It must be known first that I am a pediatrician. I practice in a blue-collar community in Oregon, and I enjoy a richly diverse mix of patient families liberal and conservative, religious and secular, urban and rural, and from all colors of the human rainbow.
Thirty percent of my practice lives in poverty or near-poverty, and qualifies for Medicaid (in Oregon, the Oregon Health Plan) and for the Women, Infants, & Children (WIC) program. Most of the remainder of my practice is solidly middle-class, though within my practice I have several obscenely wealthy families.
It is about one of these families, about a parent of this family, that I write today.
You see, this family enjoys fabulous wealth. They are a kind family, and raise their children well, albeit strictly. They are devoutly Catholic, and send their children to the finest Catholic schools. God and Jesus are often brought up in conversation during appointments.
And they are devoutly Republican, and have been guests of the current occupant at the White House on more than one occasion. Needless to say, they are major financial supporters.
Earlier today, at an office visit for a well-child examination, one parent said something to me that has since "stuck in my craw", as my father often says. Upon witnessing the departure of a large and quite obviously impoverished family from the office, the parent said to me "Those poor people just have a lot of children so that they can get more of my money. They don’t want to work. They just want to stay poor."
After picking my jaw up from off of my examination room floor, I proceed to inform the parent that, in fact, both of the parents of that family were employed full-time. The parents in question were hard-working, loving to their children, and dedicated for as long as I’d known them to attending together each of their children’s appointments.
I admired these parents, I continued, for doing the best with what they had, for standing on their own two feet, for trying if not always succeeding to do right, and to do good by their children.
The wealthy parent mumbled something about speaking too soon, without really apologizing, before moving on to the concerns of the appointment. I moved on, as well, having over my many years as a physician become skilled at pivoting toward and away from touchy subjects.
But my mind cannot let it go.
What is it with some (many?) conservatives and Republicans with the blame-the-victim rhetoric? With the animosity towards the less fortunate among us? With the "I’ve got mine, you’re on your own" mentality? With the taking of no interest in the troubles of others?
What is it with a society that at best feels sorry for the plight of the poor while feeling no sense of responsibility for their troubles, and at worst lays the blame for poverty on poor people themselves?
And what happened to the Christian principles of justice, mercy, compassion and humility? I am not Christian, therefore am I wrong in understanding that the direct imperative to help the poor lies at the heart of the Judeo-Christian ethic? Do not the Scriptures spend an overwhelming amount of their time on the poor?
As I understand it, Jesus spoke for the dispossessed, the widows, and the orphans. The hungry, the homeless, and the helpless. The least, the last, and the lost.
As I understand it, Jesus proclaimed his ministry was to "bring good news to the poor, to proclaim freedom for the prisoners, recovery of sight for the blind, and to release the oppressed." He put first those whom society counted least, and put last.
It galls me the hypocrisy of those who claim to "walk" with Jesus yet who run away from those for whom Jesus spoke.
How can one worship a God that one does not see, and then ignore or even cynically mock his people that one does see? Doesn’t walking with God mean take care of the widow, the orphan, and even the stranger who live among us? Doesn’t it mean opening your hands and hearts widely to the poor? Doesn’t it mean seeing to it that justice is neither influenced by money or class?
On this, I could but won’t go on.
On poverty, let me just say that I have come to believe that it is best understood not through the inadequacies of the poor but rather through the inadequacies of our governmental policies, and our national priorities.
I also believe that the widespread and worsening poverty within our borders is unwise, unjust, and intolerable. Each of us directly and indirectly pays a high price for allowing poverty to walk in our midst.
Poverty means the spreading of disease, the degradation of ecosystems, the rising of health care expenditures, the ill-education of our children and our workforce, the incitement of social violence and drug abuse, the breaking of families, and the abuse and neglect of our young.
All bad for all.
The more I look at it, the more I see that the question isn’t whether we can afford to help the poor, but whether we can afford not to. Our current path of apathy is a far more expensive road to take than the one that aggressively reduces the extent of poverty. We have the wallet – can we find the will?
Thank you for reading. I plan this weekend to write this parent a letter. In it, I will undoubtedly include some parts of my rant here. Your advice for what I should say will be much appreciated.