Week 8: Difficulties with a Challenging Text

A challenging text for me :

I chose the article “The Facts about Poverty in America” by Robert Rector, a senior research fellow in domestic policy at the conservative Heritage Foundation:

The Facts About Poverty in America

I chose this article because I know that Robert Rector is what Mother Jones magazine has called a “poverty denier,” someone who claims to be a scholar, but who uses “research” to undermine the severity of America’s poverty crisis and to belittle those who identify as “poor” by showing that the poor are, in fact, not so badly off. Rector’s thesis is that “The facts about poverty . . . are clear: America’s poor are supported by an enormous and expensive government safety net.” He then goes on to describe the 70 welfare or anti-poverty programs operated by the federal government and to claim that $910 billion was spent on these programs in 2011 (which comes to about $9000 for each lower-income American, according to Rector).

Rector panders to his audience to create fear that Obama will continue to increase spending on welfare, spending that “the poor” actually don’t need: “of course, it is not unreasonable for welfare spending to rise during a recession. But the big secret is that, under Obama’s budget plans, this spending will not go back down when the recession ends.” Rector projects that by 2017, the U.S. will spend two dollars on welfare for every dollar spent on national defense. Rector claims that taxpayers will bear the brunt of this spending.

In order to show why this spending is unnecessary, Rector then launches into an attack on lower-income Americans, to demonstrate that they are not actually “poor” according to the traditional definition. Here is a sample of Rector’s argument:

“Last year the Census Bureau reported that 46 million Americans were poor.  For most Americans, the word “poverty” suggests near destitution: an inability to provide one’s family with nutritious food, clothing and reasonable shelter. However, only a small number of the millions classified as “poor” by the government fit that description. Although real material hardship does occur, it is limited in scope and severity.

Here are some facts about persons defined as “poor” by the Census Bureau, taken from various government reports:

•    80 percent of poor households have air conditioning.
•    Nearly three-fourths have a car or truck, and 31 percent have two or more cars or trucks.
•    Nearly two-thirds have cable or satellite television.
•    Half have a personal computer, and one in seven have two or more computers.
•    43 percent have Internet access.
•    One-third have a wide-screen plasma or LCD television.
•    One-fourth have a digital video recorder system, such as a TiVo.
•    More than half of poor families with children have a video game system, such as an Xbox or PlayStation.

Although the mainstream media spread alarming stories about widespread hunger in the nation, in reality most of the poor do not experience hunger or food shortages. The U.S. Department of Agriculture tells us that 96 percent of poor parents report their children were never hungry at any time during the year because they couldn’t afford food.”

So, according to Rector, it is the media’s fault that we think we have a poverty “crisis,” because even the lowest-income Americans are not suffering too much. Rector blames the welfare system for destroying the desire to find employment, and he blames the decline of marriage for child poverty (based upon a stereotypical notion that single parenthood inevitably leads to poverty). He believes that a “proactive campaign” should be launched to restore marriage across America. This leaves me to ask, is being able to purchase (relatively inexpensive) material items the only way to measure poverty and wealth? What about access to health care, a living wage, and living without debt? These factors are never considered in Rector's analysis.

My difficulties with this text:

I have a diffiulty “making meaning” of this text because I fundamentally disagree with Rector’s premises that having material possessions means that poverty does not exist, and that marriage inevitably alleviates poverty. I also disagree that receiving welfare benefits destroys a desire to find work, or that marriage would increase as a result of a political campaign. I think this difficulty has to do with the general repertoire of the text (its conservative, anti-government point of view) and my own general repertoire (very liberal, a supporter of the Green Party, and critical of corporate capitalism). So before even reading Rector’s “facts,” I knew that I would most likely not agree with them, since I usually disagree with other reports and “research” on the Heritage Foundation’s website (although I have found the website useful for providing diverse perspectives in the classroom). I resent that Rector purports to be a valid scholar, but uses his research to promote biased and partisan ideas.

I think the fundamental point of disagreement is that Rector opposes government’s attempts to help those in need, while I believe we should have a social safety net. Moreover, I know from personal observations and my own research that welfare does not necessarily destroy the desire to work or to achieve upward mobility. See, for example, the recent column in The New York Times from a former welfare recipient:

I Was a Welfare Mother

I’m not entirely sure how to overcome this difficulty, since I admittedly have a bias against most of the views promoted by the Heritage Foundation. One strategy for overcoming it might be to examine the underlying assumptions that I bring to the issue, and that Rector brings to it, and to try to understand the motivations and assumptions behind Rector’s argument. Maybe he wants every American to be self-sufficient, independent, and to create their own opportunities? Yet this just doesn’t seem realistic in a world where systemic inequalities and discrimination continue to play a role in who succeeds and who falls behind. So I guess it’s hard for me to completely overcome my bias since I don’t think Rector is seeing the world in a realistic (or humanitarian) way.

I also resist embracing this article because I think Rector lacks a basic empathy for human suffering, and this seems to point to a deeper failure of morality that I can't quite accept. It reminds me of Mitt Romney's comment about the "47%" of Americans who don't pay federal income taxes (and, in fact, Rector happens to be the Romney campaign's main advisor on welfare!); both approaches reveal a dismissive perspective of the "have-nots" and a lack of willingness to help those in need.