A couple weeks ago, at the Buncombe County Commissioners’ meeting, representatives from ABCCM told how last year they placed 302 homeless veterans in jobs paying at least $12/hr., and they aimed to place lots more in jobs paying $36,000 to $60,000. The success, they said, was based on a book by Ruby Payne, A Framework for Understanding Poverty. Having been counseled multiple times to dismiss outright get-rich-quick schemes; I was nonetheless enticed to see how dually diagnosed people were starting out earning 150% of the most I had ever earned working two jobs with fifteen years of seniority. So, I confess, I obtained a copy.
While glossing over the j’en sais quoi, I was struck by an outrageous message. As a child, I learned the messages from Proverbs: A fool chases after instant gratification, and a wise man invests in things eternal. Today, one cannot say such things. Payne reframes the situation to indicate low-income people have a culture that thrives on entertainment. In other words, middle-class people get one or more jobs to try to buy food, clothe, and shelter their families. They sometimes fall short because they have to pay for insurance and taxes. The tax dollars they get go to buy food and shelter for low-income families so the low-income families can use their earnings to pay for bling, big-screen TV’s, nights on the town, and chemicals. It is wrong to be ethnocentric, but the middle-class should be more accepting of others’ needs for entertainment.
