“Today, October 15th, bloggers everywhere are publishing posts that discuss poverty in some way. By all posting on the same day we aim to change the conversation that day, to raise awareness, start a global discussion and add momentum to an important cause.
Every blogger has a unique voice, audience and perspective. By speaking to their readers on topic about an important issue we can discuss global issues like poverty in a new and hugely multi-faceted way. And from discussion springs action.”
This is my contribution to the conversation.
I have never been poor. I was raised in an “upper middle-class” family of well-educated parents. My father was sent to work in Europe for a time, so I even had the benefits of gaining an international world view - living in Brussels for five years and learning a second language, French. By the simple accident of birth I do not know what it’s like to be really poor, truly hungry, utterly hopeless.
I do read, however, and over the years both fiction and non-fiction literature has given me glimpses into multi-faceted poverty around the world: the bleak african-american experience through the eyes of escaped slave Sethe in Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Maya Angelou’s I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings or There Are No Children Here by Alex Kotiowitz; the poverty and harsh reality of the Chinese woman’s experience through Amy Tan’s books; the ghetto existence in apartheid-era Johannesburg in Kafir Boy by Mark Jones; the cultural poverty of women in the middle east in such books as Nine Parts of Desire by Geraldine Brooks, or Princess: A True Story of Life Behind the Veil in Saudi Arabia by Jean Sasson; memoirs of growing up in extreme poverty in Ireland through Frank McCourt’s Angelas Ashes, or in the United States The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls.
Some common themes running through all these stories is the constant struggle required to survive against the forces of poverty, the yearning for dignity in the worst of circumstances, and most of all, that some maintained a sense of hope that they would make it, trusted that things would be better. It amazes me time and time again how, out of hopeless circumstances, individuals rise out of poverty and misery because somehow they are able to maintain a sense of self-worth that remains uncowed, unbeaten in the face of so many forces designed to tear them down. Hope is vital for those living in poverty.
The necessity of hope does not merely stretch geographically to humans around the globe, it stretches throughout time, with recorded thoughts on the importance of hope as far back as the 400’s from Pelagius, a monk who said, “There is no worse death than the end of hope,” to Napoleon Bonaparte said, “A leader is a dealer in hope,” and even to Dr. Martin Luther King who said, “We must accept finite disappointment, but we must never lose infinite hope.”
Recent coverage during the Olympic games revealed a current sense of optimism in China. The International Herald Tribune had an article in July about the recent Pew Global Attitudes survey.
Buoyed by years of extraordinary growth and with the promise of the Olympic Games just ahead, the Chinese hold strikingly positive views of their national economy and of the direction their country is heading, ranking first in both measures among 24 countries recently surveyed. They were almost universally optimistic about prospects for the Games, which open Aug. 8.
“This is clearly a nation that sees itself as ascendant, and that leads to tremendous satisfaction with the way things are going nationwide, even though the people are still struggling on an individual level,” said Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center, which conducted the survey.
Eighty-six percent of the Chinese surveyed said they were content with the country’s direction, up from 48 percent in 2002 and a full 25 percentage points higher than the next highest country, Australia. And 82 percent of Chinese were satisfied with their national economy, up from 52 percent.
By comparison, only 23 percent of Americans surveyed said they were satisfied with the country’s direction and only 20 percent said the U.S. economy was good.
Except for Spain, which placed fourth at 50 percent, the peoples of major European countries were far from content. Only about 3 in 10 British, French and Germans expressed satisfaction.
The survey also revealed Chinese concerns about rising food prices and disparity in income, but it is notable that although they individually may be struggling, their sense of the rising economy has affected their optimism.
Did the lack of confidence in the economy by Americans and most Europeans reflect an innate sense of the looming economic crisis in which we now find ourselves? We hear much talk that this crisis reflects a crisis of confidence. This survey shows that the crisis of confidence started long before the crash, and we have a long way to go to restore it.
I am currently doing some reading on the issue of Globalization, and in Thomas Friedman’s book “The World is Flat” he says, “Too often, we have antipoverty debates but not proentrepreneurship debates. The inspirational power of a local business success story is incalculable: There is no greater motivator for the poor than looking at one of their own who makes it big and saying, “If she can do it, I can do it.”
Conversely, there is no greater de-motivator as when we in the U.S. see more and more foreclosure signs diminishing healthcare security, and real loss of wealth. A sobering article in July by Market Watch reports on the findings of a major new national opinion survey conducted for the nonprofit and nonpartisan Every Child Matters Education Fund (ECMEF) showing “…the United States at or near the bottom of most key child well-being indicators when compared to other leading industrialized nations. The ECMEF report also shows extremely wide variations in child well-being among the 50 states.”
The new edition of ECMEF’s “Homeland Insecurity” report shows that certain states - including Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, New Mexico and Nevada - are consistently at or near the very bottom of the list of states on key child well-being indicators, while other states - including Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Dakota and Washington state - fare better, but still fall far short of the top G8 nations in the health and safety of children. As “Homeland Insecurity” notes: “…within the U.S. itself, wide gaps in child well-being exist: compared to the states with the best outcomes, children in the bottom states are three times as likely to live in poverty, five times as likely to be without health insurance, eight times as likely to be incarcerated, and three times as likely to die before their fourteenth birthday… . The U.S. ranks last among the rich democracies on the two most important health measures — infant mortality and longevity - even though we spend much more on medical care.”
Voters are pessimistic about the future of the nation’s children. When asked whether today’s children in the United States will grow up better off or worse off than people are now, 45 percent believe they will be worse off while only 28 percent say they will be better off, a six point drop from a survey the Every Child Matters Education Fund released in 2003. A solid majority of Democrats (56 percent worse off, 20 percent better off) and near majority of swing voters (48 percent worse off, 22 percent better off) say that children will grow up worse off than people today, while Republican are more optimistic (44 percent better off, 25 percent worse off).
If a majority of us do not see a better future for our children, then we not only have a deficit economy, we have a deficit of hope.
Fareed Zakaria has a great
interview with Tavis Smiley about his recent book,
The Post-American World. It lays out in blunt terms how the landscape has changed. The rest of the world is rising, and we seem to be staying flat. There are 124 countries in the world that are growing at over 4% per year, and we need to have the political will to embrace the competition and prepare for the 21st century. I encourage you all to take 12 minutes to listen to the interview. In the light of the economic disaster we’ve experienced, we need to hear his message. It’s sobering, but clearly we can change things around.
Whether in fiction or memoir, in India or Indiana - the struggle, loss of dignity and search for hope in the face of poverty is universal. If we can make changes so that our children will have opportunities to grow in safety and health, to learn and compete in the future global economy, we can fight actual poverty and at the same time overcome our deficit of hope.
