Krys Boyd, host of the KERA radio jewel, THINK, interviewed me earlier this week. We talked about poverty and my assignment as chair of Mayor Mike Rawlings' new "Task Force on Poverty." During the course of the interview, she asked me about the poor who battle through and "make it" to a better life. I acknowledged that a very few do manage to find better lives on their own. I call them poverty's "poster children." The whole discussion reminded me of what James Baldwin once said about the idea. He was quoted in an Atlantic Monthly essay by Ta-Nehisi Coates.
Here's what Baldwin said:
The people, however, who
believe that this democratic anguish has some consoling value are always
pointing out that So-and-So, white, and So-and-So, black, rose from the slums
into the big time. The existence -- the public existence -- of, say, Frank
Sinatra and Sammy Davis, Jr. proves to them that America is still the land of
opportunity and that inequalities vanish before the determined will. It proves
nothing of the sort. The determined will is rare -- at the moment, in this
country, it is unspeakably rare -- and the inequalities suffered by the many
are in no way justified by the rise of a few.
A
few have always risen -- in every country, every era, and in the teeth of
regimes which can by no stretch of the imagination be thought of as free. Not
all these people, it is worth remembering, left the world better than they
found it. The determined will is rare, but it is not invariably benevolent.
Furthermore, the American equation of success with the big time reveals an
awful disrespect for human life and human achievement. This equation has placed
our cities among the most dangerous in the world and has placed our youth among
the most empty and most bewildered. The
situation of our youth is not mysterious. Children have never been very good at
listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them. They
must, they have no other models. That is exactly what our children are doing.
They are imitating our immortality, our disrespect for the pain of others.
Very well said. And very true.
ReplyDelete"They are imitating our immortality..."
ReplyDeleteDo you mean immorality?
I think people have a lot of respect for the pain of others, we are a most generous country.