The OP was pointing out the double standard that our society has against the poor utilizing certain resources and activities in order to survive versus the middle class utilizing the same resources and activities under the guise of being “more creative” or more financially savvy that’s for some reason supposed to come with applause in the process. And you turned it into a lament about Millennials and how much they’re suffering and how this has become trendy because it’s necessary for them to adopt these tactics and ideology along the way.
So, no. I didn’t project. I simply called you out for missing the point.
You can pull whatever stats you want out on whose generation is more poor than another generation, but I repeat: NONE OF THIS SHIT IS CONSIDERED “CREATIVE” UNLESS PEOPLE WHO ARE, OR WERE ONCE, MIDDLE CLASS ARE DOING IT.
All of the things poor people have been doing for generations has been creative and used as a means for survival. None of it is new. Maybe how some technically apply it today is new, because as time goes by, new tech makes the poor population shift in how they use their resources. But it’s not new.
Just because more people are using these survival tactics now doesn’t mean they invented it, and yet many try to claim it’s new or awesome because they do it. They want applause because they learned about shopping at Aldi’s or Superior grocery stores. I remember a time when people who shopped at these stores were judged and mocked for daring to use them.
I took to task your reblog reply because the issue here was about poverty and perception. You made it about you and your generation, as if your generation is doing anything that millions of people living in poverty haven’t done. Gen Xers, Baby Boomers, the Silent Generation, and so on and so forth have always had a struggling working class and working poor. And they are the ones whose survival techniques have been co-opted and whitewashed as “creative.” So no. You didn’t have to get “creative.” You simply have to do what millions of people that no one cares about (even today) have to do. But you chose to ignore that fuckery and make it an issue about Millennials instead of recognizing that it’s not “trendy” because more people are doing it. It’s called “trendy” because of the need to re-brand and declare it as something new and popular by choice.
“There has always been poor people” no shit. You are projecting onto me HARDCORE. I have a sociology minor 🙄
This shit seriously made me almost laugh out loud. Honestly. You have a sociology minor, so that means 1) I’m projecting and 2) it’s obvious you know there’s always been poor people?
Did you honestly have to go to college to learn that there has always been poor people? Because that’s how that sentence reads. Go back and re-read it. I’m guessing in your indignation that you didn’t mean for it to read like that. Because if so, well, thank goodness. What would we do if you hadn’t gone to college and learned that.
“People adopt survival tactics when they need to survive. Perhaps we have different social circles, I’ve never heard of this being a problem.“
Yes, they do. And yes, we clearly do have different social circles. We also have different communities. And apparently a different country as well.
Because here in the US, for generations, the disenfranchised poor have been manipulated, denigrated and exploited happily under the umbrella of “Poverty is a choice.” And we’ve only heard people start addressing the issue of poverty in America on a national level when it started disproportionally affecting the children of the middle class, namely white, middle class-raised Millennials. And suddenly, guess what? Poverty is now being considered something other than a choice. Go fig.
When the poor were primarily those trapped in the cycle of generational poverty handed down to them thanks to the fact that their parents or grandparents were immigrants, disabled, LGBTQ+, lived in industrialized communities, and/or a part of communities of color, the discussion on poverty was merely a few pages in a high school textbook combined with a few statistics that made the middle class shrug and move on.
Well, I live in those communities. I am a part of them. My family and friends are a part of them. These people have always been “creative” in order to survive. Otherwise they would’ve died starving and homeless. And goodness knows, our city and national governments did as much as they possibly could to make that a reality over the last century and a half.
So as you can see, I take issue with the idea that these survival tactics:
Taking the bus, biking or walking
Turning off the lights when you’re not using them
Turning your A/C or heat on at the last possible day that you can bear the heat (in summer) or cold (in winter)
Living in a mobile home, trailer or “tiny” home
Upcycling Recycling and reusing
Staycations Vacationing at home
Shopping at Goodwill, AmVets, yard sales, garage sales, and through the Pennysaver
Bringing your lunch to work
Growing marijuana as a side business
Using the resources at the library
Taking an Uber or Lyft Using bootleg cabs or jitneys
… are new and trendy. They’re not new. You’re not the first generation to use them. And they’re not trendy because you use them. They’re trendy because people who didn’t have to use them before out of necessity are choosing to do so now either because they want to or because they have to but want everyone else to think they really want to. That was the point the OP was making.
You said you just weren’t talking about that. But that’s literally the whole point of the OP’s statement. And you decided to make it about you and your generation. You think you’re the only generation that has people with college degrees who are struggling financially? You think you’re the first generation to live in Section 8 housing? And yes, most Millennials actually do have their parents or family members helping them. Whether they admit it or not is another thing. But let’s say you’re right and they don’t, do you think your generation is the first to have people who don’t have folks in their family help them? Seriously?
I’m not going to get into my personal situation because I’m not making this about me. But if you honestly believe your generation has had to “get creative” in any way that’s different from any other generation, then you need to expand your education beyond your university degree. That’s not me attacking you. Honestly, you have so much more to learn about the history of poverty in this country, as well as the survival tactics that people have used and handed down from generation to generation in order to avoid starvation and homelessness.***
Finally, perhaps you’ve never heard of this being a problem because your knowledge of poverty is viewed through a college degree and a generational-focused lens instead of through an earnest lens of “What does generational poverty in America look like?” And I can tell you definitively: It doesn’t look like people acting like their generation is the first to know poverty in America.
I honestly don’t want to end this on a negative note, so I’m going to make a couple of recommendations. Feel free to ignore them and tell me to get bent. But I like to think you genuinely care about this issue, you’ve just been looking at it from a much more narrow perspective.
If I’m right and you’d like to get a bit more history on the issue of poverty in America, I’d recommend:
*** Researching the concept of “rasquache” or “rasquachismo” as it applies to Mexican and Chicano communities. Not just from an artistic perspective, but from a survival perspective.
***Check out Jeremiah Moss’s new book Vanishing New York. It came out in late 2017, and although it’s more focused on the issue of hyper-gentrification, it provides great historical context as to how the city of New York has treated its poor community over the last 150 years. It doesn’t give you exact examples of how these communities have survived, but it will give you some perspective on how poverty in America has been treated like an enemy of the state instead of an issue that deserves our compassion and understanding.
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