The first one was a church linked to but not part of the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. Happened in the last 1980’s just after I was out of college and looking for my first “real” job. I don’t even remember the name of the place, it was just another in a long line of places I went to looking for help.
The second is the Embassies of Christ church in Gary, Indiana and a bit more recent. Those were the conga-line of WE BRING GOOD NEWS AT AN UNGODLY HOUR WHILE YOUR HOUSEHOLD IS DESPERATELY TRYING TO SLEEP!
Most recently, in 2008, the one run by Reed’s Temple in Griffith, Indiana. Others were in Chicago back in the late 1980’s.
I’m sorry - were you expecting me not to name names?
Thank you. All too often I get questioned when I state my experience. I realize not all churches are like that but some are really obnoxious.
While I have some differences with the Catholic Church and Catholic Charities I have generally found them more responsive than many of the Protestant churches, some of which are downright cult-like.
Not always, only since someone came up with the idea of restricting immigration. Before, there was no such thing as an “illegal immigrant”: recent immigrants competed with natives (mostly but not always, for the bottom rungs - hooking up with a previous immigrant from your own country was a common strategy to start a bit further up, for example), but they couldn’t be threatened with La Migra - there was no Migra.
One of the things I really, really wish I’d known about when I was living in the US was Planned Parenthood… I only recall seeing one mention of them: a billboard in Miami’s Little Haiti neighborhood which didn’t say what PP was, and by that time I’d been in the country for three years (I remembered the name because it made me wonder if it was somehow related to the concept of Responsible Parenthood, and because it didn’t explain - I had no idea who to ask, either). A friend of mine would most likely have been able to delay her first child by several years as she’d intended, if we’d known about PP. While graduate students generally don’t view themselves as “poor”, it sure isn’t a high-income group.
They dont. Over Christmas I helped out with an inner city Christian group and I noticed 2 Muslim families in the group. They were not turned away. Sure we proselytize and I’d love to see the Muslims convert, but in no way were they ever turned away.
To be fair, it usually takes an immigrant to the US 3 or more years to finally start to figure things out. I have neighbors from the Phillipines and when they moved in, it was the first time they had ever had a home with a furnace. Heck it would take me that long to learn to get around New York City if I decided to move there so i cant imagine living someplace like Tokyo.
But then thats the good about the internet and social networking sites like Facebook. One can Google or ask people questions and find things out sooner.
No, YOUR group doesn’t. Just because a group you are affiliated with doesn’t turn away people who aren’t coreligionists doesn’t mean there aren’t groups out there who do, in fact, do such things.
People are so damn defensive. Is it really THAT surprising there are hypocritical, bad Christians out there? People who are bigots, even towards the needy?
No, just genuinely surprised they would treat you like that. Certainly the vast majority of such organizations do not, so I am not sure what your point was.
At any rate, you mentioned the late 1980s… how long have you been poor for? Was it bad times followed by good times followed by bad times?
That’s my default answer mode - I hope you don’t mind.
That’s my point - becoming pregnant is not “inevitable”. Most people manage not to get pregnant as teenagers, and this is despite what you say about teenagers not making good decisions.
Like I said, not getting pregnant is not a lofty goal that is beyond the reach of even a very average teen-ager. It is very easy not to get pregnant.
Also keep in mind that girls who grow up with the long-term presence of a father in their home are much less likely to get pregnant out of wedlock, have their first experience of intercourse later, have fewer sexual partners, and are less likely to divorce later in life.
I am not sure of what you are saying here. If your aunt is poor and works full time, I already mentioned that she is atypical, since most poor households don’t have a fullt-time, year round worker.
Plus, “I can’t research community opportunities because my husband won’t help with the housework” is not an excuse that causes my heart to melt with pity. Neither is “I can’t go there because there are too many white and black faces and I am Indian”. I mean - come on now.
Yes, it takes time, but we are talking about adults who never seem to get it.
The conversations tend to run like this -
Poor Person: I’m poor and hungry. Give me charity.
Me: Aren’t you getting welfare?
PP: I spent it on McDonald’s because I am so tired from work and caring for my children.
Me: You only work part-time, and you only have one child. Other people work full-time and manage to cook.
PP: But fast food is cheaper than fresh food.
Me: No it isn’t - you can get a dozen eggs and a pound of potatoes for the price of two Egg McMuffins.
PP: But what if I don’t have access to a kitchen?
Me: You do have access to a kitchen. It’s right there.
PP:But nobody every taught me to cook or shop in school.
Me: That’s because you dropped out of high school when you got pregnant, and you were getting D’s anyway.
PP: But it’s so far to the grocery store. I’m “at risk” for hunger!
Me: So take the bus. I did it when I didn’t have a car.
PP: But you don’t have any compassion! Just give me more money…
It isn’t “inevitable” for a given teen to get pregnant, but it IS inevitable that some will. Condoms are considered very effective, at 98%. What this means though, is a 2% failure rate. Each user’s chances of success are very good, but there will still be two out of every hundred female users that will get pregnant per year, in spite of correct use–an enormous number of people, since there are so many users total.
Of course then there is abstinence. If you think 100% of teenagers will forego PIV sex altogether, you are delusional.
There are IUDs, birth control pills, etc… None have failure rates of zero, and they are not easy for a teen to get without parental cooperation.
There is rape, of course. Not every rapist will cooperate and use a condom, even if you keep a few in your purse for such events. A nonzero number of teen pregnancies are caused by rape. Those teens count and exist too.
I’m not forgetting the enormous group of teens who fail to use reliable birth control consistently and correctly. Maybe you can eke out some compassion for the aforementioned unlucky teens, but these must be the ones you are sure deserve the fate of poverty, as they should have made better choices, right? Except as a society, we acknowledge that teens generally lack the perspective, brain development, and impulse control to consistently make great decisions for themselves. That’s why they live in our homes instead of independently.
The idea that a sector of society must be punished with a lifetime of poverty because of bad luck or bad choices made as a teen and thus we should spare them no compassion is disturbing. Who among us has not made risky choices as a teen? Don’t count your own good fortune at things working out in your favor as evidence that everyone could somehow have managed as well.
Then you complain about “adults who never seem to get it.”
Sorry, but yes, part of the population is indeed “getting-it challenged.” Do you think they don’t deserve compassion because they are stupid? Because they make decisions that don’t work out for them? Do you think this is their choice somehow, like they somehow want to fail and make sure it happens by knowingly doing everything possible to make it so? Some people are simply not as capable as others.
As a man, it’s easy to sit back and say “those girls deserve poverty if they get pregnant. It’s easy not to get pregnant.”
As a financially competent person, it’s easy to say “those dummies wasted their money on McDonalds. It’s easy to budget and make money last through the month.”
As a person with a full belly and a warm home, it’s easy to say “I took the bus. I fed myself. I reproduced with another competent, intelligent, healthy, and responsible person and we take care of our children and work hard, and pay our bills, so why can’t you make these choices and have everything work out for you too?”
But I don’t see how it’s so easy to not feel any compassion towards those who haven’t managed so well, even if your hubris does not allow you to see that your positions are not based on merit and your lifestyle is not the just and inevitable reward you deserve.
While not everybody is going to have a prefect family or a family that is in a position to help, there are plenty that do. And if you look at groups that started with very little and worked their way up, you find that having a stable and supportive family is a huge advantage. If it’s not an option, then that really sucks. But more often than not it is an option, just not one that people are willing to explore. But I guess tradition and culture play into this- If you come from a culture where living in multi generational or extended families is the norm, it can be a safeguard against poverty. But if living with mom and dad ( or even grandma and Cousin Neha) is seen as embarrassing or annoying, it is less likely to be explored. And even if the person still manages to swallow their pride and do it anyway, it’s more likely to be like a dysfunctional roommate situation.
Since white people seem more inclined to ‘go out and do your own thing/follow your dreams!’ I noticed they tended to have a harder time getting along with each other when they had to live with relatives. They were also more likely to have lopsided households, where some people were doing the lions share of the work. When I was living with my parents while saving for my house, it was expected I pull my weight around the house. Everybody in my family respected this, so living together wasn’t seen as a hassle or embarrassment. But if people lack the manners, discipline and respect towards each other in a household it breaks down. I never felt like I was ‘entitled’ to anything yet my white peers feel entitlement left and right.
I wonder if this works to their disadvantage. If I was a college educated white person that encountered poverty, my entitlement attitude would likely prevent me from exploring options people of color lack the privilege to pass up. I’d be less likely to have a family support system, more likely to be computer literate and share my complaints with others, more likely to perceive myself as ‘poor’, and less willing less enthusiastic about having to take measures that I would consider ‘beneath’ me.
No, YOUR group doesn’t. Just because a group you are affiliated with doesn’t turn away people who aren’t coreligionists doesn’t mean there aren’t groups out there who do, in fact, do such things.
People are so damn defensive. Is it really THAT surprising there are hypocritical, bad Christians out there? People who are bigots, even towards the needy?
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I get that. It’s just that if things were up to me, I wouldn’t put conditions on anyone being given assistance when they need it.
Most teenagers who get pregnant do so not because their contraception failed, but because it wasn’t used. It is not typically because “the rubber broke” but because “we forgot”.
The number may not be zero, but it is pretty close to that.
Calling minimally reasonable choices like not getting pregnant “good fortune” is an abuse of the term.
Well, yes - “making decisions” is pretty the definition of “choice”.
But the question “do they deserve compassion” is not one that can be answered Yes or No.
Because you can’t fix stupid, and money doesn’t work any better than any other attempt at it. So the question is “how much compassion do they deserve?”
Are they starving in the street? Far from it - the poor are the SES group most likely to be obese. Are they homeless? Hardly - the chronically long-term homeless are either alcoholic, schizophrenic, or both. (Children are the group least likely to be homeless for long unless they are runaways and think they can survive on the street.) Do they have TVs and stoves and kitchens and appliances and access to the Internet? Yes, usually they do.
Do they have all the comforts of middle-class life? No, they don’t - and that’s what they complain about. But that can’t be fixed. If we had a guaranteed annual income like some on the Dope talk about, you know as sure as sunrise there are going to be idiots who spent everything on crap by the 20th of every month and will complain because of it.
Is it a lack of compassion to say "for heaven’s sake, get off your over-sized posterior and take care of yourself like an adult does. You aren’t going to starve, you aren’t homeless - if you want to live like the middle class you have to act like the middle class. And if you don’t, get used to being poor. " Maybe it is - but it gets tiring to hear complaints about how hard it is for you to do things that I do every day without expecting money from the taxpayer for doing it.
You are missing my point.
Not as a man, but as a minimally responsible person, it is easy to say “it’s easy not to get pregnant” because I used to be a teenager and I never got anyone pregnant.
Not as a person who is financially competent, but as one who isn’t amazingly stupid it is easy to say “don’t waste money you haven’t got on things you don’t need even if it is easy and feels good for ten minutes”.
It’s like I said earlier - this is not rocket science. Anyone with a brain in his head knows that teenage pregnancy will fuck up your life, and that fucking up your life in that manner can be prevented with the condoms they hand out like candy or you can buy for a dollar at any pharmacy. And if you got five bucks for McDonald’s, you got one buck for a condom.
:shrugs:
Right - I did all the easy things to avoid fucking up my life, that are available to all. As a direct result, I am not poor. But somehow I am supposed to believe that none of my responsible actions count for anything, and it is pure luck that I am not poor and fat and weighed down by a couple of illegitimate children and whining because I spent my welfare check on fast food. Pull the other one, it’s got bells on it.
The number of raped teens that get pregnant is “close to zero”?
Lemme guess: the body has ways of shutting that down, right Todd Akin?
Please do a little research and back that up.
Unwanted pregnancy, by it’s very definition, is NOT a choice. Females can increase their LIKELIHOOD of not getting pregnant, but even abstinence is NOT a guarantee, since one can still be raped, which is not even remotely rare.
You say it’s “easy” not to get pregnant because you were once a teen and never got anyone pregnant. Is it also easy not to have your home demolished by a tornado? Or has that happened to you, so it’s hard? Is it easy not to be arrested for a crime you didn’t commit? Is everything that has not happened to you therefore “easy” to avoid? Did you begin life with the deck stacked against you in every possible way, lifting yourself from poverty by your bootstraps, so if you can do it anyone can?
I kind of doubt it, Todd. Maybe you had some role models that guided you. Maybe you had some advantages you don’t see because you have no idea what it’s like not to have them. Maybe you had at least one parent who made sure you were fed and warm and felt safe. Maybe you have an average IQ or above. Maybe you don’t have a debilitating mental or physical illness or disability. Maybe the deck is stacked in your favor in ways you’ve never bothered to consider, because you are comfortable where you are.
You also seem to be confusing compassion with cash. Having compassion for someone does not translate into paying for them to have big TV sets and eat at McDonalds. It’s a feeling that could cause you to actually try to help people improve their lives instead of judging them.
Young people make stupid, stupid decisions. Even middle classwhite kidswith every advantage make stupid decisions. You wanna hear a few of the stupid things I heard from kids I went to school with as a teen?
“Wear two condoms at the same time to be doubly protected!”
“You can totally wear a band-aid over the tip of your penis instead of a condom and it works just as good!”
“If you douche with coca-cola after sex you can’t get pregnant!”
“You can’t get pregnant if you do it in a swimming pool!”
All of these things came from smart kids from wealthy families, some of whom attended church with me. Every one of these kids is so, so, so, very lucky they didn’t have a kid before graduation. They were all fairly conservative too so my guess is that at least a couple of them are somewhere right now bitching and moaning about all those stupid teenage girls having babies and going on welfare even though it is only by the grace of the flying spaghetti monster they turned out okay.
When middle class white kids do any of the above, they hit the safety net. When underclass Black kids do them, the system comes down on them like a ton of bricks.
It isn’t a black/white thing, it is about cultural, family and individual ideals (the latter is the most important because it is the end result). I grew up in an area heavy in Southern rednecks and flat out white trash along with about 50% black people. Many of the black people did quite well for themselves despite growing up with even more obstacles than just simple poverty and institutionalized racism. Some of them were abused in every way possible and still made it out OK. Then again, a lot of other ones are in prison now too even if they grew up in marginally better circumstances than the ones that did well.
On the other hand, I also know many white trash families whose personal identity is tied up in not only being absolute trashiest people possible (and I mean that in the sweetest sense) but outdoing their other trashy counterparts. I am friends with some of them because they are entertaining in a perverse way. It is intentional and they are oddly proud of it. Their kids are practically expected to get pregnant or get someone pregnant before they graduate high school and then drop out. Criminal convictions are just par for the course as well and holding down a job is just submitting to an alternate lifestyle that they want no part of. Of course they are multi-generationally poor. They designed it that way and, while they would love a winning lottery ticket, they have no interest whatsoever in doing anything other than keeping their current lifestyle going this week.
I too get tired of this idea that all or even most poor people are too tied up with jobs and responsibilities to ever make any progress without any outside help. If you think that is true, have you ever known any truly poor multi-generational families? Working too much isn’t one of their problems nor is taking care of their kids because they generally don’t like to do either very much. They do have some serious issues but it isn’t something more money or even job opportunities can solve readily.
I know that there are different types of poor people. Some are just people whio are just temporarily down on their luck while others have a disability but there is a sizable class of people who are going to be poor because they are just general fuckups and arent ashamed at all about that fact. The latter group will take whatever you will give them plus anything else they can get away with. I like some of them personally but I also have absolutely no sympathy when their plans inevitably go astray.