Stop trying to make poor people “just like us”
by Lena Potts
This weekend at a party I met a lovely young couple- two middle-class, working, elite-educated 20-somethings like myself. We’ll name them Matt and Laura. During the conversation it came up that I work in affordable housing, and, at some point, we turned to Matt’s prior experiences with homeless populations in San Francisco and D.C.
He began to tell the story of his time working on a project, for what I’m not entirely sure, wherein he spent a night as the homeless would, and with them. Someone asked if he had to “scavenge” for food “like they do”. He had eaten before his arrival at one of the camps, and “it was a one-day thing, so like, you can go much longer than that without food”. Someone asked if he panhandled. He had not. The goal was to interact and observe, in an almost ethnographic sense. Laura, her friend, and a friend of mine were positively engaged with this story. He talked about “what a great experience” it was, and people signaled their agreement. How interesting.
But really, it shouldn't be that interesting, and people should not be extraordinarily impressed. What he was describing is very similar to camping, a recreational activity people willingly undertake all the time, and frequently enjoy. He slept somewhere not in his bed, outside, for one night, with a full stomach, restful mind, and a home to go back to in 24 hours. The difference between what Matt did and *camping fun times* is the company- he was with homeless people, those who do not do this recreationally and whose adventures in the outdoors do not have a known end date. He interacted with them, slept next to them, and attempted, briefly, to understand their lives.
I am reminded of the fantastic article last year by Pippa Biddle, the little white girl of her own title, “The Problem With Little White Girls, Boys and Voluntourism”. In it she reckons with the detriment of her attempts to do good around the world, in poor, often brown places. She tells us to think, before we decide to leave for our uplifting volunteer work, whether we’re truly capable of making the impactful difference we want to, or whether we’re assuming too much of ourselves, being big-headed. She asks us to consider whether we’re contributing to the White savior complex, which, really, hurts us all.
And that is what I felt with Matt, and the pleasant, “good for you, good for all of us” reaction his story inspired.
This is not meant to denounce Matt’s intentions, or even actions. He wanted to do a good thing, and surely, has not done a bad thing by trying to understand people who live a very different life than his own. One could argue he tried to recognize his own privilege, and, somewhat feebly, did so. I don’t believe we all need to make ourselves homeless for an extended time so that we have the ability to truly empathize, in the same way I don’t believe anyone needs to wear blackface in the south to really know racism. None of us will ever be able to empathize with experiences we don’t have, or can’t imagine; we simply can’t empathize with everyone. But we can listen, we can sympathize, we can trust, we can learn, we can have an understanding. Trying to walk in someone else’s shoes is nice, and well intentioned, and maybe even worthy of recognition. That is, as long is it’s not the only way you remember that the inhabitant of those shoes is a person. If you needed to walk in their shoes to humanize them, you’re in the wrong.
Matt’s story had a deeper, more personal point to it. He told us, impassioned and genuine, about how much he learned from the people he met. He expressed surprise at his own comfort. “Everyone was so different, it just wasn’t what you’d think. One guy, he was younger, and he had his own start up and it failed, and he lost all his money, and now he’s homeless.” Matt chose that man as an example, a case study in how homelessness doesn’t have to be what you think it is. But what is it that we think it is?
Coded in this is, “it’s not what you think: everyone wasn’t scary, everyone wasn’t on drugs, everyone wasn’t a criminal, everyone wasn’t bad. That one guy, he was once, not so long ago, just like one of us, at this party in Atherton.”
Laura is one of those people who gives you her opinion physically. Earlier in the night, she had shuddered and shaken her head furiously at the thought of child soldiers (don’t ask me why all topics of conversation at this party were so heavy- I don’t know); now, she nodded emphatically, telling us all that this new re-framing of who the homeless are had resonated with her.
Being like us has more value than being on drugs, regardless of your understanding of systematic poverty, the war on drugs, or the American drug trade. Being like us has more value than being scary, even if it was hard to pin down what causes all that fear. Is it dirt? Is it begging? Is it misfortune? Is it bad choices?
When someone mentioned 24 hour bus and train systems that groups of homeless people sleep on for warmth and shelter, Laura said, “yeah, I guess the people who get on the train every night are probably not on as many drugs and stuff and are probably not as…”, moves her head back and forth, indicating a loopy, goneness, “They’re probably more together. Because drugs make you not care about safety and things like that.”
The people who get on the train make the decision not to do drugs. They consider their own safety and comfort. They better themselves. Hell, they’re the American Dream. They’re just like us.
I’ve done this same sort of likening many times for my work. I frequently make presentations to various groups- service clubs like Rotary or the Lions, neighborhood associations, city councils, etc.- explaining my organization’s Home Sharing Program, which matches someone who is renting out a room in their home with someone who is looking for a place to live. The agency is courting “Providers”, those with the extra bedroom, as there is currently a great imbalance within the program- to absolutely no one’s surprise, everyone needs cheaper housing now. And so that’s what I often tell people: that “everyone” needs housing now, that the housing crisis hit “everyone”. That teachers and EMTs and customer service personnel and other clean, friendly, service-minded people can’t afford the rents here, that I can’t. It’s comforting to know that if you were to open up your home and rent out your extra room, the tennant might look like your son’s 3rd grade teacher, or like this nice lady making a presentation to you. ‘She’s clearly productive, she works, it’s not her fault things are expensive’, one might think. It’s a classic, obvious, and useful marketing move, one both professional and personal. Of course it makes sense to make something or someone sound familiar in order to make it desirable, because appealing to people’s altruism and trust in other humans is far more difficult than appealing to their prejudice and self-interest.
I do it because it gets things done, gets really good things done, and I hate myself every time I do it, because it’s disgusting.
It becomes a battle between the expectations of ideals and reality. It makes me think of an episode of The West Wing, when conservative female White House staffer Ainsley Hayes argued against the Equal Rights Amendment. Rob Lowe was all, “whoa, you can’t be anti-ERA, you’re a woman, it’s for women” (perhaps paraphrased). This could have been classic West Wing, helping liberals pat ourselves on the back since 1999. But Ainsley’s response is wondrous, and made me pause to consider 1) her point of view and 2) who wrote that episode:
“…it’s humiliating. A new amendment we vote on declaring that I am equal under the law to a man- I am mortified to discover there’s reason to believe I wasn’t before. I am a citizen of this country, I am not a special subset in need of your protection. I do not have to have my rights handed down to me by a bunch of old, white, men. The same Article 14 that protects you, protects me, and I went to law school just to make sure.”
She has points. She’s arguing against what she feels is a redundant law based on our constitutional ideals. She’s following a strong logic. But what she’s missing is the truth, the practicality. People don’t treat her the same, and, 14 years after that episode, gender equality is still being fought. The professed ideals have not played out, and thus something new needed to be implemented, still needs to be implemented, to support their realization.
And so I find my ideals, like Ainsley’s, crying out every time I hear people assign someone’s worth based on their own position in the world, like I heard this weekend. I may have some sort of idealistic fantasy, wherein people don’t have to be like you to deserve your true consideration, to be visible and real. I know that in reality, we’re not capable of the grand empathy it would require to see all other humans as truly equal to ourselves, to wholly understand one another. But listening to Matt, Laura, etc., approve of a homeless man’s value because he once ran a start-up, seemed to not be a drug addict, and was apparently a tragic, one-off tale of riches-to-rags, privilege to need, was terrifying and depressing.
So next time you’re discussing someone not like you, qualifying them in terms of your own life, values, and understandings, question whether you really need to humanize the humans.
