Anyway, after being inspired by Dorina Sackman, I decided to look up 2 books offered as opposing viewpoints during the conference: Ruby Payne's A Framework for Understanding Poverty and Jawanza Kunjufu's An African Centered Response to Ruby Payne's Poverty Theory. After reading several Amazon customer reviews of both books, I found a blog post where someone had compiled a list of other resources: Debunking Ruby Payne. Among those resources, I found a couple interesting articles that discuss the culture of poverty, and I found a quote I wish to respond to:
"We regard people living in poverty as the Other, and we define people living in poverty by the negatives, by those material goods they do not have (or apparently are unwilling to work hard enough to attain, the narrative implies)." -Original article
When I read this, I remembered with a pang of guilt all the times I have thought these negatives and have even discussed them with my coworkers or my family. What is even more hypocritical is that I have experienced some of the difficulties it takes in overcoming poverty. By this last statement, I do not mean to let the reader assume I have actually experienced poverty because I have not, and I know that life is much harder for many others than how I have experienced it. I only mean to show that I can begin to understand the struggle those stuck in poverty must deal with every day.
When my husband and I were married I was unemployed. In fact, I went to a job interview the day before our wedding (and, gratefully, I was hired from that interview). My husband worked in an entry-level position for the county government and we lived with two roommates so we still had our bills paid. Two and a half months after we were married, I gained a similar entry-level position at the same government agency as Hubby, making about $0.75 less than him. At the end of our lease, we decided that we made enough money together and we could afford a one-bedroom apartment to ourselves with no roommates.
Moving in to that one-bedroom apartment was quintessentially "making it". Hubby and I had arrived at middle class. We didn't own our own home yet, but we lived without roommates, with our dog, within our means, and we had officially arrived at married life and adulthood. We paid our bills, put more than 10% of our paychecks towards savings, and still had plenty of fun money left over for spending on whatever we wanted. We were independent. It was small, but I remember that one-bedroom apartment with great fondness.
Although we didn't own it, and I feel that owning your own home is a milestone of a middle-class American, that one-bedroom apartment symbolized our entry into the middle class. We lived in a gated community on the "rich" side of town. With the amount of money we were able to put into savings, it would be no time before we would have the required down payment for a house, and we would enter the club of home-ownership.
But then something happened. Hubby and I weren't satisfied with our paychecks, even though we were comfortable. Hubby and I didn't want to work in an entry-level position for the rest of our careers, and so Hubby went back to school, taking on student loans because together we made too much for him to receive any grants and his previous grades kept him from many scholarships.
Fast forward three years. Hubby earned his degree, looked for a job in his field, and found the job market wanting. He took a less-than-ideal job with less-than-ideal pay working for an ethically questionable boss. He is now back with the county government agency and is much more comfortable, but he is working in basically the same entry-level position he held before he left. And now he's paying back his student loans.
At the same time, I have gone back to school and am working towards my Bachelor's in education. I also have taken on student loans with one grant awarded this past school year because Hubby was out of work for much of 2012 and so I qualified for a little help.
Compared to the relative comfort Hubby and I experienced in that one-bedroom apartment 3 years ago, we are now stretched financially to the point that it is a major stressor for both of us. We now own our own home, and the mortgage is $5 less/month than the rent for that one-bedroom apartment. But we now have an added bill: $200/month towards Hubby's student loans. That money used to go into savings.
Hubby commented on our situation a few months ago, noting that if he had not gone back to school and accrued student loan debt, we would have been able to buy a house sooner and we would be much more comfortable financially. Six months after I graduate our household will take on another payment: my student loans. As a teacher, I will start my career in education making roughly $5000 more per year than I do currently. I can tell you from experience, that difference is only about $50-$75 per paycheck after taxes, and it won't pay my student loan bill.
My point is this: getting ahead in life, getting an education beyond high school so that you are more qualified in a professional world costs money, and if your gamble (since, really, folks, that's what it is) doesn't pay off with a much higher paying job, you end up financially castrated in a world of debt. We regard people living in poverty as the Other, and we assume they are unwilling to work hard enough to attain anything better. But if Hubby and I had not gone back to school and had not pursued higher degrees in our education, we could afford to raise a family, we would have much more in savings, and we would be much more comfortable financially than we will be in the coming 10 years.
No comments:
Post a Comment