Throughout history, the US government has proved time and time again that it does not care about any citizens it deems unworthy. In this particular essay, I’ll only be examining the marginalization of homeless/low income people (to better connect to my sources) but make no mistake: it doesn’t just end at people without homes. Corruption runs deep in the government, and it’s hard to rip the roots out of the ground when the tree is still growing. Let’s go back to history, though. There’s the displacement of Native American people as European settlers moved in, around the 1640’s. There’s also the lack of housing and jobs for war veterans after the Civil War, World War 1, World War 2, etc. Then we head to the Great Depression, where makeshift towns called Hoovervilles were created, and were eventually burned down. As though that would stop people from being homeless, by burning down their homes. My main point is this: the US government has had multiple opportunities to even show a shred of kindness to homeless people, and every single time they give just under the bare minimum. When an authority figure gives you the minimum, it’s because they know it will keep you under their thumb.
I decided to explore this idea through my different sources. This year in English class, I’ve had the opportunity to read The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinback, a book about a migrant family looking for jobs and a home in California, and it’s informed my view on homelessness and migrants a lot. The struggles of the Joads and the tough decisions they face have shown me that everyone deserves our compassion and charity, even if they’re not from here.
In The Grapes of Wrath, one of the intercalary chapters is about how the farm owners would rather destroy the food they can’t sell than give it away for free to people who need it, Even in the face of death. For example, “And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificates — died of malnutrition — because the food must rot, must be forced to rot” (Steinback 349). While the book may be fiction, it’s based on what a lot of the families who moved to California went through. You’d think a child dying would be enough for someone to stop and think if working for these men, but then Tom Joad makes an excellent point when discussing potentially going on strike, “‘Tonight we had meat. Not much, but we had it. Think Pa’s gonna give up his meat on account a other fellas?’” (Steinback 384). The Joads can’t afford to sacrifice the measly pay of 5 cents on the chance that if they strike, they’ll get more. They know that what they’re getting paid is garbage, but at least they’re getting paid, right? Wrong. Tom even admits the meat they got was not much, so why do they keep working when they’re getting paid nothing? Because they’ve been conditioned by the business men and government that 5 cents is all their work is worth.
However, there’s a different way the government keeps the working class down, and that’s an us vs. them mentality. Once you raise people up, just enough for them to feel important but not enough for them to do any damage, they’ll look down on those they were once a part of. In the Strawberry Fields, an essay by Eric Schlosser, he explores the culture behind the people who pick fruits for a living. One of the interviewees, a farm owner named Doug, thinks that “…Americans don’t appreciate how lucky they are to have cheap food” (Schlosser 438). There’s a sort of stereotype about strawberry pickers in California; how they’re all immigrants who can’t get a “real job” like the rest of us. But we were once them, in a way. Some of our ancestors came to California as migrants looking for any job we can get. By disrespecting the labor that puts food on our table, we also disrespect our ancestors. People love to talk about the American dream, on how all Americans are hard workers who got where they are because they earned it, but when it comes to people working in fields, suddenly their labor is devalued. Why? Because we’ve been taught by authority that their work is less important, so that way we don’t view the fruit pickers as actual people and then start caring for their human rights. Once you observe these people as actual people, the system might need a deep reformation. And those in charge can’t handle that.
Governments also tend to feign care for those in need. It creates the illusion that they are thinking of low income people, but in reality all they care about is the public image. No one wants to be the guy who hates homeless people. In a UK newspaper, the chair of the Children’s Future Food Inquiry committee said, “‘It cannot be right that 50% of households in the UK currently have insufficient food budgets to meet the government’s recommended Eatwell Guide. A healthy diet, which we know is important for our health and development, should not be unaffordable to so many people’”. A government making an Eatwell Guide should show that they care about their citizens’ health and wellbeing, but if 50% of households can’t afford the guide, what does that reveal? That the UK government isn’t equipped to actually help these people. It’s one thing to say something on behalf of these people, but it’s another thing to actually care for them. Instead of simply recommending healthy meals, why don’t you offer meals that follow these guidelines for free in schools and in homeless shelters? It won’t happen, because that’d be too much effort expected from any sort of government.
Free meals and food accessible to all should be considered a right, not a luxury. When the government, formed by people who used to be on the bottom of the totem pole and now are so high up they can’t see the ground, use food as a way to make wages less, to divide people, and to feign love, you have to recognize it before any action can take place. We have to stand together, not against each other, in order for change to take place. As Rosaura Revueltas put it in the movie The Salt of The Earth, “Do you feel better having someone lower than you? Whose neck shall I stand on to make me feel superior? And what will I get out of it?”
Sources:
Steinback, John. The Grapes of Wrath. Penguin Books, 2006.
Shea Renée Hausmann, et al. The Language of Composition: Reading, Writing, Rhetoric. Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2013.
Masters, James. “4 Million Children in UK Too Poor to have Healthy Diet, Report Claims.” CNN Wire Service, 05 Sep 2018. elibrary, https://explore.proquest.com/elibrary/document/2099362411?accountid=193113.
Biberman, Herbert, director. Salt of the Earth. Independent Productions, 1954.