Posted on 09/28/2005 6:47:53 PM PDT by ex-Texan
Repeatedly I hear that the misbehavior in New Orleans sprang from the exigencies of poverty. I would offer a countering view. Permit me to start with the family of Violeta, mi pareja in Mexico. I know them well. Listen, and judge.
Her father was born poor 78 years ago. Poor in Mexico in the twenties meant poor--dirt-floor poor, village well with typhoid and no sewerage poor, no safety net, no medical care, and government by caciques who had unlimited power and didn’t care whether you lived or died. It was hookworm, roundworm, pinworm, tapeworm poor. It was louse poor. Obesity from eating at McDonald’s was not a concern. Just eating was a concern.
Her Dad learned to read from an aunt who had learned in a Catholic school. In Mexico then, as in the United States now, the Catholic schools were better than the public, when the latter existed. He then apprenticed himself to a primitive machine shop, the only kind available, and became a valve-maker.
Eventually he hired on with a company, saved hard over the years, and bought a house, now paid off, in which he still lives. Buying a house for a Mexican worker then required grim determination. After thirty-six years he retired with a pension adequate to support life. In all this time, he did not sack a single city.
Poor doesn’t mean ignorant. He read whatever he could find, to include newspapers daily. He knows a lot of history and geography. If you mention, say, Ceylon, he knows where it is, and the capital. Do American college graduates?
He wasn’t shiftless, you see. Poverty is a condition characterized by a lack of money. Shiftlessness involves a lack of backbone, morals, independence, self-respect, and drive. They are not the same thing. Of course, if you are shiftless, you are likely to be poor.
I note in passing that anyone who wishes can learn to read, short of the genuinely retarded. Illiteracy is a choice. So is ignorance.
Along the way he married, whence Violeta. He was an imperfect dad—strict, yelled a lot, and wasn’t too tolerant, though he didn’t hit her. He taught her that there are things you have to do, things you ought to do, and things you ought not to do. She learned. A thoroughgoing Catholicism reinforced these ideas.
Adolescence came, and high school. Violeta decided that she wanted to go to the University of Guadalajara. There was the little problem of no money. Mexicans do not get preferential treatment in Mexico. To her, poverty was an obstacle to be overcome, not an excuse for failure. For five years in the Facultad de Letras y Filosofia, she worked three jobs. And graduated.
Poor, you see, is not the same as, nor does it imply, nor justify, passive, thieving, dependent, and benighted.
At this point I am going to sacrifice literary consistency to explication. When I was nineteen a buddy of mine and I hopped the freights to New York where, listening to a Copland concert in Prospect Park, I met a little Italian girl of seventeen on the grass. We began writing, and then dating. Her father having died unexpectedly, she and her mother were living essentially on Social Security in Brooklyn. They ate, but not much more.
They were not shiftless, however.
Her mother got her into a Catholic school. Eva understood perfectly which way was up. Good grades were not optional. They were going to happen. And did. Four years of high school and a 4.0 later, she blew away the Regents and got a scholarship to NYU Washington Square. She repeated the roughly 4.0 performance. After grad school at Rochester, she is a tenured professor of mathematics in the New York system. Poor Italian kid. Never burned a city.
Anyway, Violeta. While in university, she became pregnant. Contraception is an imperfect art. On moral grounds she decided not to kill it. (Actually it wasn’t a decision. There are things one doesn’t do and, in her view, that was one of them. Today The Unkilled is fourteen and prospering mightily.) Violeta was now a single mother as well as working three jobs and going to school.
She did it. It wasn’t easy, but she had no expectation that it would be. There are things one does.
On graduating she got some wretched office job, discovered that it was a snake pit (un nido de serpientes) and that she couldn’t give enough attention to her child, who turned out to be a girl named Natalia. So she said to hell with offices and moved to Ajijic, the American enclave on Lake Chapala, to teach Spanish to gringos.
It was a gutsy call. She had no safety net and very little money: North Americans living in half-million dollar houses object to paying an extra dollar an hour for a service that would cost ten times as much in the US. When I met Violeta, Natalia was twelve. They were living in, by American standards, a desperately tiny one-bedroom house, with one small bed and a mattress on the floor, and a total of $300 between them and destitution. Don’t tell her about the high price of running shoes.
Now in the US, social class, which we pretend doesn’t exist, depends chiefly on consumer goods owned, money coming in, and credentials on paper. Two BMWs and Yale beats three Volvos and the University of Maryland. Violeta, ever wrong-headed, believed that what you are worth depends on how you behave. Again, Caholicism.
She conveyed this to Natalia, who was (and is) the best student in her school, reading constantly with the fluency of an educated adult. Principled motherhood has its virtues. If the child had been a latchkey, she would doubtless now be pushing either drugs or a stroller. Today Nata is fourteen, smart as a whip, largely over the tyrannosaur stage of hideous disagreeability that briefly afflicts teenage girls, and pretty as a flower. She very much likes boys, but has none of that unhappy—what? Lack of self-respect? Desperation for love?—that makes so many US girls easy prey to libidinous striplings.
If I may digress again, long ago on the police beat I rode in DC with a black cop from a bad section of New York. How did he get out, I asked? From my column of the time, I quote: “My father told me, ‘Son, you’re going to learn your lessons, or I will whup your ass.’ He did, too. So I learned. Best thing that ever happened to me.” (Boys are a little different.)
You don’t have to be helpless, nor useless, nor immoral because you were born poor. If this were not true, the Irish, Italians, Jews, the Chinese of railroad coolie days, the Poles and the Czechs would still be in slums. They aren’t. They made it, as Violeta made it, as Eva and lots of black cops made it, without Section Eight housing, welfare, scholarships, minority preferences with no expectations attached, medical charity, or monotonous self-pity. She has a contempt for those who could, but don’t, that would peel chrome from an engine block.
Got to agree with you.
America is the ONLY country in the world where poor people have cell phones, television, Air Jordans and are also fat.
Sometimes I agree with Fred, other times I don't, but Fred Reed is always a great read. I was home sick one weekend when I found his site, and ended up spending hours reading all of his old archives.
Poor is a choice in the US.
When WW2 came my grandfather went to war. It was only then that my mom and her brother had food and clothing, as my grandmother wa allowed to get a job. That was short lived when Granddad came home from war, and continued the drinking, and sired two more boys.
I asked my mom once, why they didn't go on Welfare? Her answer was amazing given today's poor. "No proud person went on Welfare. That was for the lowest of life. We felt sorry for those people," she said.
My mom was a straight “A” student, and was voted most popular in her school her senior year. Due to lack of money she couldn't go to college as some of her cousins were able to do. So she went to work in a hosiery mill, and then a year or so later met my dad.
My dad had a similar upbringing, in that his mom and dad were alcoholics and divorced when he was 7-8. My dad's father's family did have money, but he lived with his mom in poverty. Back then child support was a joke to non-existent. His father was a building contractor, his mom worked as a fry cook. When my dad was 16 he lied about his age and enlisted in the army and was sent to Korea. When he came home, his mom was remarried to another building contractor, and my dad finished high school and worked for him full time too. My parents met while my dad was on leave from the Army. They married a year later when he was discharged. He worked for his step father after graduating, and 2 years later when he was 20, took over the business. At that time my mom quit her job to help my dad.
They were determined to make something out of their lives. It took many years of trial and error, but my dad built an extremely successful business, and now my parents are enjoying retirement, happy, and wealthy.
I know this is not a unique story, and many people born in the 1930's had some of the same experiences, but I am so proud of my parents and what they overcame to be where they are today.
My parents have always been generous in helping other families in need. They do it within their community, when they hear of a family down on their luck (not by their own choice). My parent's do this anonymously.
One last thing…. a story that always brings tears to my eyes. When I was about 6 years old a family moved in across the street. They had just come from Poland. It was a mother and her children. Her husband was stuck in Poland at the time and wasn't allowed to leave with them. They were so poor and so sad. I remember at Christmas we bought a tree and decorated it. (the mother had told my mother she couldn't afford one) My mom bought loads of toys and wrapped them, and bought a few outfits of clothes for the kids and the mom. In the middle of the night on Christmas Eve, my dad went over and set up the tree with all the gifts around it on the porch, and never told them about it! The father eventually was allowed to come the U.S. The parents have since died, but the children have all become very successful. Two are Physicians, and the other Two hold their Doctorates in Art and are accomplished artists and teach at highly regarded universities.
That is one of the many things they have done over the years. I know there are 1000's of people out there with a similar story, and I thank anyone who helps genuinely deserving families achieve their dreams!
I am writing this to say, anyone that has a desire, can achieve, just as you have said in the original post.
Many, many thanks for your wonderful, heartfelt message.
Excellent post!
You're Welcome! I am just so proud of people (including my parents) who remember where they came from and try to help others achieve success!
Thanks for a wonderful story. My family has stories like that, as they were "shanty" Irish, and everything they had and have now they worked for, and worked HARD.
My parents and grandparents generations were amazing people. We just don't grow them like that anymore. It's sad. "Sacrifice" is now against the law, it seems. So many people these days don't respect what they have, and have been given, it has no value to them.
true that
Yes, we do. There are still extraordinary people around. Some of them are immigrants, some are Americans by birth. And a lot of them are over fighting in Iraq today.
In the neighborhood there was probably 5% working poor and 95% welfare poor. Everyone knew which group everyone else was in.
Today I occassionally see some of the 5% around town with their wives and kids. They are working, making an ok living, worrying about things like the kid's orthodonture and property taxes.
Those from the 95% I frequently see in "Day in Court" or the "Births" section of the paper where they are being sentenced or having children out of wedlock.
IMHO, it is not so much being poor that decides your fate as what kind of poor.
You're right, and may God bless them!
Exactly! That is what keeps this country going!
My husband's story is similar. His parents were Ellis Island immigrants from Italy.
Capriole has it right.. our Military proves these people do exist and are still here!
God Bless our Troops and our first responders (Police, Firefighters) here in the US!!!
He even touched on something deeper. (Boys are a little different.)
Naw, the feminists liberal (what do you call them) "ologists" say that girls and boys are the same, and can be raised equally by the same gender. Discounting what a DAD brings to the upbringing...or mom for that matter.
"We just don't grow them like that anymore."
I agree with you ascertains. However it was having been thrust into unforgiving times that branded them their moniker. The Great Depression and WW2 IMO is nothing compared to today. We are spoiled.
The guys at the front still have the same walk as any soldier, but our great country has shielded civilians from the burdens of past hardships. We as citizens should be grateful rather than protesting. How sad Cindy and Co. can't be grateful at the times. Her followers are being led to to become slaves of the Islamists.
Sometimes it does take a great cataclysm to bring out the strength in one's character. The people in the Greatest Generation had to face the Depression and World War II, and today we don't have challenges of that magnitude. The modern people who display strength and courage are only those who are either serving in the military or have individual catastrophes to struggle through. But there are many people out there who have guts, strength, and nobility of mind. If some holocaust ever visits this country, which God forbid, you will see these people stand up.
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