Stop Blaming America’s Poor for Their Poverty

Clarification: Going bankrupt will be a mark on one's credit for the next 7 or 10 years. It may prevent someone from acquiring necessary loans to get a car, housing, opening a small business, and other things people consider to be advancing their life or career.

1. I grew up extremely poor. By poor I mean living in a pup-tent down by the river. Going to school with duct tape around my shoes to hold them together. eating beans and oatmeal for 3 meals a day months at a time. Having 3 sets of clothes, all of them involving sweats, and recycling them throughout the week. You get the picture.

2. I agree that we need the safety nets you're speaking of.

3. I turned 40 this year. Long enough to get more of an objective perspective on my childhoold than could have happened 10 and 20 years ago.

4. I'm Native American, as is my mother.

And now having said that. There are many poor people who are poor because of the decisions they make. And there are many poor people who are that way due to circumstances beyond their control.

Both sides of this debate are right, neither side is actually interested in reality.

Looking back on my childhood, my step-father was not of average intelligence. He was, without a doubt, the dumbest person in our household, and I think at some point he realized that.

This man would make piss-poor decisions. I don't want to get into specifics, but as an adult looking back, a large part of our problems were stupid shit this man would do. I remember one job he had in which he was making decent money. By decent money, I mean we could afford to order pizza for the family every other friday, and for us it was amazing. We felt rich just being able to do that. It didn't last for more than 6 months because he's an idiot.

My mother was sent to a boarding school at the age of 5 where she was beaten and raped until she married at 16 to get away from the school (no HS diploma). I've heard her tell stories and I know I haven't heard all of it. They would put the children into the showers and tell them to cover themselves with soap. If they weren't white enough, they would strap them with a belt under those showers until they were. My entire extended family went to those boarding schools (my grandmother had 16 children and 3 step-children), but my mother and 1 of my uncles went at a very young age. The way my mother tells it, that school eventually got shut down when the child of a senator wanted to go to the school to be with a friend and the child got beat. I can't vouch for the accuracy, but that's the story she tells.

When I was in HS I have a vivid memory of walking in on my mother crying and asking her what was going on. She started talking about many of the things she never revealed to us as children. And I remember crying because I knew she was hurting and I had the wisdom to understand there was nothing I could do.

Even now, years later, I get emotional just thinking about it.

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So with all that being said, I want to address 3 different ideas that often get spoken about.

1. poor people bring it on themselves

Yes they do. very often.

2. Poor people are poor due to circumstances outside their control.

Absolutely. It does happen, and we need safety nets for it.

3. People who are not poor are just lucky.

yes and no.

Here's where my luck ran.

- I'm pretty smart

- My step-father was very abusive and it caused me to close in on myself. Due to this I discovered reading. through reading I discovered a love for sci-fi. Through sci-fi I discovered a love of technology. And through that love of technology I chose CS in college. I also discovered I like math and double majored in CS and Math.

- I went all-in with software development. It was a passion. This helped me start self-identifying as a software developer and not that abused poor kid. I would eventually realize just how big of a deal that is.

- My mother pushed education on us as hard as she could. It was the one thing she would never budge on. She knew how much she missed out on. My mother was not dumb, just uneducated.

- My childhood taught me that decision making is an important life skill. I'm damned good at it because as early as middle school I had learned that lesson, and have fostered it all these years.

Here's where my luck didn't run.

I tend to make good decisions. That's all me.

I work my ass off. That's all me.

I choose not to allow other people to affect me. Yes I've been called a red N-word in my life. Those sorts of things never had any effect on my life, I simply stay away from those people. When you allow these people to affect you to the point that you're spending energy on them, they win.

My overarching point is this:

This debate gets super old because most of the people involved in it aren't interested in reality. I've lived and seen both sides of it and I get really tired of seeing these same simplistic arguments argued over. Both sides are right. and wrong.

False. While donations to churches are tax deductible, they aren't automatically 501c3 orgs. Source: my church applied to be one, in the event that church donations aren't automatically tax deductible.

> For someone who mentions churches several times, you seem to have missed one of the core lessons about caring for thy neighbor.

You seem to have missed the part where he mentioned 'my community'.