Perceptions and Poverty

This is an important article and a powerful article about how expensive it can be to be poor.  The author covers several aspects of the lives of the impoverished and talks about how the common solutions usually presented by people with wealth just don't work. He doesn't discuss every issue.  He doesn't touch on health, which can be catastrophic for poor people, but the ones he does talk about are many of the days to day problems.

Of course, one of the first comments is from an attorney who is married to a doctor. He proclaimed that if he and his wife who work many, many hours every week can take all of Sunday off to prepare healthy meals for the rest of the week, anyone can do it. He talked about how they made pancake batter and pulled pork in the crockpot. They baked bread in their bread machine (for pennies) and had a whole other number of healthy dishes set aside. Eating healthy, he stated, was a matter of priorities.

I'm blogging about this statement because I think it highlights a great deal about why people perceive the poor the way they do. They look at the effort they have to put forth to do something and assume that effort is all it would take. In fact, they assume their effort is the only thing making the situation happen, but that is far from the case.

To use the man's own example, the first thing he has to his advantage is a Sunday off. He has a whole day off where he can prepare food. Many of the working poor don't have days off. They may have days where they work fewer hours than others, but for many of them, a day off is a very rare thing. Most of the time they have off is dedicated to trying to recover well enough to go to work again.

His second advantage is the knowledge of food preparation. Now, mind you, with Youtube and such things, this knowledge is easier to get than it used to be, but learning how to cook still takes time. It still takes trial and error, and trial and error requires more time and money. To prepare a weeks' worth of food implies quite a lot of confidence in one's skills. If a person does not have this knowledge, they will not be able to do what he did.

The third advantage is a functional kitchen. I think a lot of people would be shocked at the number of US households that lack this. If you rent and your stove goes out, your landlord may or may not repair it. Depending on the state's renting laws, he may not even have to.  In areas where people are trying to find reasons to kick poor people out of rentals so they can fix them up and rent them for far more money, making waves is the last thing a renter wants to do. If you own your home, buying a major appliance usually isn't an option. For instance, if my stove goes out, it won't be replaced. There is no way it could be.

Speaking of functional kitchens, he also mentioned having several smaller appliances to help him. A bread machine. A crockpot. Cooking a week's worth of food implies some level of food saver system. He had enough pots and pans to do this. Given the mess this would make, he probably also has a dishwasher. Many poor households are lucky if they have a microwave. He didn't say where he lived, but as an attorney married to a doctor, I am assuming it is an area where it's safe and easy to shop for food.

Now mind you, I am speaking from the perspective of someone who lives in a household where food preparation is handled very well. Some of our smartest decisions are made on how we buy, prepare, and handle our eating. Before someone would use me as an example of a poor person who can do this, consider the following:

• I have a roommate who shops very well and taught himself to cook at a young age. 
• I have family members who buy me Christmas/birthday gifts. I use these gift options to get things like small appliances that can make cooking easier. One year, my grandmother bought me a used portable dishwasher for fifty bucks. The thing is probably 30 years old, but it certainly helps out. 
• I moved into a house that had a full compliment of pots and pans. Combined with the ones I had on my own, we have quite a lot to work with.
• When my roommate one time had a windfall of money, he used it to purchase a stand-up freezer. Because we have that level of freezer storage, we can prepare and save quite a lot of meals. 
• We have lots of food storage space. The kitchen isn't as functional as I wish it was. We don't have as much preparation space as either of us would like, but we do have quite a bit of space for storing food. Besides the freezer, we also have two fridges. A few years ago, my roommate found some closet shelves for an insanely cheap price. We repurposed them into storage for shelf stable food. 
• We both grew up with grandparents who lived during the Depression. These people knew a lot of tricks about how to stretch out food. They knew if you made a pot of beans, it would last several meals. They knew if you tossed a bit of meat into that pot of beans, you'd feel more sated. 
• I live in a small city in Oklahoma. And while this has some disadvantages, one of the major advantages is that 'small' 'city' and 'Oklahoma mean I'm not living in a food desert. In a lot of larger cities, grocery stores have moved out of the poorer areas. I can drive down the street to Walmart and have several other options other than it. In many cities, the only options involve a lot of travel to a richer area.

The thing is, I am not going to stand around and say 'well if I can make healthy meals on the cheap, so can the other poors' because, at the end of the day, I know  that whole bullet list I just presented is far, far more than a lot of people have. I think realizing your own blessings goes a long way towards empathy for others.