Would the “Homeless” by any other name sound less rude?
Forgive me here, for I am terrible with words. Not to say I can’t write, but more likely that sometimes I use the WRONG words to describe things. I find though, with the right motivation, I can come up with the correct words. With this however, I am torn. People are very caviler when it comes to “the homeless.” When you say it like that, it sounds like an indie band with a bad record contract. To me, the idea of homeless people is sad. Think about this for a moment: You lose your home. You are on the street. You are most likely on the street because you couldn’t pay your bills, lost your job, or have an addiction. Furthermore, being that you are in this position, you may have put yourself there by neglecting something. And on top of that, if you have actually made it to the street, it means no one was kind enough to assist you in giving you a place to stay until you are on your feet. Now, from that perspective, do you feel any sympathy for this person? Maybe a little? Okay. Next scenario: You lose your home. You are on the street. You are there because you were financially struggling and you couldn’t move from your home to an apartment due to unforeseen circumstances and bad credit. Your family has all passed on, and your “friends,” though “kind people,” do not help you because they have their own things to worry about. You don’t know the first thing about being homeless, where shelters are, ect. In turn, once this happens, you are unable to keep yourself clean, fuel your car to get to your job, or for that matter, have much food. If you had a car payment, it’s probably going to lapse to pay for whatever food you can get, and you end up running from whoever the car lease is in. If you own your car, then you have a warm place to sleep. Until you can’t pay for gas. Now how do you feel?
My friend, who shall remain nameless because I did not ask him permission to write about this (even though I doubt he’d care) got in an internet debate. I misread him, and in turn, accidentally jumped down his throat unintentionally. Once that was over though, I realized what he meant. We were discussing a photo circulating the internet stating a high statistic of number of empty homes across America, and how that was enough for each homeless person to have up to six homes. Whether this is accurate or not, we don’t know. But, of course, I posted it anyway, including a little jab about Detroit and how that is something to think about.
Almost immediately a discussion broke out. “I don't mean to stereotype the homeless, but statistically speaking, many of them have issues with drugs, and/or mental health disorders. Giving them a free murder pad, or free drug house isn't necessarily the answer.” He went on to justify that there are better channels of assistance (which is right, I agree), but the first statement hit me hard. This is what I hear all the time from people. My pal didn’t mean it in a harsh way, but even when you preface things with “I don’t mean to stereotype…,” you will always be laying down the stereotype. Back to my scenarios. So the first one, you probably don’t feel as bad for. Maybe the person had a drug problem. Maybe they were struggling so bad and just gave up. Who knows. The second however, maybe not so much. The person tried, and in turn still had bad luck and lost out on everything. Now, lump that all into a stereotype: Statistically speaking, and yes, this is probably true, most homeless people have drug problems and mental disorders. But statistics don’t show that one individual that tried and was alone. Statistics also don’t show something very vital to this idea: they are still humans. Drug problems and mental disorders, or just an ordinary person who’s down on their luck: They all deserve kindness.
When we apply the term “the homeless,” it’s like we’re creating a race or labeling a group of people, degrading them to a lower set of human culture. And I don’t have the answer when it comes to re-naming it to something less degrading. “Less fortunate?” True. Sounds a little less like an indie band with banjos. Or maybe just not using the label as such a crass statement or a bragging piece. “Oh, I went to such-and-such a place and helped the homeless, because I’m a good person. Braggity braggity brag.” You’d think people would help people just because they wanted to. Not so they had bragging rights, or got paid by their company to do so (not a hit/jab on my co-workers who just went and packed food for a few hours at a local food bank). Help because you want to – not because you’re getting something out of it. At any rate, after we squared away the fact that my friend wasn’t being a jerk, it still got me thinking more about how to go about this. Many go ignored, because people don’t like to think about problems that aren’t their own, or they are too scared to go to places like Detroit to help. But it’s not just Detroit. From a local standpoint of where I am geographically, I go to Ann Arbor frequently and people ask me for spare change or are camped out near Starbucks. Reports show when President Obama visited grand ol’ A2 in 2012, home of the privileged college students of the University of Michigan, the homeless were shoo’d into the woods, in fear Barack would see them and their camp. The city law enforcement tried to justify the actions, but really – it just looked pretty bad.
I can’t say I know where to go next. I’m waiting on another friend of mine and his girlfriend who are working toward potentially establishing an organization to help the homeless directly, rather than going through a third party. Some exist. Some churches also go out to Roosevelt Park on Saturday mornings to hand out food. These few friends of mine loaded up a truck with clothes and when visiting a local shelter around Christmas, they wanted to hand them out themselves. The shelter refused, so they took what I brought that was left and went out to Cass Corridor to hand them out themselves. Sometimes that is the better option. Source to “consumer.” Once I hear more about their organization, I’ll keep everyone posted – in case anyone wants to join. You won’t get anything out of it, except the important thing: the feeling inside that you’re doing some good in the world.
To ease my other pal’s brain – I really wasn’t thinking about the misunderstanding we had until reading my international film textbook today (apparently this class is really changing my life – I’ve wrote about it twice already). I read this passage and it made me think a little more about the subject and what I was trying to say to him, but got depicted in the description of the movie Boudu [or Boudu Saved from Drowning] (the green is what happened, the yellow the interpretation):
The notation about the middle class woman is what I see happening a lot. Even though she was trying to teach her child the right thing, it came down to “realizing your view point and articulating it correctly” could be mentally and physically damaging – in this case, to Boudu. As humans, we all have a concept of pride, and though that can sometimes be a bad thing, at the same time, it is a human emotion that we can’t always control. Even for a person who’s in a bad situation, hurting their pride could be the last straw. On top of every other emotion they probably feel, chances are, you don’t want to wound their pride anymore. If she had not said that in front of the man, potentially he could have went to buy bread. As the book notates, it was probably a dumb move on his part to not keep the money, but in turn, it also could maintain a parallel of “wealthy people are so poor, all they have is money.”
