A new study, “Poverty and Racism: Overlapping Threats to the Common Good,” is part of Catholic Charities’ campaign to cut the U.S. poverty rate in half by 2020. It was officially released by the Rev. Larry Snyder, the group’s president, during a Mass Monday at Blessed Sacrament Cathedral in Detroit.
“We are convinced that without a conscious and proactive struggle against racism, our efforts to reduce the plague of poverty will be in vain,” the study says.
For example, the study cites evidence that the poverty rate for African Americans in the U.S. is 24 percent–three times the rate for whites. Latinos and Native Americans also suffer from poverty rates above 20 percent, according to the study.
30 years ago Catholic Charities began to deemphasize actual charity work in favor of political advocacy against “the roots of poverty”. There is certainly something to be said for that approach, but not nearly as much as CC has actually said about it. For one thing, they have become dependent on government funding for many of their services (I used do the billing for our local CC refugee services), and that carries a lot of baggage. The golden rule is true enough: them with the gold make the rules. Moreover, while it’s generally good to do good deeds, authentically Catholic (and Christian) Charity links prayer and action, feeding the body with feeding the soul, the corporal works of mercy with the spiritual works of mercy.
All of that said, and admitting I would need to read the study in question to form a firm opinion, I suspect this study is political cant more than really useful information. Racism, personal and institutional, exists and really does keep people down. The legacy of racism exists as well in broken homes, sick family systems, and deviant (i.e. criminal) thinking that correlates with poverty. However, correlation and causation are different things, which is where, I suspect, the CC study will do off the rails. Too many black people are making it financially, many better than me. We make choices in how we want to live our lives. The range of choices is not (contra advertising dogma) infinite. While it’s generally a good thing to broaden choices for most people, it’s not particularly helpful to blame external forces. It’s certainly a feel-good thing, but I question how useful it will be in really alleviating poverty.
My rather brief time working at Catholic Charities was not a bad experience. I had some friends there, but they were not Catholics, and most were not even Christians. It was a decent social service agency, although not as good as many state services I had been around. In fact, one woman I fired from our public mental health agency was working there (that was awkward!). But the agency, like many of it’s employees, was neither Catholic nor noticeably Christian.
If they focus their efforts on combatting illegitimacy & drug abuse, they will do far, far more to reduce the poverty rate than this (essentially political) campaign ever will.
It is uncontestable that the presence of a (sober) father is more important to the well-being of a family, than whoever happens to be President.
I dunno, while I do have a knee-jerk reaction to all this because of how it is presented in the Episcopal church, I trust that Catholics more. First off, many Catholic parishes truly are integrated in my area, which is a huge step up from segmentation of a Korean, White, African-American, Latino, etc Protestant segmentation. Managing that far gives the Catholics more of my ear to explore these other areas.
Not to mention crime, #2. There is a strong correlation between the level of crime in an area and the level of poverty. Of course, correlation is not causation, but you cannot have causation without correlation. And there is substantive debate over the direction of said causation.
Wilfredn and Jeffersonian,
The best way to reduce poverty is probably a few things, applied together. It’s probably not accurate to reduce poverty to one or two things (say, blaming people for making mistakes).
One cheap way of reducing illegitimacy is abortion. Steven Levitt illustrated that abortion, in this way, reduced the number of people in poverty and thus, crime.
But that’s not exactly what you’d like to hear.
“It is uncontestable that the presence of a (sober) father is more important to the well-being of a family, than whoever happens to be President.”
Easy to say. Who denies that? But why should a woman marry an unreliable man? Give men jobs that have health insurance for the entire family and you’d see marriage rates rise.
Oh – but health insurance would mean raising taxes. In essence: we want a reduction in illegitimacy and drug use, but we don’t want to pay for it.
John,
One way to reduce crime would be to apply the death penalty much more frequently to serious felons. But that’s not exactly what [i] you’d [i/] like to hear.
If illegitimacy were caused by a lack of health insurance, then bastards would be the norm, rather than the exception, throughout our history.
Believe it or not, some people do deny the importance of fathers.
Fathers do need jobs & health insurance for their families. The best way to provide jobs is with a vibrant economy, not weighed down with crushing taxation. This has been well-demonstrated over the past half-century, with the whole capitalism versus socialism thing.
Wilfred: unfortunately, there’s no evidence for your assertion about crime and the death penalty. If anything there’s evidence for the contrary. Immediately after someone is executed, there seems to be a spike in crime. Further, in states with fewer death penalty cases there seems to be less crime.
If killing people made things safer, I suppose Saudi Arabia would be the best place to live. From what I understand, however, it is fairly violent. And – alas – unless we want to take the risk of killing the occasional innocent, the death penalty costs money. That’s taxes. I admit, I always find it morally odd when people like the state to take lives rather than their money (which can be used for good things – like roads, air traffic controllers, or the like.)
You say: “If illegitimacy were caused by a lack of health insurance, then bastards would be the norm, rather than the exception, throughout our history.” You might be right. But that was at a time when women didn’t choose abortions or have access to birth control. Most women don’t want “bastards.” But if you want them to choose partners willingly, rather than have be imposed by the state (which might need taxes if it were to regulate this), then it seems you might look at human behavior rather than tyranny.
As far as denying the importance of fathers, you can go ahead and argue with whoever that person is. I’m not in that fight, nor are most of the liberal families I know, which are generally intact.
I don’t disagree that a vibrant economy is important, but you are imagining things if you think we have high taxes. Europe is doing very well with higher taxes. People are generally happier. They live longer. There is less poverty. They are healthier. Their economies are stronger than ours. They have lots of businesses (say, Mercedes and Volvo. Cadbury-Schweppes.) And you carefully avoid how our economy has been helped by our government investment in the military and NASA. That’s socialism for the military. The government helps business when it invest in businesses and gives contracts to them.
Keynes pretty much demonstrated that the government helps capitalism – if anything if you want liberty, you have to pay for it. Someone has to protect the rights we have. Otherwise, its whoever has the biggest guns.
John,
So executing violent criminals does not reduce crime, but killing innocent babies does?
This makes no sense whatsoever. In addition, it is a monstrous injustice.
You make a lot of assertions about “Europe” that are debatable. It’s a large & diverse place. I’ve been there a lot. I also spent some years in Africa, and met people there who were quite happy, but I wouldn’t want to pattern our government on that of any of those countries.
“The poor” are not objects of white men’s charity, to be “given jobs” and health insurance (they already have health care, at least in my community). In fact, they aren’t “the poor” at all, but many people who will benefit from higher expectations, opportunities, and, most of all, the respect of their choices. These are people who make choices, often poor choices, but choices none-the-less. They don’t need a bunch of white liberals indulging their need to feel pity for the masses. I’ll go one step more: “they” aren’t “they” at all. Of course, since I live and work in the inner city, I actually know quite a number of “the poor”, including any number of homeless folks. So they aren’t “they”, but “us”; but maybe that’s just me.
Two recent news reports illustrate, I think, the ridiculous lengths we go to pity people. A recent Star-Telegram article focused on “the working poor”, which happens to be a subject dear to me. Unfortunately, the picture of one family showed the big screen television in the corner and the fact that they were living in a rather nice, new home. A report on last nights news was bemoaning the fact that people in the poorer sections of Dallas have to drive THREE MILES to a chain grocery store and that makes them more likely to eat unhealthily. This is Texas, for heaven’s sake. Three miles is spitting distance. But the white people who run that television station clearly have a need and the people in south Dallas meet that need.
Here’s the bottom line: life is hard and financial “success” takes work and specific choices. I chose a profession that doesn’t pay well, but I’m making it. I live in a tiny house that’s falling apart, but that’s a choice I make. Many of “the poor” are poor because of drugs and alcohol, problems that are treatable. Many are poor because they chose to have babies without husbands. And yes, they chose this, I can name names. Behavior has consequences, and de-humanizing these folks by making them out to be victims is an abominable behavior, the consequence of which is not to help them rise up. In fact, it may keep them down. You know, now that I think about it, pity for “the poor” may be the most racist attitude of all.
Words, I think the internet isn’t helpful for conveying the cadences of what i’m saying.
Giving people jobs isn’t the same as charity. There is a lot of work to be done, after all, and streamlining health insurance would probably create lots of jobs in the private sector, jobs that are wasted in corporate administration. Our military is one of the grandest public investment examples in the world.
Second, people make choices, and they make bad choices. It seems fully reasonable to helpe people when they’ve fallen down. When a poor person gets cancer, or even my neighbor, having a community help that person financially just seems like neighborliness, not pity. Of course, given health costs, the “community” should be pretty large. That’s where the government comes in.
I didn’t mention black or white, but I will say that one excuse given for not helping others is the insinuation that welfare mothers are predominantly black.
I also think you aren’t counting accurately. what would it take for people to include the vicissitudes of normal life (say a car accident, taking an ambulance, going to a movie) to start saving. Add a credit card. A car. But count. Perfect people can do it, Words. Human beings have a tougher time. Which is why we might learn to care for each other, and together, as a country, help others.
Wilfred, look at some numbers between Europe and the US. Alas, by not raising kids in poverty, crime is reduced beforehand. The link between poverty and crime is… pretty obvious to most people except those who like to blame the poor and idealize the rich. I’m not approving of abortion.
but what is clear is that you want to get rid of abortion by strengthening the state rather than increasing economic incentives. I bet you could reduce abortion by giving all poor mothers solid health care and money for childcare. But that would mean taxes. Alas, it demonstrates how limited our willingness to support children is.
Who said anything about not helping others when they make bad choices? Having spent the major portion of my adult life in social services (public services, mostly) actually helping people, I think I know something about it. Your comments, Mr. Wilkins, do not come close to responding to what I actually wrote.
This is about people, not statistics, sentimental religious do-goodery, or grand theories of government, all of which tend toward the dehumanization of these people; it is that to which I object. They don’t exist to be objects of white, suburban liberal pity, served through vast governmental bureaucracies: they are humans to be known and cared for. Some of the folks I genuinely respect go to the night shelter and serve dinner not once a year, but once a week. They look at the folks in line, talk to them, come to know them. You might read some of Dorothy Day and, if you can get hold of it, some of the personalist philosophy of Peter Maurin. He actually lived in the shelters of New York, did day labor, and helped Dorothy Day move beyond the simplistic nostrums of her communist background.
You see, that fellow over there isn’t “the poor”, he’s Lawrence. I’ve known him for about 20 years and I don’t give him money because I know that his needs are met through SSI and public mental health services. Besides, he justs spends the money on a 40 ounce and what he needs from me is a kind word, not another beer. In my world, welfare mothers actually are mostly black. Of course, in my world, a good chunk of the people are black, so maybe my viewpoint is skewed. Is it a denial of help to note the obvious: that black families too often lack the coherency of two parents in the home and that contributes to poverty. Again, poverty is born in the heart and the home and the help we offer should be based on the way things are, not some fantasy about “the poor”. Real help should be tied to real relationships in the home, the community, the church, and so on.
I have been pilloried from the right (on this very site) for the fact that I consider some governmental aid not only helpful, but necessary. In fact, it is the public health system in my community that serves the poor quite well – I often say that my clients have better health care than I do – that makes me suspicious of schemes to drag everyone into insurance plans (public or private). Cheap sentimental “love” isn’t love, anymore than impersonal charitable giving. As I wrote above, it’s generally good to do good deeds, but as Christians, we should tie our work to prayer and our “love” to real human relationships.