““Really poor children in really poor neighborhoods have no habits of working and have nobody around them who works,” the former House speaker said at a campaign event at the Nationwide Insurance offices. “So they literally have no habit of showing up on Monday. They have no habit of staying all day. They have no habit of ‘I do this and you give me cash,’ unless it’s illegal.””—Newt Gingrich: Poor kids don’t work “unless it’s illegal” - Political Hotsheet - CBS News
I just…I can’t…what? Does he even realize that nearly a quarter of the American labor force lives in poverty? Close to a third are “low income”? Has this man ever visited reality?
(via robot-heart-politics)Gingrich has visited reality, but he didn’t stay there for long. The problem of young people who don’t have working role models not having basic skills necessary to hold a job *is* a real problem. I *think* that’s what Gingrich was trying to describe. However, he couldn’t resist the urge to generalize it and throw in a drug-dealing reference.It’s one thing to say that children from poor communities need greater opportunities for career development and mentoring. It’s another thing to treat poverty as if it’s something that exists solely because of laziness and criminality. Convenient narratives rich people tell themselves so they don’t have to feel guilty…
Poverty is an extremely complex issue with a whole slew of complications. It’s tempting to do what Gingrich is doing and propose a simple and convenient answer to it. (The left might be more inclined to equate poverty with structurally imposed powerlessness in a way that I feel devalues the very things those in or near poverty can do to help themselves or their communities.) To list “crime” and an unfamiliarity with a culture where employment is the norm (which should not be glossed as “laziness”) as if it is a comprehensive response to poverty is wholly out of touch with reality. With that said, I think that in many cases the problem goes beyond a lack of career development and mentoring.
