The Lead

You don't have to agree with everything Stephen Steinberg writes to find plenty to engage with:

Yet even Moynihan’s harshest critics did not deny the manifest troubles in black families. Nor did they deny that the culture of poor people is often markedly at variance with the cultural norms and practices in more privileged sectors of society. How could it be otherwise? The key point of contention was whether, under conditions of prolonged poverty, those cultural adaptations “assume a life of their own” and are passed down from parents to children through normal processes of cultural transmission. In other words, the imbroglio over the Moynihan report was never about whether culture matters, but about whether culture is or ever could be an independent and self-sustaining factor in the production and reproduction of poverty. ... Like Moynihan before him, Wilson has committed the sin of inverting cause and effect. He thinks that black youth are not socially mobile because of their cultural proclivities—“sexual conquests, hanging out on the street after school, party drugs, and hip-hop music.” But a far more convincing explanation is that these youth are encircled by structural barriers and consequently resort to these cultural defenses, as Douglas Glasgow argued in his neglected 1981 book, The Black Underclass. Liebow had it right when he stripped away surface appearances and put culture in its proper social and existential context:
If, in the course of concealing his failure, or of concealing his fear of even trying, [the street-corner man] pretends—through the device of public fictions—that he does not want these things in the first place and claims he has all along been responding to a different set of rules and prizes, we do not do him or ourselves any good by accepting this claim at face value.

I agree the culture of the poor is not self-sustaining. But I disagree that cause is confused with effect. What we call institutional or structural racism are themselves cultural. The two cultures mutually reinforce each other.

In his inaugural, JFK said,

We observe today not a victory of party, but a celebration of freedom -- symbolizing an end, as well as a beginning -- signifying renewal, as well as change. For I have sworn before you and Almighty God the same solemn oath our forebears prescribed nearly a century and three-quarters ago.

The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life. And yet the same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe -- the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state, but from the hand of God.

With nuclear weapons we do have the power to abolish human life. We do not yet hold in our hands the power to abolish poverty. Atoms don't have a mind of their own, aren't prone to bigotry or susceptible to cultural influences, and carry the baggage of a history of hollow assertions of freedom for all.

Let's be realistic and admit: (1) poverty is a tough problem, but (2) as a nation we're hardly trying.

Comments (6)

We need also remember that being poor is very expensive. The poor cannot undertake many saving mechanisms like buying in bulk. The best example I heard of (an American example, as it happens) was a single mother living in a cheap hotel. An decent apartment would provide better accommodation at a better price, but she couldn't come up with the security deposit in addition to the first month's rent in one fell swoop.

Posted by Malcolm French+ | January 29, 2011 6:51 PM

As a society, we seem bent, not on alleviating poverty, but on pushing poor people out of sight and out of mind. Our president didn't even mention poor people in his recent speech. Charles Blow wrote a devastating column on this omission in the Friday New York Times.

Jan Adams

Posted by janinsanfran | January 29, 2011 7:10 PM

Overall, there are two kinds of jobs with two sets of rules: low pay, low opportunity jobs with rigid rules for promptness, sick leave, bathroom breaks, and so on; and socially mobile jobs with more flexibility and benefits. The first type of job is very difficult to hold onto if you are caring for kids or elderly relatives who need clinic visits, rides, supervision, etc. This scenario has been true for a long time and getting progressively worse.

Posted by Mary Caulfield | January 29, 2011 10:50 PM

Working class culture in England for centuries has mitigated against things like education that leads to upward mobility. There's an entrenched attitude of betrayal towards those who break out of the cycle. While some families are proud of the "first kid to go to college in our family" there are even more that see that as a betrayal of their "values". Minority cultures in the US are often no different.

Posted by Dave Paisley | January 30, 2011 12:48 AM

There is further the culture of refusal amongst some of our working poor to accept state assistance from targeted educational funds to food stamps -- a shame connected with accepting any kind of perceived charity or, in some cases, even unemployment payments.

Our wage and working condition inequities are growing, making this even worse.

Posted by Richard E. Helmer | January 30, 2011 1:43 AM

Let's not blame the poor for their poverty. To do so is to reject the entire biblical legacy and to ignore some obvious facts. There may well be some cultural shifts that would help poor people and communities more effectively resist the violence of the rich. Community organizing approaches of various kinds would need to be used to identify what they are. This article seems little better than old attempts to blame poverty on the vice of the poor, rather than the injustice of the rich. Any cultural adaptations that come out of communities trapped in a cycle of poverty are themselves imposed.

Posted by Bill Carroll | January 30, 2011 9:39 AM

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