With the disaster in Haiti in the news, and the terrible situation on the reservations in South Dakota, and efforts to bring relief to those stricken in those areas, I've been thinking a lot lately about how charity affects its recipients over the long term.
First a little bit of background about me. I grew up in Appalachia at a time before President Johnson's war on poverty. My immediate family would have met anyone's reasonable definition of poor, though we never thought of ourselves as such. It wasn't bad in many ways. We bought much of our food directly from farmers, we only had meat as a main course on Sunday (it was too expensive otherwise), and we grew vegetables to supplement what we could buy. so the food itself was pretty healthy. We were way ahead of the curve on healthy eating. And we had a roof over our heads. My dad would have wanted me to mention that.
But much wasn't so good, as you might imagine. The schools were terrible. I was one of the few to go to college from my town, and I spent the first two years there catching up to the other students. Even though I grew up in a VERY small town, the neighborhood was dangerous. We were the only family in town with indoor plumbing, but the water was so bad we had to keep a cloth over the spigots to catch the debris that came out. The water was not treated. We couldn't afford to buy clothes, so we got hand me downs from the neighbors. Even the underwear, I'm sorry to admit. And we had a lot of trouble in the family itself that was directly related to being poor. [Not the topic of this diary.]
One other thing about me, in the way of a caveat. I don't have any psychology degree, though I have been in therapy for 18 years, and I am contemplating becoming a therapist after I retire. I am no expert on this issue. I am merely relating my observations of charity's effect on the poor, so please take this diary with the amount of salt necessary to make it palatable.
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My mom's sister lost her husband to a heart attack when I was four. He left a wife who was never capable of holding down a job, and seven kids. Because they had no income, they relied entirely on the generosity of the Catholic Church, family and neighbors. So, as I grew up, I got to observe how being poor affected my family with its limited income and handouts, and my aunt's family.
Except for a few people I've met, everyone has an ego, and the ego has many needs, such as to be loved, to be wanted, to be needed, to feel important, to feel unique, to feel safe, to feel powerful, to feel independent, and many more. But maybe for this discussion, the most important is to feel in control of your life.
Having your survival depend entirely on the generosity of others affects many of these needs. How can you feel independent if someone else pays the rent? How can you feel safe if it is up to others whether or not you eat tonight? How can you feel in control when you have a total lack of control rubbed in your face every day?
You do it by changing how you think of charity.
They are no longer helping you. They are giving you what you deserve. They are not handouts. They are payment on the debt that society owes. If you say you need money for something and you don't get it, you get angry. How dare they withhold!
I watched this happen to my cousins. It got kind of ugly at times. When their car needed repairs, my dad would give them the money, when he could. When he couldn't, they got angry. This happened many times over many things.
As they grew up and started their own families, I drifted away from them, so I don't know the details of how they were affected by their early experiences. But I do know they did not stay dependent of "welfare". I think welfare dependency is a myth for the most part.
I guess my point is, charity is a good thing when the need is dire, but medium to long term need has deleterious effects on people that I don't see discussed anywhere but at the Heritage Foundation, that font of unbiased knowledge. [Hmm... too bad there isn't a snark tag.]
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I hope to follow this up with others on ways to help those who need charity without hurting them in the process.
This is my first diary. Constructive criticisms are always welcome.