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At last, some success with the bureaucracy.
Some recent posts on racism in various parts of the world, I'm reminded that I have to keep an eye on my own life. The problem is that you're raised with certain patterns and if you meet another person who grew up in the same system, your buttons are pushed and, if you're me, it's too easy to react the way your parents did.
In my family's culture, racism took the form of very benign paternalism. We were taught to respect the various black people we encountered, to mind them if they were charged with our care, never to use the N word (or even its milder and respectable version), etc. But we were also taught in subtle ways that African-Americans were often not able to take care of themselves. In my family, again, that meant that we were responsible for the people who worked for us (or that my parents' families had known in the small towns they came from)--and expected that they might wind up in debt or jail and need our help. Or just appear on Saturday afternoon asking for fifty cents. We'd give it, but that expectation was deadly. It underlay the whole system of Jim Crow.
Well, I grew up and met many, many very bright and competent black people, worked some in the Civil Rights movement, had many African-American colleagues, fellow students, and supervisors (that means college vice-presidents). As an adult, I met the people I'd never encountered growing up.
Of course that totally changed my expectations--if I go to an emergency room and have a black doctor, for example, I assume she's well-educated and experienced, and feel total confidence in her ability (unless she shows me otherwise, as some doctors of all races have done, for all of us).
But Elmer is a man from my past. He's younger than me, but not young enough to have grown up in the less segregated south. And his life has been hard, brutally hard. When I first knew him, 15 years ago, he was doing yard work in my neighborhood, and he was trustworthy, hardworking, and pleasant. But gradually he worked less and less, and asked for handouts more and more. I could see that alcohol and other things were beginning to dominate his life. We got tired of him coming by the house several times a week, borrowing a few dollars and promising to work for it later, but later never really came. So we quit giving him money and quit thinking he'd work for it. I was glad that we got to that point, because I was beginning to realize that our relationship was exactly like those my parents had with the people who'd moved to the city from the little towns--me as the one with money and power and brains, him as the one who needed help and guidance and rescuing.
Paternalism or co-dependence, the name doesn't matter. It's not a good relationship on either side, but so tempting, especially when you fall into the roles you've had all your life.
This year I really needed someone to work in the yard--it was horribly overgrown after a summer of neglect. I didn't want major landscaping, but someone who'd work with me to save this plant and replace that one, weed, mow, etc. Like magic, Elmer appeared. And he seemed changed. He always came to work, he might borrow a little one day but he'd work it out the next. And then he began to come when I didn't have work--but now he wanted food. Not even money. And he was looking thin and sick. I finally found out that he is homeless, sleeping under the railroad trestle. Everything he owns is in the backpack he carries. We do have shelters, but I can see why he doesn't like to go there if he can avoid it. Still, hungry and homeless is no life, especially when it turned out he'd had a stroke and has heart problems.
So I couldn't just say go away, anymore. I found myself making work for him, giving him big lunches and then food to take with him. Just like my parents did.
The only way out of this is to get him some government aid, which is a form of independence. I think. Better than handouts, for sure. But Elmer's got that kind of fatalism that keeps him from having the persistence to keep appointments across town, that makes him distrust caseworkers, that makes him hopeless. Fortunately for him and me, the Free Clinic was a starting place, and they delivered, with minimum line-standing and futile visits. They did the paperwork to get him started on the Social Security Disability payment process—but twice he’s missed appointments to get his disability claim processed. But today he went again to set it up one more time, so I’m hoping. That would pay for a place of some kind to live in. And then after three 7:30 AM visits to the Food Stamp office, he was approved today and will get the card for the stamp money next week.And the caseworkers were very kind and reassuring (although Elmer told me that waiting with the crowd in the office made him nervous). So now he has food and medical care, and maybe that will encourage him enough to get him to finally show up at the SS office, so that he’ll have a place to live.
But even helping in this process has a very familiar feel…
Some recent posts on racism in various parts of the world, I'm reminded that I have to keep an eye on my own life. The problem is that you're raised with certain patterns and if you meet another person who grew up in the same system, your buttons are pushed and, if you're me, it's too easy to react the way your parents did.
In my family's culture, racism took the form of very benign paternalism. We were taught to respect the various black people we encountered, to mind them if they were charged with our care, never to use the N word (or even its milder and respectable version), etc. But we were also taught in subtle ways that African-Americans were often not able to take care of themselves. In my family, again, that meant that we were responsible for the people who worked for us (or that my parents' families had known in the small towns they came from)--and expected that they might wind up in debt or jail and need our help. Or just appear on Saturday afternoon asking for fifty cents. We'd give it, but that expectation was deadly. It underlay the whole system of Jim Crow.
Well, I grew up and met many, many very bright and competent black people, worked some in the Civil Rights movement, had many African-American colleagues, fellow students, and supervisors (that means college vice-presidents). As an adult, I met the people I'd never encountered growing up.
Of course that totally changed my expectations--if I go to an emergency room and have a black doctor, for example, I assume she's well-educated and experienced, and feel total confidence in her ability (unless she shows me otherwise, as some doctors of all races have done, for all of us).
But Elmer is a man from my past. He's younger than me, but not young enough to have grown up in the less segregated south. And his life has been hard, brutally hard. When I first knew him, 15 years ago, he was doing yard work in my neighborhood, and he was trustworthy, hardworking, and pleasant. But gradually he worked less and less, and asked for handouts more and more. I could see that alcohol and other things were beginning to dominate his life. We got tired of him coming by the house several times a week, borrowing a few dollars and promising to work for it later, but later never really came. So we quit giving him money and quit thinking he'd work for it. I was glad that we got to that point, because I was beginning to realize that our relationship was exactly like those my parents had with the people who'd moved to the city from the little towns--me as the one with money and power and brains, him as the one who needed help and guidance and rescuing.
Paternalism or co-dependence, the name doesn't matter. It's not a good relationship on either side, but so tempting, especially when you fall into the roles you've had all your life.
This year I really needed someone to work in the yard--it was horribly overgrown after a summer of neglect. I didn't want major landscaping, but someone who'd work with me to save this plant and replace that one, weed, mow, etc. Like magic, Elmer appeared. And he seemed changed. He always came to work, he might borrow a little one day but he'd work it out the next. And then he began to come when I didn't have work--but now he wanted food. Not even money. And he was looking thin and sick. I finally found out that he is homeless, sleeping under the railroad trestle. Everything he owns is in the backpack he carries. We do have shelters, but I can see why he doesn't like to go there if he can avoid it. Still, hungry and homeless is no life, especially when it turned out he'd had a stroke and has heart problems.
So I couldn't just say go away, anymore. I found myself making work for him, giving him big lunches and then food to take with him. Just like my parents did.
The only way out of this is to get him some government aid, which is a form of independence. I think. Better than handouts, for sure. But Elmer's got that kind of fatalism that keeps him from having the persistence to keep appointments across town, that makes him distrust caseworkers, that makes him hopeless. Fortunately for him and me, the Free Clinic was a starting place, and they delivered, with minimum line-standing and futile visits. They did the paperwork to get him started on the Social Security Disability payment process—but twice he’s missed appointments to get his disability claim processed. But today he went again to set it up one more time, so I’m hoping. That would pay for a place of some kind to live in. And then after three 7:30 AM visits to the Food Stamp office, he was approved today and will get the card for the stamp money next week.And the caseworkers were very kind and reassuring (although Elmer told me that waiting with the crowd in the office made him nervous). So now he has food and medical care, and maybe that will encourage him enough to get him to finally show up at the SS office, so that he’ll have a place to live.
But even helping in this process has a very familiar feel…
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From:
no subject
That may well be. And I can't speak to your upbringing and environs. But I can't help but feel, that at some level, there will always be a certain amount of paternalism/co-dependence involved in helping another. Where the difference exists to me... is in the level of care and how it manifests. If one helps out a less fortunate solely from guilt, or out of pragmatic desire to perpetuate standing... (If we didn't give handouts, they'd riot) that's clearly terrible. But if it's a genuine case where you really do care about this guy, you really are trying to teach him to fish... then it's not exactly the same.
This is a case-by-case sort of thing, it would seem. And while paternalism is a worry... what do you do when paternalism is genuinely required. Not because of a race-based attitude, but because there is someone who needs to be parented first, before he can take care of himself. Whether he's white or black.
From: (Anonymous)
no subject
Yes. I was thinking not long ago that working with him was sort of like working with a student, that I had an expectation that he'd learn and go on. And I've seen students fail several times and eventually get the idea and pass, but that doesn't always happen. And one way the echoes, at least, of racism creeep into it shows up in some less important but still real parts of our relationship. He calls my husband Bill, but me "Miss Nancy"--a form of address that I've mainly only heard from students who didn't want to pronounce my strange last name and couldn't feel comfortable with calling me just Nancy. Little things like that, but each also a little complicated.
I don't see that I have any choice about helping him, ethically. I'm just interested in seeing my own self more clearly, if that makes sense.
From:
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From:
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The difference is, you wouldn't feel quite the same sort of uneasiness then, would you? So, I'm thinking, let it go.
;o)
From:
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And thanks again for the supportive thought. Of course I have to help him, and I really shouldn't berate myself for doing that. I don't think either he or I can really behave differently now--we're both doing the best we can, given who we are. I just hope that in future generations, that kind of help won't need to be given.
From:
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From:
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