The Payne of Poverty

In this Sunday's New York Times Magazine, the issue is money, or rather the income gap in America. John Edwards is on the front cover tidy, pressed and clean. One of his political platforms this election year is economic "injustice" and inequity. It's his new War on Poverty campaign remixed, something resembling that of Lyndon B. Johnson's WOP which launched the Economic Opportunity Act and was pushed aside and resulted in the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, also known as Welfare Reform. ("The end of welfare as we know it..." Remember that line? Mr. Lewinsky, I mean, Clinton said it.) What's John Edwards' impetus for the issue? New Orleans, of course. Particularly the Lower Ninth Ward, which has been the media focus of the natural disaster and tragedy of Hurricane Katrina. Though not the only low-income area of color affected by the hurricane (as I have come to witness first hand while being down here), candidate Edwards has made it his passion to use New Orleans' Lower Ninth as lens for disparities of poverty in America. Read more about it here ...

What caught my attention in this week's issue, however, was Paul Tough's "The Class-Consciousness Raiser" which profiles Ruby Payne, a self-proclaimed "class expert" and lecturer. Admittedly, I approached the piece with some skepticism, unsure of what exactly Ruby Payne has to offer me (and the world) in regards to her take on classism in America. She has books and DVDs about class differences and many working in education go to Ruby in order to understand the situations of the poor communities and students they work with.

It may be that the only people with abiding faith in the power of class divisions in America are the country’s few remaining Marxists and Ruby Payne. And while Payne may not believe in class struggle, per se, she does believe that there is widespread misunderstanding among the classes — and more than ever, she says, the class that bears the cost of that misunderstanding is the poor. In schools, particularly, where poor students often find themselves assigned to middle-class teachers, class cluelessness is rampant.

Your class, Payne says, determines everything: your eating habits, your speech patterns, your family relations. It is possible to move out of the class you were born into, either up or down, she says, but the transition almost always means a great disruption to your sense of self. And you can ascend the class ladder only if you are willing to sacrifice many of your relationships and most of your values — and only if you first devote yourself to careful study of the hidden rules of the class you hope to enter.

This is where I began to cringe and suddenly Ruby Payne is Oscar Lewis all over again, a modern day anthropologist plus some DVDs, books and a lecture circuit, perpetuating this myth of the "culture of poverty." Payne, however, assures that what she is doing is not meant to do such a thing:

Payne’s critics say she is oversimplifying the complexities of poverty in the United States, perpetuating offensive stereotypes of irresponsible, disorganized poor people who play the TV too loud and like to solve disputes with their fists. Payne is quick to caution that her portrait is a general one. She would be “heartsick,” she said on stage, “if anyone used this information to stereotype.”

You know what they say: the road to hell is paved with good intentions. And Ruby Payne's intentions are genuine. She married outside of her class and fell in love with a man who came from a poor home. Soon she found herself becoming more versed in the complexities of class and language of the poor people, the world where the man she loves came from.

As Payne studied her new surroundings, she came to appreciate more subtle nuances of class division. ... Payne wasn’t quite sure what to do with this new knowledge. As her career in education developed, from teacher to principal to administrator, she found that her understanding of class came in handy. Because of her exposure to her husband’s family and neighbors, it seemed, she was better able to communicate with poor students than most other middle-class teachers. Her colleagues began to ask her for help and advice on dealing with their most troubling students, and Payne worked up an informal set of strategies and tips that she would pass along.

See, this saddens me beyond no doubt particularly because I know that while I see what's problematic with this picture, there are people who flock to Payne in order to understand those "poor folk" who are so foreign to them because of their alien ways.

Not only is there the failure to include situations of race and gender when disucssing socioeconomic status but also Ruby Payne is painfully (no pun intended, I swear) patronizing and essentialist ideas about poor, ie - “If you’re from middle class and marry or otherwise move into poverty, understand the need of your spouse/partner to protect you,” she writes. “You are his/her possession. Try to see the positives in this.” This makes my skin crawl and it's not like it's the first time I've been encountered with this sort of thing, but I wonder if Ms. Payne sees the ideologies and discourses that are running through her. Does she acknowledge the privilege that is exerting itself when she prides herself in providing her audience with options? She says, "You can choose whether or not you want to alter your behavior or embrace a different way of doing things. But unless you’re informed, you won’t get the opportunity to decide.” What does it say about her class or perhaps, her White privilege, that she is the one to hand off options and give agency?

Sure she may be speaking among her fellow middle-classers who, in her opinion, are so comfortable that they assume everyone wants to be middle class, but she's also speaking for and those who haven't been given a voice because they're too busy being observed and studied, like Ms. Payne's husband and his low-income family. I haven't read Ms. Payne's books or watched any of her DVDs. True, I know not much about her other than this piece and a brief google search this afternoon but I can't help but be struck by the language was used and as I have come to learn language is a significant indicator of not only where you're from but also where you're at. And that's the thing, no one is ever listening to the language of the poor and oppressed they're just watching from the center out to the margins studying them in their natural habitats.

To read the entire story, go here

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As I prepare myself to go work with low-income middle schoolers for the next 8 weeks in rural Louisiana and urban New Orleans East, I have to keep in mind where I'm from and where I'm at and remember to acknowledge my limits and privileges. I don't know it all but the first step forward, to being class-conscious, race-conscious and conscious about anything is admitting what I don't know and educating myself.