I am watching coverage of the hurricane and the newsman asked the correspondent on the scene why in the world these trapped people would think it was a good idea to sit out the storm on their rooftop. He says, “Wellll, it *is* a low income area.” (!!!) As if poor people are just STUPID. Everyone doesn’t have a car to escape in. Not all folks have money to evacuate. Not everyone is able-bodied. Not everyone can abandon all they have. Hell, a lot of people don’t even have a fucking roof!
It reminded me of a day 10 years ago. I was in community college where 75% of the students (me included) were on financial aid. This history professor who went to Harvard and whose brother was an astronaut mused aloud, “Why is it that poverty and filth always seem to go together? I mean, it doesn’t cost anything to be clean.” (!!!) I guess he figured he was asking the right crowd because it didn’t even occur to him how appallingly IGNUNT such a statement was. We all looked around at one another in silence and he continued to pontificate and dribble.
Classism assumes the cream rises to the top, but that is a lie. My whole family has been ragged through generations forgotten, and I have known poor people who were as brilliant as the sun, stunningly beautiful, able to sing sweet enough to make angels cry, and writing poetry I remember to this day. Songs never on the radio, books never published, beautiful faces never in a magazine. Poor people are not less than. They are simply without money, and therefore without privilege and real resources.
Fuck, it is always the assumptions we all make about one another, ain’t it?
Anyways, we saw this soaked man crying earlier on the news. His house had split in half and he couldn’t find his wife. Man, that fella brought it home for me.
