What do poor people look like?
Perhaps the designers of the latest Harvest for Hunger ad don’t know people who are poor. The ad, which thanks everyone who contributed to the latest Harvest for Hunger Campaign, prominently features a of photo of a young girl sitting in front of a meal.
I imagine the design committee’s discussion as follows:
“A child who is neither too white, nor too Black.”
“She shouldn’t smile, but we don’t want her to look too sad either.”
“How can we make it clear that she’s poor?”
“I got it,” says one. “Let’s give her bed-head.”
The result is a hackneyed stereotype of the poor — a child whose hair is messy, a stand-in for dirty, which is just a short walk to laziness. Not far behind laziness is dishonesty. Charles Dickens couldn’t have done better.
“Please, sir? Can I have some more?” pathetically begs Oliver Twist in a room full of dirty, thieving orphans.
There is plenty we can do as a nation and a state to help the poorest of our citizens build lives that take them out of poverty. For starters, our country should fully fund SNAP, otherwise known as food stamps, which is nine times better at delivering food to hungry people than food banks.
I also applaud Gov. Mike DeWine for recently promoting the science of teaching reading and the importance of strong schools. As he’s pointed out, a qualified workforce attracts businesses to Ohio.
There is also much important work to be done locally. In fact, that’s often where the greatest impact occurs.
I worked this past school year in an Akron Public Schools’ elementary building with some of the poorest students in the district. These students may have many underserved needs, but they are as clean and well-groomed as any student body in an affluent district.
And most of children in the school where I tutor come from families that clearly love them — even the students whose parents do not prioritize getting their children to school regularly.
How do I know? Because of the way these students engage with others — openly and without fear, the way children who are regularly spoken to as full humans interact with other adults.
One 6-year-old girl, whom I reassigned to my more advanced reading group, told me her mother was fired for getting into a fight at work. This girl draws whenever she’s given the chance. Her drawings of people show an understanding of proportion and detail combined with heartwarming whimsy. In her portrait of me, I sport cat ears and a tail, along with my glasses.
An older student, whose family lacks permanent housing, loves to read. She is chronically absent and likely wouldn’t need tutoring if she attended regularly. When she is in school, she seeks me out and we often talk about the books she’s reading.
The math program I teach to four fourth grade boys includes a story about a boy who was given money by his grandparents and then spent it on foolish things until he was broke.
“Why doesn’t he go around and mow his neighbors’ lawns?” these 9-year-olds adamantly suggested.
“That’s what he should do,” they said, indicating that working is a no-brainer solution.
Contrary to what some believe, poverty is complex, particularly multigenerational poverty.
In his book, “Rosa Lee,” based upon his Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative series for the Washington Post, Leon Dash provides an extended, and often harrowing, profile of a woman and family shackled in multigenerational poverty.
The book includes sociological research on what led to the Great Migration, in which Black Americans left the South in large numbers starting in 1910. Dash then explores the history of those who, like Rosa Lee’s family, settled in Washington D.C.
Rosa Lee had eight children and a life filled with the struggles of the underclass, including crimes related to addiction and sex work. What she was not, however, was dirty or lazy. Her small Section 8 apartment housed several family members. It was always spotless.
By the end of the seventh chapter of “Rosa Lee,” the stories of her and her family were so unendingly bleak, I didn’t know if I could finish the book.
Fortunately, Chapter 8 highlights two of Rosa Lee’s children who rose out of poverty. Each credits an adult who reached out to them when they were children. For one it was a social worker, for the other it was a teacher.
Again I ask, what do poor people look like? In my experience, mostly like everyone else.
Poverty is not an unsolvable problem. Strong national and state policies combined with local outreach can effect substantial change. Dismissing those among us who are poor as unworthy of our time and help for any reason is not just morally wrong, it is a loss of opportunity for everyone.
This was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on Sunday, June 11, 2023.
Whoopsie Piggle 
Well said succinct commentary