The Invisible Women of America: How Poor Women are Treated
September 1, 2009
by Helen McCombs
|I am a poor woman living in the United States. I make a little more then $12,000 a year working in a group home for the mentally ill in their group home. A lot of poor women work in nursing homes or in hospitals as Aides. Most of the time this is the only training offered to poor women. The work is difficult and the pay is lousy but for me the big payoff is when I help someone.
The poor people of America are often invisible except for when we are being used by both parties to make a point. One party insults us because we cannot pull ourselves up by the bootstraps and the other party offends us by giving us pity or creating helplessness. We don’t want pity and the majority of poor people do not want the Government to take care of us.
Social Workers come to your house and offend us by asking us if their cars are safe or afraid of being in the neighboorhood after dark. This is done by African American people as well as whites.
People tend to think that because we are poor we are ignorgant or stupid. They tend to think we are bad mother’s and bad pet owners. We are seen as lazy because after all we are unable to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps. We are pitied and people tend to portray us as having terrible and sad lives. I do not have a tragic life even though I have suffered and have overcome great obsticles. Most of the obstacles I have had to overcome were because of my gender, my race, or where I am from.
I haven’t suffered to greatly because I am poor. I am actually quite happy with my life. I have an unbelievable support system and I have a job I love. My kids have grown up and have not gotten lost to the Streets. I have beautiful children and grandchildren and a colony of cats that I rescue. I wouldn’t change positions with anyone.
Poor women have a support system that is amazing. The end of the month may come and families are starting to run out of food. I may have bread but no butter, someone else may have butter but no
bread, another person may have koolaid no sugar and a fourth person may have sugar no koolaid but we all put it together and everyone eats. Someone in the Community needs help and the entire community comes together to help the family in need. A “rent” party will be thrown to help someone who may be facing eviction where we make food and serve “pop”. We also support each other emotionally. We really don’t care about race as there are a lot of white women here as well as African American women and frankly poverty isn’t racist it hits everyone regardless of race or religion.
I wouldn’t have been able to achieve the things I have without the support of other poor women. I may not have a lot of things but money cannot buy you happiness.
If I could teach non poor people one thing about poor people its that we are just the same as you we have joy and sadness, laughter and tears, and love and anger. Don’t be uncomfortable or feel guilty when you see us. There is nothing to feel guilty about and please leave the pity at the door.
Why must other women bring down other women? Why must they talk down and lie about other women!
It needs to stop!
Thank you for a glimpse into your life. Everyone has struggles and it is wonderful to know that everyone can find happiness regardless. It is also important to know that poverty is more likely to lay at the feet of a woman than a man; and that women do find that their community is more likely to bring them up than bureaucrats in D.C.
I read this post on a blog somewhere else and believed it summarized things quite effectively, basically the ignorance of people in a capitalist system:
“Poverty is fundamentally an environmental condition. The wildcard is luck, timing and the individual’s ability to discipline him/herself to theoretically make the best decision every time he/she has the opportunity to gain ground. Most poor people just don’t have the combination of luck/timing/discipline to rise above the water line. Where people turn judgemental is when they presuppose the idea that poor people are ONLY poor because of their lack of discipline, while dismissing the overriding environmental disenfrachisement. The reality is that many of these finger-pointers would themselves not have the discipline to pull themselves out of that situation either, and are in fact only in a position of priviledge as a function of timing, luck and environmental position of advantage, but not due to their discipline.
A civil society effectively accepts the opportunity cost that not everybody’s will is made of steel and would rise to the occassion. The US is of course, NOT a civil society when it comes to economic classes. The operating reality of America is based on the ability of people to rise above other people; you cannot rise to capital riches without denying someone else the ability to put food on the table. We mislabel poverty as a character flaw, and give no credence to environmental realities. Of course this is overkill, since as a function of simple economics the american mantra is somewhat oxymoronic, as capitalism capped by scarcity is a scenario where the best we can attain is a society where there are rich people and poor people, and NOT a utopian scenario where everybody can be well off. In order for people to be well off in this country there has to be people not well off, but the difference is that only in this country we call out poor people as morally flawed and disregard the environmental factors that keep them poor and could keep us poor too if the dice would have fallen different.”
Great piece Helen. Thanks for giving TNA a very needed POV. We look forward to having your voice here frequently!
An inspiring article. What a beautiful description of neighbor helping neighbor. I witnessed that kind of spirit growing up in a rural, farming community where no one was wealthy, and some were very poor. People were given the support they needed. If there was victim blaming by the adults, I was never aware of it.
This article serves as an excellent reminder that people should be define by who they are, not what they have. And, I love the last sentence., ” There is nothing to feel guilty about and please leave the pity at the door.”
Excellent article.
What I wonder though is what I call the “male factor”. Why men are paid more invariably? Because there is nothing inherent in the jobs that men do that would warrant they be paid more; yet fields dominated by men are paid more, and those fields that women work alongside men, the men are still paid more. Education isn’t the common denominator. Labor isn’t the common denominator. Dangerousness isn’t the common denominator. The common denominator seems to be the male. If women begin to populate a field, its worth in the eyes of the public decreases, and thus the salary. Education, yes even B.A’s, meant something before. Women were kept out of higher education, as women are kept out of most things so as not to make the men look bad. Now women get most of the degrees and a degree is almost worthless, though the cost of one has not decreased. As long as society keeps making women worthless, while women have full citizen rights, the economy can only suffer.
Poor men still get paid more than women; the idea being he has to make a living and she does not. But that isn’t the case in reality. In reality, women are the ones raising full families on their salary, unable to have the American dream.
Capitalism is a system that can not thrive on discrimination towards any of its full citizens, much less 50%.
Please take a moment to check out my documentary film BLACK HAIR
It is free at youtube. 6 parts including an update from London, England.
It explores the Korean Take-over of the Black Beauty Supply and Hair biz..
The current situation makes it hard to believe that Madame C.J. Walker once ran the whole thing.
I am not a hater, I am a motivator.
Plus I am a White guy who stumbled upon this, and felt it was so wrong I had to make a film about it.
self-funded film, made from the heart.
Can it be taken back?
Link
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p96aaTSdrAE
This post with a sad title actually ended up very uplifting. I like your story about how the women of your community support each other. Also I like your challenging stereotypes about poor women. Great post!
I particularly like the description of both parties approaches. we used to think the democrats need the poor as a voting block and that would be the reason for the pity and big government. I wonder what is happening these days with the new alliances the democrats are forming. Are they needing the poor less as voting block but more as excuse for big government.
It pays to read Helen’s article more than once. It’s my feeling that poor women are the real feminist in this country, and around the globe. They are the ones with a “fighting history”, and they fight for human rights for all.
What they have is “emotional strength”……necessary for survival in their neighborhoods. What makes me care even more is the love, the respect they show each other, be it in friendship, by helping others make a “home from the
heart”, and not a home of hate. Providing for the children, struggling to feed, pay rent, buy clothes, and needs, such as mourning when they lose a child, or when children are orphaned, or be it when women are battered.
You cannot destroy the poor women’s pride, you cannot do it.
I feel that lack of opportunity, and not being compensated, and being underpaid is so frustrating. I wonder if high technology has on one hand been hell for poor women, and on the other, it’s allowed women to plant their two feet down, those two feet that Mama gave us, and move us to be like Helen, and share our experiences even if we are poor, or as some say unsophisticated, and
uneducated, we are your patriotic women, we give our sons, our daughters
to fight for the rights of freedom in this Country.
Thank you for the conversation Helen, we will survive, and do our best!
Fannie,
Beautiful comment!
Women’s advocacy clearly can learn a lot from what is happening in Helen’s neighborhood. Thanks goodness we have Helen’s voice to teach us!
I want to thank you all for the nice comments. I wanted to write the truth about poor women because of all the negative press and ideas about the poor. We are not hopeless I actually have hope and dreams.
I also thank TNA for giving a voice to all women even poor women who are often ignored by both women’s groups and African American groups. I feel that is sad that no one ever thinks of asking us what we think or how we feel. I am so happy that TNA did just that.
I loved this article! It was obviously written from the heart, and conveyed great strength, as well as vulnerability. I was delighted to see how much we have in common, Helen – working in the mental-health field, having more month than money sometimes, cats, kids, and the happiness that comes from having a loving support network. I hope you keep sharing your considerable writing talent with TNA, and look forward to your next contribution!
Excellent article. Certainly, I and most other people recognize the dignity and grace that comes when people persevere through difficult circumstances, and being poor certainly qualifies as difficult circumstances. You and your close-knit community should be deservedly proud.
Wow, I really appreciate Helen’s article, and Fannie’s comment. I believe you are right about the “fighting spirit” of poor women, Fannie. Maybe they aren’t the only real feminists, but they are damn fine ones, the kind of feminists who “get” the value of unity because we live it every day. I just got out of poverty myself earlier this year, and I’m already back in the ranks, trying to pull out a few more to join me. This is what we do, as Helen so beautifully pointed out. Thank you Helen for sharing this.
Well said Helen, thank you. Poor, rich, or somewhere in between; we live the same life. We grow and learn, we struggle and rejoice, we laugh and cry, we dance and sometimes we stumble, we are needy and often we are needed, – but most important of all, we LOVE. Our love for one another, as your article reminds us, costs nothing and is worth more then all the other riches of the world.
This is great. I’d like to see more articles like this one.
Helen said this very nicely. I also think http://www.poormagazine.com says it quite well, and things that should be said.
Jesus said “The poor you always have with you” (approximately). Judas, who was a thief & betrayer, feigned concern for the poor, and there’s a WHOLE lot of that going around. He also talked about the poor in spirit (vs., I presume proud), and carried the common purse, I gather. In the end, he sold Jesus down the river for the price of a slave.
I’ve spent a lot of time around homeless people in the past several years since a restraining order was removed, a few years out the door of a violent relationship, the “control” part of which was restricting access to work, bank account, credit (first thing to go) and basic infrastructure. After a decade (approximately) of that, it wasn’t too hard to recognize similar behaviors, belying the words, in the set of a whole bunch of people, most of who had not walked a single mile in these shoes (violence, poverty, and trying to extract some wonderful children from the situation without forking over civil rights, and/or the kids). I’m working on not joining the ranks. We went from Food Stamps to Family Law to Felony Child-stealing (unreported) and no access to the Victim Compensation help, back to job loss and back to food stamps. Along the while I became an activist feminist, still-Christian (but I have a word for some of the non-reporting, non-intervening, “get-down-woman” pastors, also, who knew about this violence in the home situation) still Mother. But the courts won’t enforce, and my ex (still stalking) knows this, and so I had to let my kids go to this situation, and one has aged out since.
I don’t have much agenda in commenting here except to comment that with all time I spent seeking help from some system, OR some nonprofit, in SF Bay Area (Oakland-East Bay/Contra Costa), after functioning just fine in South Side Chicago (while single, though), I find it really odd that the experts don’t invite the people going through this system to their conferences, policy-sessions, and most of us can’t afford half the publications.
I worked most of my adult, single, life for nonprofits restoring arts/music to the schools that the govt took out. I kept a trickle of this alive during marriage, and was threatened for it. On filing a restraining order, I REJOICED to get it together again and back to music. Then we went to the family law system, and all I can say is, you don’t “fix” systems like this, you research their history, their practices, and then you dismantle them before more kids are hurt worse.
The very key to understanding dysfunctional systems IS their dysfunction. It’s there for a reason, and until the reason is understood, not much is going to change. There’s also a reason for the dysfunction of family law, besides the obvious nonstop cash machine (wealth transfer), and trafficking, sometimes literally I believe, in kids. Well, that’s probably the main goal. But the method can be seen in the history page of the AFCC, when it talks about getting rid of the “old” language of criminal law and replacing it with new terminology more suitable to farming out due process to others.
My support system during the trip through the system (and I’m not “through” yet, although it’s been 6 years of hearings, and 10 years almost since I separated) were music colleagues (church was a non-entity when they were enabling and endorsing the wife-battering etc. to start with, and I’m not talking just one….). They wore out sometime after my kids were stolen on an overnight visitation, which is a felony in this state. When the police refused open the door to call it that (or return the kids, or prosecute), the door closed to any victim compensation funding.
So, like I say, there’s a method to the madness, both in individual families, in single systems (like family law) and in the more overall systems, as we find in communities. I haven’t fully resolved how to solve this, but am looking for a way to get to my own daughters, leave a trail of truth in case something happens between now and then, and waiting for the return of the Lord, but I don’t JUST wait, I act, and talk, and blog, and network.
I think Irene Weiser // Stop Family Violence is on the right track, talkinga bout family law. I just have a problem with exclusivity in conferences, and being order to jump on some kind of alert, when women I know are already and still, and long-term, dealing with trauma, homelessness (yes, we have homeless on the list, did you know?), stalking, PERSONAL risk-assessment ongoing, and repeated job loss in combination with the systems assigned to help, their doors are closed.
I watched fatherhood funding for so long, but recently I’ve been seeing a lot of Violence Against Women grants I’d like to see which women, precisely, they are helping. A recent (June ’09) NIJ “special report” on DV research notes that intimate partner homicides against women are NOT going down, although other kinds are (for exact quote see link — I just added it under “2009″). Sometimes all some of us need (when extended family is participating in the abuse) is timely economic help and just a LITTLE longer in the safety zone. . . . . For example, a 5-year restraining order would’ve done it for me. I was within months of self-sufficiency as the 3-year one expired out here (Alameda County, California). When my batterer wanted it defeated, someone told himi where/how to do this. The answer was, the family law venue. It happened the same day. Mediation, and that was that. No stability, no protection, no enforcement, and where’s then the recovery? I wasn’t going to leave the state with my kids in another home there…. Then when you watch police, who are supposed to protect, lie, and they get laid off in their own departments for raping female colleagues, what gives? ??
Anyhow, hope the comment was helpful, maybe some folks curious about the new agenda (WHAT “new agenda? I have the same old one — getting free from domestic violence, i.e., in a safe place, and teaching my daughters that it’s unacceptable for any man to assault a woman, particularly because of her gender. That they ARE equal under the law and on here in life with their own calling and purpose, and not to support a man who’d rather not work, or be used to punish another woman who thought he as a father should, and did something about it. And who also took a stand against insanity, namely, being thrown and slapped around and calling that “marriage.”
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