Lazy, poor people and our community

The percentage of working poor in the United States continues to rise.

A good friend recently said something ignorant about a mighty fine group of ladies I know.

He showed his middle class ignorance. After telling my friend about a class where I serve as a facilitator, part of a program aimed at helping people in poverty transition into the middle class, my friend said what he thought was a joke.

“Tell all those poor people to stop being so lazy and get jobs,” he said.

I want to believe that he didn’t realize how hurtful his words cut. This friend comes from an educated middle class family that included Christian upbringing. He should know better, but how could he? He has never experienced realities people in poverty face each day.

Census data show that 21.8-percent of Mississippians live below the poverty level, compared to 14.3-percent overall in the United States. In Oktibbeha County where we live, nearly a third of all residents live in poverty.

My friend believes that only a small percentage of people living in poverty actually want to get out of it enough to do something about it. This middle class ignorance advances stereotypes against the poor.

The class I facilitate—Getting Ahead in a Just Getting’-By World—associated with Ruby K. Payne’s book, “A Framework for Understanding Poverty,” helps people in poverty learn hidden middle class rules we take for granted. In Starkville, the class brings 15 families identified as living in poverty together for two nights a week for two months, helping them build bridges from their lives now to a middle class mindset.

Of all the adults in my class, every single one works hard to support her family. None of them want handouts. They work to have the best lives possible for their children, given their current circumstances. They should be applauded for wanting better lives than what they experience each day.

For many of us in the middle class, we take for granted opportunities and relationships that have helped us get where we are today. We kid ourselves if we pretend we succeed in life based on our individual efforts alone. We also live in an ignorant (or smug) fantasyland when we show contempt for the poor, saying they should get jobs and stop burdening communities.

More and more in this state, the nation and around the world, the poor we criticize is ourselves. With U.S. living standards declining since 1970, the ever-shrinking middle class, more companies outsourcing manufacturing jobs to foreign countries and the continued economic slump, many of us in the middle class remain just a couple of paychecks from poverty ourselves.

Sure, many people in poverty suffer from many challenges, including mental illness, addiction and physical disabilities. Finding sustainable solutions to improving lives for people living in poverty isn’t easy or simple. Many churches, nonprofit organizations, government agencies, private foundations and individuals continue to work to help people carrying these challenges on their backs.

Using cable news sound bites of the latest sensational headline and stereotypes to form our views on people who live in different worlds from us only reinforces our insulated thoughts. While we may all live in the same community, most of us also live just a few minutes from worlds we don’t understand and could survive in.

The next time you or a friend says something about the lazy poor folks who won’t work, resist the temptation. Instead, give thanks that you have never experienced a life of poverty or no longer do. After that, you may want to help someone who has his or her hand up, trying to find a way out of poverty’s quicksand. 


Urban Ministries of Durham has a wonderful game to see how you could make it for a month in poverty. Click here to visit the site.

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