Hurricane Katrina offered a rare glimpse of the ugly face of poverty almost 50 years after Michael Harrington caught the attention of President John F. Kennedy in his brilliant book, “The Other America” (1962).
The problems of the “invisible poor” as traced by Harrington are more rampantly cancerous today than they were when Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, declared a “war on poverty.”
Contrary to the popular stereotype, most poor people work, but as sociologist Herbert Gans finds, they work in “physically dirty or dangerous, temporary, dead-end and underpaid, undignified and menial jobs” that prevent them from climbing out of poverty.
The myth of welfare dependency is a staple for conservative talk-show haters like Rush Limbaugh. The truth is, not only do most poor people work, but the average welfare recipient is on welfare less than two years.
I am embarrassed to be a sociologist. Poverty is not considered a social problem, in part, because most sociologists receive 80 percent of their research funding from big business or the government to study the poor, rather than the institutional structure that perpetuates poverty.
Poverty persists, according to Gans, because the poor serve useful functions for many members of American society. This includes, but is not limited to, providing a cheap labor pool that is willing to perform the worst work at the lowest cost to increase corporate profits; providing income for some lawyers and doctors (the wealthy don’t select from billboards or TV ads); guaranteeing the status of lower income but not poor people by giving them a group to look down upon; helping many prosperous people feel good about themselves once a year by such activities as passing out turkeys on Thanksgiving; providing piatas for conservatives who get votes by appealing to stereotypes about the poor; and providing jobs for people such as social workers and criminologists.
When I taught at the University at Buffalo’s Urban Center for the disadvantaged, with tongue in cheek, I said we better not do too good of a job or we will be out of a job. Unfortunately, some took me seriously. The center was also an orphanage for many middle-class blacks and whites whose main qualification appeared knowing someone who gave them a job.
While Americans require the poor for economic, social and political fodder, we are unable or unwilling to see the poor. Most Americans are isolated from any experience or knowledge that they exist.
Suburbanites on a trip to Buffalo for a concert at Shea’s only catch a glimpse of poverty on the fringe of the slums, but after the show they return to the other side of the tracks.
The media are the worst perpetrators of the myth of the poor as a problem. Only rarely, such as the excellent series in The Buffalo News on child poverty, do mainstream media cover the poor in any meaningful way. Television stations in Buffalo and other cities are the worst offenders because they run easy news stories on crime, the single most reported topic.
Although official FBI statistics show crime in urban areas has declined steadily since 1990, Americans believe crime in cities has never been higher because they get their definition of social reality from television. Sadly, people ask me if it is safe to meet in Buffalo.
If this was not shameful enough, a 2007 study of the electronic media by Dr. Travis Dixon of the University of Illinois indicates that although nine of 10 crimes committed are intraracial, local television news over-represents black crimes against whites.
In the final analysis, poverty will be eliminated only when there is the recognition that economic disadvantage results from inequities in society and not the deviant value system of the poor.
It is unlikely that President Bush will provide the massive infusion of monies by the federal government necessary for a new “war on poverty.” But his handling of the crisis after Katrina may provide a model for such a program. It would provide the president another opportunity for the creation of jobs for the wealthy under the guise of helping the poor.
Ross T. Runfola is an attorney, writer and professor of sociology at Medaille College.