Fighting Stereotypes about Poverty While Avoiding Oversimplification

In the last two days I have read two pieces that provide radically different views of government programs and their use by those in poverty.  On the one hand there was a piece on Slate by Neil deMause which looked at the way Georgia has managed its Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program so that few families enroll relative to the number of poor in the state.  This piece clearly paints the state administrators as mean spirited and depriving potential clients of needed services. On the other hand Nicholas Kristof from the New York Times writes about families in Jackson, Kentucky pulling their children out of reading programs so they can continue to qualify as intellectually disabled and thus garner the family additional payments.  This strategy does not need much analysis to be seen as a horrible way to exploit a program at the cost of children’s future.

Taking these two pieces together make me understand how hard it is to simplify and generalize about the issues involved here.  Where I teach, at an independent school with  a yearly tuition of $25,000 or so, the students in my class usually have no firsthand experience of being in poverty although they may have observed poverty as part of service learning opportunities.  I often hear comments about the lives of the poor being easy because of government provided food, housing, and other benefits.  I also hear complaints about the poor lacking the work ethic (undermined by government programs) to move up in society.  The challenge comes in when I want to ask students to question those assumptions, but I do not want to error on the other side by painting a picture where all those in poverty are striving nobly against a hostile economic system.  The challenge is to teach nuance–always a grand difficulty.

Soup Kitchen Line (Getty Images picture from Slate)

Sophia, Disney’s First Latina Princess (or not)

Hanging out with my daughter watching other Disney shows, I have seen promotional clips for TV movie featuring Sophia, Disney’s most recent princess.  In looking at the clips, I had no idea she was Disney’s first Latina princess.

I know race is a social construct and one cannot tell another person’s race by looking, but I was still surprised.  Now looking at picture of Sophia’s family, I get that she is Latina on her mother Miranda’s side.

Having realized this fact, I also now have a new controversy to follow.  According to this CNN piece there has been criticism of Sophia for not being Latina enough, comments that focus on her skin tone and her being voiced by a white actor.  On the other hand, others have welcomed her as representative of diversity both in America and in the Latino/a community.

It is always interesting to see how much weight people give to the representations of imaginary people from imaginary places.  Here is a Disney spokesperson talking about Sophia’s origins:

“The range of characters in ‘Sofia the First’ — and the actors who play them — are a reflection of Disney’s commitment to diverse, multicultural and inclusive storytelling, and the wonderful early reaction to ‘Sofia’ affirms that commitment. In the story, Sofia’s mother, Queen Miranda, was born in a fictitious land, Galdiz, a place with Latin influences. Miranda met Sofia’s father, Birk Balthazar, who hailed from the kingdom of Freezenberg, and together they moved to Enchancia, where Sofia was born.”

As many commentators have said, I see this controversy as reminiscent of the controversy over Tiana the first black Disney princess.  People complained that her prince, Naveen, was not clearly black, and her role model possibilities were reduced because she was a frog for most of the movie

 

Update: Disney now says the produce spoke in error and Sophia is not Latina.

This American Life: Hello Philippines?

Listening to last week’s This American Life podcast “Switcheroo,”  I noticed that the Philippines played a prominent role.  First, the Philippines were the source of cheap labor in the story about outsourcing local journalism and reporting.   The piece talked of how a company providing local news content has farmed out writing responsibilities to Filipino writers paid cents per article.   Additionally, they did not get credit for the articles, instead having to select generic traditionally American sounding computer generated pseudonyms.  This American Life also gave the writers a limited voice, reaching out to contact one but only quoting him saying a single word.

Second, in the final piece in the show, the Philippines were the source of a mail-order bride who did not take a maternal interest in her new stepdaughter. This mail-order bride later sued her stepchildren for possession of the family home when her husband took up with another Filipino bride and fled to the Philippines. The entire piece is a narrative from the stepdaughter and except for a brief fact checking epilogue, no other source is presented and the brides have no voice.

Taken together, the listener gets a view of the Philippines as a source of oppressed workers with limited options open to being exploited by Americans.  Also, the stories reinforce the sense of Filipinos as low-cost laborers willing to make money in ways the average American would not accept.  What listeners do not get is a sense of Filipinos as authors of their own stories, as speakers in their own voice.

I know this show was not meant as a piece on the Philippines, but it did strike me in a way as a microcosm of the history of American interactions with the Philippines, interactions that have involved imperial occupation and an unwillingness to listen to authentic Filipino leadership.  See Stanley Karnow’s “In Our Image: America’s Empire in the Philippines” for details.

“Bougie Lettuce”: A Great Piece on Food and Culture

Veronica Marche-Miller’s piece, “Bougie Lettuce, Or Why I Stopped Trying to Change my Family’s Diet” is a great meditation on culture and food.  I can totally imagine the scene when her relatives want lettuce and she offers them mixed greens, leading them to call the greens “Bougie lettuce” and go to the store to get iceberg lettuce.   I especially like the way she traces her progress from culinary to crusader to acceptance that her family’s habits aren’t that bad after all.  She also ruminates on “food culture” and what food can represent, something I heard about in a totally different context yesterday in church when the sermon considered food and faith, and the role of food in the receptions after funerals.

Her argument could of course be taken the wrong way to excuse any and all unhealthy family traditions.  It seems her family specializes in traditional home cooked food that is in its way already healthy.  However, were I to claim that Stouffers frozen dinners, what I grew up eating,  were family culture and insist on consuming boil in the bag Swedish Meatballs, my actions would be the height of absurdity.

Let us analyze the cultural, culinary, and nutritional meaning of this salad.

NFL Player Gets Time off to Support Wife

Who would have thought it, but the NFL’s Jacksonville Jaguars gave a player, Aaron Ross, time off from training camp to support his wife.  I was amazed when I heard this.  Missing training camp?  That experience of communal suffering is crucial as it is time to practice as a team developing cohesion and an understanding of responsibilities on the field.  Still, the Jaguars will let Ross go…

It probably helps that Sanya Richard-Ross is a top American Olympic athlete and Ross will be going to London to watch her.  The Jaguars also have made an effort to recruit free agent athletes with stable family situations thinking that those players will have the support to focus on the game.  Of all NFL teams, it makes sense they would do this.  It also helps that there will probably be positive publicity for this move.

Regardless of the reasoning, this decision still gives a great opening for all the men out there negotiating for time off to support their families.  If XYZ Corporation does not give one time off for a family commitment, just say that if an NFL player can miss training camp to support his wife, can’t you miss some time in the cubical?