savage money / By Jennifer Savage

Keeping Up the Front

Or, passing for not-poor in a world built on money

(July 23, 2009)  A certain earnestness goes a long way at the Social Services office. When sitting in those plastic chairs, filling out endless forms, surrounded by posters supposed to be motivating, but really rather menacing — “Those who don’t ride the wave are crushed by it” — what one should try to convey is, “I’m a good person! A hard-working mom just needing a little help to feed my kids! Times are so tough, aren’t they? Even someone like me can wind up in here.”

Someone like me. Because there’s a huge difference between someone who’s just going through a hard time and someone who appears chronically hopeless: Whether by official means or personal favors, people only want to help the former. If you’re without much in the way of funds, you have to take charge of how you’re viewed. Upstanding, albeit cash-strapped, citizen? Or lazy fool leeching off society?

This isn’t about the rights vs. wrongs of America’s classism problem; avoiding discrimination is a survival technique. Being poor in our culture invites judgment. People have no qualms about rating what you eat, what clothes you wear, the reproductive choices you’ve made.

Stocking the kitchen with pricey organic foods instead of club card budget fare? You’re opting for champagne taste on a beer budget. And, no, you don’t get credit for opting to provide better, more local food for your children, even when you cut your own food intake to do so. Your neoconservative family will never understand how shopping at the natural foods store can be a responsible decision.

Dropping the kids off at school in your banged-up, decades-old car? You fail as a reliable adult. Reliable adults only drive non-banged up old cars, or shiny new ones. You, in contrast, look like Uncle Buck.

Multiple children running around your unkempt yard? Two words: white trash.

(God, I hate that phrase, and the “trailer trash.” Otherwise thoughtful people throw it around as acceptable, but what does it really mean? Dirty poor Caucasian folk? What if you’re dirty, but not poor? What if you’re poor, but not dirty? What if you’re dirty and poor, but not Caucasian? Do they throw out a racial epithet at that point? Probably not. What if you’re just having a really bad week that’s caused you to fall behind on the home front? Are you temporarily white trash?

Look, I don’t like garbage. I abhor litter and belligerent drunks and fathers who creep into their daughter’s bedrooms in the middle of the night and mothers who smack around their 8-year-olds. But I know plenty of people who have money and messy houses, filthy cars. Likewise, poor people have no monopoly on abusive parenting. It’s just more acceptable to stereotype them as losers.)

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