Episode 69: Dwayne Perkins

[Namu]

I loved hearing from Dwayne, partly because of his being black. I'm white. I grew up in cities with neighborhoods that were mostly still segregated, but schools that were newly integrated. Whites were a minority in most of the schools I attended, but since leaving high school I've had little access to ethnic variety. I feel the lack, and I'm afraid my interpersonal intelligence and awareness shrink every year my white-people diet continues, so I'm glad for nibbles of diversity.

I'm pleased to report that Dwayne's ethnicity isn't the only thing I appreciate about his interview. (Whitey-worry looms.) I feel nourished by his nuanced perspective; his commitment to stay in the questions instead of latching onto premature answers; and his gentle attitude toward the wounds he's suffered, and toward the people he wishes had done a little better by him.

I disagree somewhat with Dwayne about the legitimacy of existing in the U.S. with a sense of not-enough. He references rappers who claim to have had "nothing" growing up, and points to refugees in Africa, to show by comparison how much people in the States have. It seems misguided to assume that people (especially poets) who claim to have grown up with "nothing" are speaking literally, and to use that as a basis to deny their credibility, or to dismiss as invalid their recollections of their own childhoods.

I think exaggeration is generally a mistake, mostly because it's so easy to poke holes. Critics may take the opportunity to toss out the whole message, when there may be real and important truth underneath the hyperbole. I want to vouch for the particular wretchedness of occupying the lower layers of a society with significant, persistent wealth/power inequality. Having possessions, a place to live, and water and calories to keep going is essential, but it's not always enough; humans have needs beyond the most obvious and rudimentary. In a society where subsistence and financial insecurity are the norm, having enough material resources to survive on, if only barely and only through constant vigilance, might be adequate for a life worth living. It can be debilitating to subsist that way in a media-saturated society that models, rewards, and lionizes people whose privileges, opportunities, and options are practically limitless. When inequalities of power and opportunity are ignored, hidden, denied, rationalized, or minimized, failure to thrive gets blamed on the victims. This happens a whole lot in the U.S.

From my own experience, having vastly less wealth, power, opportunity, and freedom of choice than the people who dominate the society in which I live (and who thereby define the culture), my position in the power structure has a big effect on my quality of life. I have more possessions, wealth, and basic physical security than many people in developing countries, but people thousands of miles away are not the people I interact with, not the people in relation with whom I build identity, and not the people with whom I (as an individual) must compete and/or cooperate for resources. I suspect that many people in developing countries manage some of their challenges with greater ease and equanimity than I do, though our tasks may seem similar. If everyone you know has to scoop rainwater from silty, specky buckets, because that's the only affordable, fingers-crossed-potable water, the chore of harvesting rainwater probably isn't as aggravating as it is for me. Hunched alone over my buckets with a cup for decanting -- dripping sweat, swatting mosquitoes, squinting to spot and avoid the floaters -- I feel a bit singled out for drudgery.

If my community were poor like me, I could benefit from general local knowledge about harvesting rainwater and a hundred other subsistence skills. In a society where subsistence concerns are common, there may be someone around with the experience and ingenuity to design better systems for meeting those needs. If I'm not unusual in being more interested in drinking water than in diversions like televised sports, latest fashions, or luxury cars, chances are higher that there will be people who are not only able, but motivated, to address the problems of subsistence. I'm the only one I know who relies on buckets of rain for drinking water, and, after more than two years of living this way, I haven't yet found the time and energy to devise a better system.

There are many situations like this, where I don't have the benefit of communal attention to problems of subsistence. Every day I spend time and energy on odd chores that are beyond the understanding of others; whenever one of these things comes up in conversation, people tend to either go a bit blank or point out some easy, immediate idea that they imagine will fix it — as if they're more brilliant in an idle instant than I’ve been able to be in years of living with the inconvenience. Money buys people out of having to recognize how much convenience their money affords them. "Simplicity" is touted as a trendy, economical lifestyle choice, but real simplicity requires money. Much of my life force is spent on tasks that are invisible in society, because the standard is to purchase freedom from those tasks.

There's another difficulty particular to first-world poverty: In order to function in a society that is designed and built by people blind to poverty, I need to find a way to afford things I would otherwise do without. I need, for instance, a car and gas, because rich people buy influence, and thereby determine the placement and maintenance of roads, which then lead conveniently to wherever they choose to locate their businesses. Rich people drive the poor, via the real estate market, ever farther from cultural resources and commercial centers. Rich people twisted the law to grant immortal corporations privileges and protections intended for mortal humans, paving the way for mega-corporations, which gobble up local shops and consolidate into ever fewer, ever more distant mega-stores. Rich people can afford to drive as far as they like, as often as they want, while poor people have to budget for every trip to get groceries.

The humblest of clothes are, to me, expensive, and mine get thrashed by rough chores and dirty well water, but I feel pressured to stay equipped with clothes that are free of stains and holes. Tattered people lose credibility, and, please believe me, the further I am from well-groomed, the harder it is to get things done that require the cooperation, trust, and good mood of the people paid to serve, including medical staff, pharmacists, law enforcement, and other government employees.

Socializing options for people stratified into poverty are very limited, because we can't afford the conventional get-togethers at bars or restaurants or other buying-things-based venues. People tend to point to isolation as a form of self-sabotage, instead of recognizing and acknowledging the responsible, often lonely, choice to live within a tight budget.

I recognize that the character of isolation and relative poverty that I describe isn't exactly what Paul and Dwayne are discussing; they're mostly talking about people who are in poverty but also in community, not isolated from others in similar circumstances. But some of what I describe about my experience applies more broadly as well. Growing up in a community that is plagued by poverty, but is under the foot of a larger society that is driven by massive wealth, is deeply frustrating and confusing. People who must spend their lives in the effort to fend off crisis are just as subject as everyone else to wealth-driven infrastructure, media-imposed norms, limits to educational access, and personal and interpersonal expectations that presume a somewhat lavish pool of advantages and resources.*

*[Please never presume that government aid programs in any particular state are more helpful than harmful to people in poverty until you have been forced to apply for, and attempt to live in compliance with the requirements for, government aid programs in that state. Government aid programs, in my extensive experience, function overwhelmingly to keep well-intentioned, ambitious poor people busy, exhausted, and confused, trying to figure out how to stay poor enough to avoid losing the aid we can't afford to lose, feeling guilty for conniving in that way, and trying to find a way out of the vortex generated by rules that seem diabolically engineered to destroy all sense of personal agency and all potential for self-sufficiency. The rules in place where I live are such that keeping badly needed aid long enough to have any hypothetical chance of establishing a financial foothold requires myriad choices that feel filthy, stupefying, and irresponsible, and are utterly contrary to gaining a foothold. It is one of the most frustrating, costly, destabilizing, demoralizing processes I've ever suffered. I am quite clever, but the system is absurdly complicated, obscured, and inconsistently and variously misrepresented. Every person and every institution I know was speaking and acting as though applying for aid was the obvious choice, an essential part of the solution, for people in my position. It is a terrible thing to consider, that the massive beast that is government aid might be not just insufficient or ineffective, but actually destructive. Apparently the notion is inconceivable until it’s unavoidable. It took years for me to finally believe what I couldn’t help seeing — that I couldn't afford to keep trying to help myself through government aid programs. My life works much, much better — including that suicidality is much less of a problem — now that I simply don't have enough money to meet my needs, rather than having not enough while also scrambling to carry out frenzied, endless, demeaning, intrusive busywork, and while submitting continuously to the dazzlingly dysfunctional micromanagement of a seemingly sadistic, inexcusably intrusive, apparently deliberately crippling bureaucracy.]

Every few seconds in mass-media, the word "we" is used in a way that outright denies the existence of people busy trying to survive poverty. "We" wryly reflect on how we have let ourselves become addicted to social media, and brainstorm and compare notes about how to save ourselves. “We" rue the obsessive, voracious viewing of disaster footage that has led on occasion to media reporting of nationwide self-inflicted PTSD. “We" make a game of shaming ourselves for once having been so screwed up that we actually went out in public in sweats, yoga pants, or some other attire that exposes us as insufficiently committed to avoiding the scorn of strangers. “We" poke sheepish fun at ourselves, recognizing that our concerns are "first-world" problems. “We" compare stories about our vacations and our dinners out. “We" can access support groups and low-cost mental healthcare just by entering those terms and our ZIP code into a search bar. “We" establish our common ground by claiming that anyone who hasn't seen some movie or television show, or isn't aware of the recent antics of some celebrity, has obviously been living under a rock.

A fortunate minority among the poor have imagination sufficient to resist the silencing force of the pervasive use of the word "we" that invisibly, deftly presumes that they don't exist; some of those resilient spirits are additionally gifted with sufficient persistence to pry open a back door into the public conversation.

Those featured as the image of American society are mostly attractive, coiffed, fashionably dressed, precisely sized and shaped, rigorously serviced medically and dentally, and cosmetically enhanced. They are almost always wealthy; they are usually extremely wealthy. Even with the internet, where individuals can try their hands at podcasting, blogging, and other attempts to make a difference, it's not mostly the poor who have the time, energy, and education-, recreation-, and travel-enriched talent and perspective to create works of significance. A person who emerges from poverty to appear on the public stage may be the rare one with an extraordinary mix of talent, imagination, luck, and drive sufficient to break through the wall of exclusion; such people sometimes join the ranks of the wealthy, and thus have what it takes to stay in the game. I notice that people of humble origins succeed almost exclusively within entertainment, where their influence on culture is likely to be incidental, haphazard, and indirect. Positions of more direct influence, such as in the upper echelons of politics and corporate industry, are, it seems, absolutely unattainable for those not born into wealth.

Usually, poor people who find themselves in the public eye are featured fleetingly, as popular diversions -- they are perpetrators or victims of shocking violence, or victims or heroes of disasters following extreme weather events. There's a freak-show quality to this sort of fame; there is no power in it for such people to actively participate in culture.

To the degree that a community is subject to a socioeconomic system that is significantly more powerful, people in that community are compelled to conform to rules and expectations that are defined and enforced by people and institutions whose interests are foreign, and frequently antagonistic, to their own. It's an impossible situation for most people to succeed in, and it's not unreasonable to object to it.

Expressing deep and complex emotional wounds, such as having grown up in felt, inequality-induced poverty, is difficult. Expressing such things with precision and accuracy, rather than resorting to exaggeration to convey the sense of extremity, is among the higher-order skills that tend not to develop in people whose attention is gobbled up in coping with systematic inequality, chronic resource scarcity, and relentless poverty-induced dysfunctions and crises.

Therefore, in response to Dwayne's lack of respect for people who say, "All I had to eat was soup," I ask for a reconsideration. Possibly there are people who whine from sheer laziness, willful ignorance, or a twisted sense of justice and entitlement. Nevertheless, there are lots of people whose inability to be articulate about subtle or confusing experiences makes them easy targets. It takes no real investment to tear down the feelings or complaints of someone who's not great with words, but it's kind of a waste of time. Listening for the truth underneath takes a bit of attention, but it's much more interesting, and much more productive.

Late in the episode, Dwayne says, "I think I’m a little too ... cut and dry, or like ... I kind of like see contradictions really easily. And sometimes I think I pounce on them in a way that’s maybe just a little too reactive. Oh, you know, this person just contradicted themselves. They don’t care!" I think that tendency may be at work sometimes when people find ways to dismiss people who are trying, however imperfectly, to express legitimate confusion or pain.

I respect Dwayne for his remarkable insight and honesty in recognizing this tendency in himself. I also appreciate it, because I have the same problem, and I have trouble spotting it when I'm the one doing it. I can "pounce" on his reactivity to rappers who say they had nothing, but I am similarly blind in other contexts. His putting words to it, and owning up to it, helps remind me to be on the lookout for similar acts of unkindness in myself.

Namu