The One Group of People You’re Still Allowed To Hate
Good news for all you judgmental people out there. There is a group of people that you’re allowed to hate and it doesn’t matter what side of the aisle that you’re on. Left, Right, and the Middle can come together, fingers wagging and pointed, tongues lashing and clicking at this group: the poor.
Once, I read an article on CNN about a young Black mother who simply stated that it was hard enough living on what passes for a wage in the richest country in the world. She stated that paying for rent, food, clothing, utilities, and child care was enough to break her and that she didn’t make enough money to take care of all her needs.
The comments section was a disaster.
Why didn’t you finish school?
Because it’s expensive to do so. We live in a country where education is at times, very expensive. Our kids are going into debt, paying off student loans still into their thirties.
Who told you to have children?
Well, one party (The Republicans) and the people who claim to love everyone (Christians) tend to state that abortion is murder and you need to take care of your responsibilities. They claim that life is precious and sacred but once you give birth to that child, then you’re on your own. If they truly cared about life, you’d think that they would do anything to help support that life as it grows up.
Why would you have a baby when you knew you couldn’t take care of it?
Again, the Republican party doesn’t seem to deem it important to continue to care for the precious fetus once it becomes a baby. These people sit outside abortion clinics begging and pleading for you to have your baby but slam doors in your face when you need milk and pampers. People aren’t going to stop having sex. They didn’t in the 19th century and they aren’t going to stop now. The difference is, that we have contraception that can help turn the tide of teen pregnancies. Contraception that this party doesn’t think the public should be paying for. They’d rather slut shame you for having sex like they are, but tell you to keep your baby, then again slam a door in your face for daring to ask for support. It’s a stupid cycle that we see again and again.
Angel Adams is a woman with fifteen children by different men. When her current beau went to prison, she was left with the responsiblity of these children. She was evicted and then placed in a hotel so that she wouldn’t be put outdoors with all of her kids tagging behind her.
“Somebody needs to pay for these kids!” she said in a newscast and all hell broke loose. Soon, social media was filled with condemnation for this woman and her entitlement.
I don’t want to defend Angel Adams. I don’t know what happened in her life where she had fifteen children, a few of them old enough to care for themselves. Right winged blogs with screaming headlines condemned her in the most horrible ways. But remember her?
That’s right. That’s Natalie Suleman or “Octomom”. She was on welfare and she had treatments that allowed her have octuplets. She was given public appearances, interviews, and she even did soft pornography. Yes, public opinion of her was vicious as well but I don’t see Angel getting any offers to do television. I wonder why? The media treated both these women with scorn however, the attacks on Angel were more racially charged than for Natalie. She was just a media spectacle. Angel was another Black (insert racially charged epithet) looking for a handout…just like the rest of ’em.
We live in a society today where we blame the poor for being poor while creating the conditions for them to stay poor for the rest of their lives. We take money away from education, healthcare, and mental health. We pollute the environment especially where poor people tend to live causing even more health and development issues. We demonize those on public assistance while acknowledging that wages have remained stagnant for decades. The current president campaigned on “jobs jobs jobs” but we shame people for not having one.
It’s all craziness. It’s complete lunacy. Why do politicians, especially those on the Right, continue to state that the country is in shambles but then demonize everyone who needs the extra help because the country that they are running is in shambles? If you’re a candidate running on jobs that you helped outsource to other countries, how do you then turn around and demonize me for not having the job that you made sure went to India? It’s completely insane when you think about it.
So if you’re a young woman that grew up in the ghettoes of Chicago or in coal country in Appalachia, you know that the chances of you getting a great education will be nil. You won’t have access to health care unless you need to go to the ER, and even then you won’t be able to afford the bill. You don’t have a job, and even if you do find one, then you may have an employer that doesn’t want to pay for your birth control due to their religious beliefs. You will get shamed for having sex but your male partner will get none of this shame. If you get pregnant, then you won’t have access to family planning services, especially if you want to get an abortion. You’ll be subject to great personal harm if you attempt a “back alley” abortion or you’ll just have to live with your “mistake”.
This is a temporary victory for the anti-abortion crusaders but not for you because you can’t take care of this child. You won’t get leave to have your baby so say good bye to your job. You won’t have affordable childcare because no one gives a damn about your child now. He’s was a fetus for goodness sakes. Why would anyone care about a child? It’s the fetus that counts. You need to go on assistance now to care for this child so the public shaming begins. God forbid someone ever interviews you. Now you’re the poster child for the leech that you are.
The others condemning you won’t admit that some of them are a few paychecks from the poor house themselves. However, facts don’t matter at this point. What matters is that you’re a leech and you need to somehow overcome the nearly insurmountable challenges you already had in front of you even before you learned to say your name, because you probably inherited this impoverished condition from your parents.
Sure, some people are able to climb out of poverty. Some people are great inspirations to us all due to their hard work and dedication. However all of us can’t be like that. If that were true, then we’d all be rich. You can’t legislate something like that. You either have it in you or you don’t. Not everyone can do the things that these select few have done. Oprah, Dr. Ben Carson, and others who rose from poverty to become extraordinary individuals. But that’s what makes them special…the fact that they were able to overcome their situation. If everyone could do it then these people wouldn’t be special. Why does that have to be said?
Thanks to changes made to labor laws, the G.I. Bill, and income levels rising, many people were able to climb out of poverty for the first time in their lives after WWII. The American economy was booming and people were able to afford many comforts like a vehicle and a home. If you were a White person, that is. This allowed many poor immigrant Whites to finally become respectable and blend in with the rest of the country intermarrying and climbing the social ladder. Something that was denied to people of color. This left poor Appalachian Whites, Blacks in urban and rural areas, Native Americans on reservations, and Latino immigrants in crowded urban areas to be forgotten and left out of these opportunities. As the wealthier tax base moved to the suburbs, they took their money with them and the inner cities crumbled. The ever increasing divide between the wealthy and the poor widened significantly.
The American poor would need at least a hundred years to catch up to where their more wealthier counterparts are and I’m being awfully generous with that number. However, facts don’t seem to matter these days. The poor in America have been left behind and they are desperately clinging onto the American dream. We just have politicans that promise us everything and give us nothing. They do great with dividing us against each other, and telling us that our problems are the people ‘over there’. They forget that their mothers, fathers, grandparents used to be the people ‘over there’.
It sounds incredibly cliche, but the system is set up for you to fail and many people do fail. It will take them a hundred years or so to climb out of poverty and they don’t have the health care to ensure they’ll live that long. Republicans are rolling back regulations so that your job that you may have will be unsafe, they won’t have to pay for your healthcare or birth control, they can pollute your water and air so you stay sick and so do your children. They put lead in your water so your child can’t concentrate at schools due to being slowly poisoned. You aren’t getting paid a living wage and God forbid if you get interviewed and complain. They’ll tell you to get a job that the politicians just told you are not there and make more money that they sent to India and you’re supposed to just suck it up, take a deep breath, and try to survive another day.
But I’m better than you are and it’s okay for me to say so.
