles to success that Adam Shepard obviously doesn't have to deal with.
Furthermore, there are many instances of people who have problems that are challenging to the same extent as a mental illness (i.e., poor social skills, crippling anxiety and feelings of worthlessness, anger management problems, inability to trust others and most importantly addiction) that often have their roots in the family they grew up in, either because they are inherited or taught to them through their social environment.
These are all contributing factors to chronic homelessness, in my opinion.
So like I said, what's your explanation? Is it really just "laziness"?
Why "anonymous"? I really hate getting into discussions with nobodies. It just bugs. It also seems that these elusive identities are out to insult first, rather than discuss. Statistically speaking, of course.
This was great post and I could not agree more.
First of all, Nora, thank you for acknowledging that you did not read Adam Shepard's book.
That said, your "review" is inherently flawed by the simple fact that you DID NOT READ THE BOOK. Acknowledging that you DID NOT READ THE BOOK is nevertheless no justification for your critique of a book that YOU DID NOT READ. In fact, you are indulging in the most glaring manifestation of white privilege, which is the presumed right to be a know-it-all and to make all sorts of assumptions about points of view of which you are under-informed. How very, very white of you indeed.
Secondly, your review is further flawed by the simple fact that Adam Shepard actually engaged in this experiment and wrote a book about it, whereas you have done neither of these things. Shepard's willingness to even try trumps your ivory-tower "rebuttal" of his arguments (or should I say,what you merely perceive to be his arguments--since you admittedly DID NOT READ HIS BOOK).
So, what we have here is basically a rant about the horrors of making assumptions that rests upon--yes, you guessed it!--a bunch of assumptions! Talk about willful ignorance.
For all your screed against white privilege, your insinuation that one needs to be well-off and college-educated to know that "saving money is a thing one should do," smacks of maternalistic classism and perhaps even of your own unacknowledged racism.
So a sense of thriftiness is now entirely the province of the upper crust?! Basic money management is a somehow now a skill exclusive to the white elite?! What a jaundiced outlook you have there.
You truly must think that poor people, and minorities, and mentally ill people, or whoever, are really just incredibly stupid and pitiable creatures and that it's up to you--white, noble, enlightened you--to defend them. If you equate unfortunate circumstances with an exemption from personal responsibility, then you essentially believe that people in such circumstances cease to be quite human. That's an extraordinarily patronizing view.
Pardon the pun, but knowing that one should save money is not Rocket Science. Sincerely not being ABLE to save money despite all efforts is another matter. However, I would not grant lenience to anyone on the basis that, because of their background, the idea simply never occurred to them. To grasp that money has at least symbolic value (which I think most people would concede) is to be capable of grasping that amassing some money is desirable. Surely there are non-white, non-male, non-middle-class, non-college-educated, unhealthy people with children who would testify that saving money is important and that doing so can make all the difference between getting by--or even advancing--and not.
And where are you getting that the dominant middle-class paradigm is a view of the future "in which success is so likely that it is a sure thing"? I doubt that has ever been the case, good ol' pluck or moxie notwithstanding. By and large, America has always been and continues to be solidly grounded in the so-called Protestant Work Ethic. A more realistic view is that Americans are terrified of future failure...they're jealously guarding what they have, which (whether jusitified or not) they feel they've earned and worked hard to attain.
I will grant that within the past generation or so, there has been a growing sense of economic entitlement. I would peg it as coinciding roughly with the emergence of easily available credit. But if you think white, middle-class, etc., Americans are the only ones who suffer from this sense of entitlement, you are flat-out wrong. Lots of Americans, from all strata of life, live beyond their means. Americans in general take for granted all sorts of little luxuries and comforts, and I guarantee you it ain't just rich or middle-class people.
Frankly, whether Adam Shepard or Barbara Ehrenreich have succeeded or failed in their respective experiments, is of little consequence to the "reality" of the situation either way. Now, I do agree wholeheartedly that the ability to end the "experiment" at will completely skews the outcome. My guess is that whether one sets out on such an experiment to succeed or to fail, one will ultimately validate their initial optimism or pessimism.
By all means ignore Adam's book if you can't get past the idea that he is biased in favor of success, or is too "Pollyanna-ish." I would suggest, however,that you follow up with people who HAVE overcome homelessness or poverty despite having few or none of Adam's advantages. What ideas would THOSE folks impart? What if their "secrets" are essentially the same as Mr. Shepard's?
I'm not suggesting that attitude alone is a guarantee of success (I don't think Adam Shepard is suggesting that, either). Certainly skills, resources, and support are just as necessary. I would suggest, however, that an attitude conducive to success is absolutely indispensable and that without it, one will never acquire the requisite skills, resources, or support.
What I find much more fascinating than any contrived "experiment" is the issue of why some people, despite every disadvantage, manage to achieve their goals (whatever they may be), while others, who seemingly have every opportunity handed to them on a silver platter, do not. How ARE some people apparently capable of doing that which you claim is impossible--to lift themselves up by their own bootstraps? Surely there are some small few who have managed to do just that, or something close to it. How did THOSE people manage when others in similar straits failed? There must be something more to it than just blind luck and largesse. Everyone makes poor decisions. Everyone can learn from their poor decisions, and it is incumbent upon everyone to do so. In no way need this be incompatible with compassion or social justice.
Ricky: Your comment is quite fascinating--first, your humor and deft skills with the caps lock tease out a laughable critique: that Nora should only talk about the web page she links to after she reads the book it reviews. Perhaps she could catch up with Adam's family, or interview the man himself? Later, your expectations attain even dizzier heights -- she must attempt some sort of ethnographic "following up".
Ricky, you are not responding to Nora, nor are you responding to the linked article; you are responding to what is clearly a deep and personal and constantly raging discourse you have noticed in culture at large. Your accusations ring hollow as a result -- you have pigeonholed Nora (and by implication anyone who dares to critique Shepard's premise and conclusions) as embodying some sort of white privilege by critiquing white privilege's manifestation.
I can see the seduction of this reductionism, and am not surprised you are taking it up. It's foolproof, it assuages any guilt you may have. But it's embarrassingly simple, given the prolixity with which you chose to laminate it; at the core, you are simply employing a an army of Straw Women.
Your scarecrows are quite a scary lot, too! Seeking to destroy capital, patronizingly sneering at the homeless and mentally ill, blithely skipping through a Neo-Liberal playground, and raging against success (can't have that!). Hell, they're starting to annoy me too! But they seem to exist nowhere else but in your passionate hatred towards them.
If you respond to me, I can't wait to meet my counterparts -- patronizing, no doubt, perhaps racist too (why not!). But at the heart of your commentary, you are embodying (not articulating) the paradox that Nora is exploring: where does compassion exist, relative to the fluidity of our society?
Of course, that's just my take on her entry. Do I agree with it? Perhaps not entirely, but it got me thinking, and I responded with some questions and observations of my own. Courtney seems to find something disparaging about Nora's writing, but she framed her response very well, didn't resort to exaggerated accusations, and emphasized a positive aspect of the whole debate.
It's a delicate issue. We're all having a discussion. I'd love to hear your thoughts framed as such, rather than a freewheeling, angry and violent hominem attack.
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