By Robert Dilday
Attitudes toward poverty are strongly influenced by class distinctions and experience, and frequently lead to misrepresentations of the poor, say two couples who operate a Christian community building organization in a low-income neighborhood of Charlotte, N.C.
“There is a myth that has been part of American society since the beginning that if you find yourself in need, you just have to lift yourself up by the bootstraps,” said Jason Williams.
But many poor Americans find that assumption flawed, said Williams, confirming Martin Luther King Jr.’s comment that “it is a cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps.”
Williams and his wife, Joan, and Greg and Helms Jarrell are members of the Hyaets Community, which ministers to the poor and marginalized in Charlotte’s Enderly Park neighborhood. The four – all graduates of Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond – led several of the 75 workshops held during the March 23-24 general assembly of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of North Carolina.
“We make a distinction between situational poverty and generational poverty,” said Williams. “Generational poverty affects at least three generations of a family. Sometimes I hear people say they lived through the Great Depression and so know about poverty. But that was situational poverty. People who have lived through three generations [of poverty] develop a specific way of looking at the world.”
That worldview is significantly different from perspectives developed among middle and upper classes, said Helms Jarrett, who distributed a check list of skills required to live in each category.
Those in poverty, for instance, know:
- Which grocery stores’ garbage bins can be accessed for thrown-away food.
- How to live with electricity and a phone.
- How to keep clothes from being stolen at a laundromat.
The middle classes know:
- How to properly set a table and order in a nice restaurant.
- How to help their children with homework and to call the school if additional information is needed.
- The difference among principal, interest and escrow statements on house payments.
In the upper classes, people:
- Know how to enroll their children in preferred private schools.
- Can read a menu in French, English and another language.
- Know how to host parties attended by “key” people.
“Poverty is about surviving every day,” said Jarrett. “This is the only way they can view the world.”
Both the Williamses and the Jarretts agreed the middle and upper class mindset is primarily about achievement – owning a house or planning for retirement – while that of the poor is much more about relationships – feeding other people’s children or dealing with unsupportive partners.
Their relational approach is at times closer to biblical values, said Williams. “The Bible says not to worry about tomorrow because it will take care of itself,” he said. “My neighbors don’t worry about tomorrow at all. They don’t store up treasures on earth – they value people. They often give everything they have at any given time to those around them.”
Jesus’ observation that “the poor will always be with you” isn’t a justification to be complacent about the plight of the impoverished, Williams said. It’s a description of what Christian communities should look like.
“We tell people that in order to be the Christian community we need to have the poor around us,” said Greg Jarrett, citing the Magnificat, a prayer of Mary recorded in the Gospel of Luke. “Mary’s prayer of exaltation is to lift up those in need to God and bring down those who have too much. We lift others up but also learn the humility that God wants.”
The Hyaets Community encourages crossing of class barriers through programs like the Christian Women’s Job Corps, said Joan Williams.
“We pair up middle class people and the poor and together learn job skills,” she said. Bringing two class views together influences both, she added: “One scenario is about relationships in order to survive, the other is about achievements in order to get stability.”
Jason Williams said those perspectives need to be “layered, not replaced.”
“Some of those who live in poverty have values very close to what Jesus asks for,” he said. “Perhaps we have something to learn from them. At the same time, if the poor are going to survive in the achievement world, they need to know how to engage it.”