| by Amber Poole |
I believe the expression today is social and economic insecurity: The stylish
way to say poor; all dressed up in designer clothes. At least the language
developed by the sociolinguists or those who decide what is politically correct
or still others who have the time to waste about what to call poverty, only who
don’t know the first thing about it.
Poverty.
Who gets to tell the story of what it’s like to be poor? Add a layer. Who gets to
tell the story of the single mother living hand to mouth, barely getting by on
minimum wages, broke?
Add yet another layer: Who gets to tell the story of woman as refugee,
immigrant, deportee, stateless?
Woman under occupation? Woman whose family has all been murdered.
She is alone.
Who gets to tell this story?
The story of the white woman and the story of the woman of color will be two
different stories, even though both are women and both might be poor, both at
risk. While there will be similarities to each account, the gap will eventually
widen when one considers the inequalities of race, religion, language and
nationality and how each of these factors influence the individual narrative.
I can certainly weigh in as a single mother of a son whose father abandoned
him. I can add to that what it meant to scrape by and in the later years what it
meant to raise a boy to manhood who was in trouble and a high school drop-
out. I can speak to drug and alcohol abuse. I know what living on the edge was like living hand to mouth, earning a minimum wage.
Whatever other correspondences inherent to my personal story with another
woman would be revealed in the sharing of our respective experiences.
Who gets to tell the story of the poor woman?
Rafia Zakaria writes from her book Against White Feminism:
“This book examines what ‘whiteness’ has enabled within the feminist
movement...the goal here is not to expel white women from feminism, but to
excise ‘whiteness’, with all its assumptions of privilege and superiority, so as to
foster the freedom and empowerment of all women.”
Is there a mid-point to the question of solidarity among women? Where in the
Agora do we meet?
How can women of class and privilege avoid the temptation to hear themselves
utter such tedious comments about exposure, shame, and empathy to name a
few. I’m not saying that misfortune does not afflict a woman of means for
indeed it does, but the resources afforded the privileged are in far greater
supply than what’s available to those scouring the streets for food. When the
latter is subject to the subtle sanctimonious air of one who has means,
suggestive in their tone they are an authority on the matter, it’s just simply
insulting.
Poverty is a real, painful, scary and direct attack on women. To light a candle,
to set intention, to think positive thoughts, to take a moon bath, to name your
inner goddess is not the antidote for every woman.
There was a time when I thought all women could gather together in unity,
circling around the others as female elephants do in the wild; fierce protectors
of their sisters. I don’t feel that way anymore.
To name a few, there are women being slaughtered in Gaza, women at great
risk of rape and hunger in Sudan, those women in Yemen living in squalor and
starvation and the Ukrainian women suffering from chronic stress due to
displacement, their safety at great risk. There are the women in America living
in the inner city exposed to frequent neighborhood violence. These women are
hungry, angry and terribly afraid for their children who could use some help
from the women who live in protected communities and neighborhoods. Is it
possible to take some form of action? How do we close this gap? Can it even
be closed as modernity suffers clearly from those who have and those who
seem to be offended by those who do not.
I’m not the first to attempt a reconciliation between two discordant socio-
economic systems.
In 1889, Jane Adams and Ellen Gates Starr opened the Hull House on the South
Side of Chicago. Their mission was to provide social and educational
opportunities to working class people. They offered free courses to everyone,
organized concerts and made available activities for children. “Education and
Autonomy’ for women and the poor was the moral and cultural climate of that
era.
Hawthorne, Tolstoy, Thoreau, and Emerson were all drawing from each other’s
inspirations by their interest in reforming economic models to ease the
suffering of the poor.
Is there a way to encourage this kind of thinking and this kind of impulse in the
21st C?
We must step out from behind the comfort of our social media platforms and
make ourselves known. We must abandon cultural entitlement and see it for the
toxicity that it is; stop assuming a trite ideology is a one size fits all. We must
change our tactic. We must either remain silent and do nothing or ask what is
needed. Ask to hear the story before judging and categorizing from a
perspective of privilege. We must stop making anemic comparisons and get
down to the business of compassionate listening, preferably without a political
agenda or bias.
Each entry reflects my thoughts on a book bought from Bust Down Books.
Today’s book: Against White Feminism by Rafia Zakaria