So, if it were you, who lived in New Orleans, had a home or apartment there, and then was forced to leave because of the disaster, what would you do?

Would you sit in a "cracker box" of a home and say that you are just "in storage", or would you make attempts and efforts to go back? Or would you make a different decision, maybe that you didn't want to go back, that you wanted to try something new, that you wanted a different chance at life?

Really consider it. If it were you. What would you do?

I bet your answer isn't "nothing".

I think the church should be making a much better effort to all of the refugees homes, but it's hard for me to make the connection to racism (maybe classism).

Actually, how are you making the connection to racism?

i understand what you're saying, elise, but i don't think that's the same mindset that someone with relatively no education or means would make. I don't think you or I or anyone who's been blessed can understand what it feels like to be poor and on the ropes every second of your life. I've heard people speak about how different a poor society and an affluent society treat success and dreams. So I don't think it's as easy as someone needing to try harder. I think people do try, but that it's not easy like we maybe try to make it seem.

It's easy to think that you just walk down to whatever store and apply and you're hired. That'd be true for you and me, but in many states, you simply won't be hired if you're a survivor from the hurricane. The NY Times reports on this quite often, about how employers and residents treat Hurricane survivors as though they are second-class citizens. In the article I pulled the slideshow out of it, it talks about one of those it featured. It said she used to live across from her mother and next door to her aunt. With a disabled brother and some other challenges, not being that close to family and what they called "an extended babysitting network" there's a lot of people in shambles.

So, basically, I think it comes down to how unfair we as a country are to these people. We easily forget them because they're poor and we expect them to make due wherever they ended up. But they're not refugees, they're Americans, and I don't think we'd do the same thing if suburban Dallas flooded and was destroyed. So I think there's some serious overtones of racism and as James said, and maybe he's more correct, classism. I simply don't think it's fair that we've left these people out to fend for themselves when they don't have the means to, and it's definitely unkind to expect them to make some other city home, when I don't think we'd expect the same thing of ourselves or those with means.

Yeah, I don't know why I said "maybe" classism. I agree with everything you wrote.

My question is why rebuild? The city is an engineering disaster awaiting another storm even if the levees are rebuilt to withstand a category 5, these folks need to move on with their lives and leave New Orleans in their rear view mirrors. Government is not the answer. Besides, the levees are not ready for the impending current hurricane season in any event at the current time. One cannot bring back yesterday.

While it's always true, to an extent, that you can't know what things are like for someone else until you've walked the proverbial mile in their shoes, I will leave you with this little story.

I'm sure you've read that the number two item purchased with the Red Cross credit cards issued to the hurricane survivors was the PlayStation. I always figure those stats to be...well...stats. Easily twisted and turned to paint whatever picture you're trying to paint. However, I already owned my store at the time of the hurricane. And since Tyler is less than a day's drive from New Orleans, we had quite a few refugees living in our town at the time (still have many here now, actually). I cannot tell you how many of these survivors came into my store (a high-end ladies boutique) and used their RED CROSS EMERGENCY FUNDS to buy expensive dresses and jewelry and purses.

With the first customer who did this, I didn't even know it was a Red Cross card. Visas and Mastercards these days have so many weird logos on them I don't even pay attention. However, after she decided she wanted to only put some of what she was purchasing on the Red Cross card and we had to try and refund some of the purchase price back onto her card, I found out pretty quickly. I ended up spending nearly the entire next day either on the phone or sending faxes back and forth with 1) the government office designated to deal with the financial aspects of the crisis and 2) the Red Cross. They were both so completely swamped with people overcharging on the cards, with people using the entire card in one day at GameStop, with people trying to take back the items they had purchased (after using or copying them) and get more money put back on the card....it was a total disaster.

So, while I agree that I don't know what it's like to be completely poor and destitute, we have to agree that neither of us knows what it's like trying to help people who are only waiting for the next opportunity to make a very bad decision. And you can't chalk "buying an Xbox instead of food for the family" up to poor education. Food and shelter above all is survival instinct, and when people decide that it's someone else's job to take care of them, they seem to lose it.

Elise, I can certainly see what's influenced the way you're seeing the situation, but respectfully disargee. I've spent the past year and a half teaching in two schools fed by neighborhoods with some of the highest levels of concentrated poverty in the country---one of them being what the latest cencus said had the highest levels in the country. The way we're socialized completely influences the way we respond to situations; just like the upper and middle class, low socio-economic status households have very regular trends. One of them being that they spend the majority of their income on very expensive clothes and shoes. If you were to think about it, what would you say the reason for that is?

James, I completely agree with you that the way we are socialized influences the way we respond to situations. The difference in the trends of the upper and middle class compared to the lower economic class is that the upper and middle class people have more successful responses to crisis situations. Now I am sure that upper/middle class socialization taught them to save their last 500 bucks as opposed to buying shoes and jeans and worrying about bills next month, but does that mean that we do not hold others accountable when they make poor decision after poor decision?

Why can't these people, who grew up in these low income situations, see that the choices made by their parents (parent) were not decisions that led to any level of success? In my business, I look at other guys who are doing better than me and attempt to emulate them. It takes no education to make that decision.

Is it possible that the people Regan is referencing in this situation are actually comfortable where they are and that that is the real problem? What would happen if the government funded trailer were taken from them? Would they spring into action then or would they actually sit there complaining until they keeled over and died?

It has been two years. Why is the lady in the article still sitting there on the steps dragging on a cigarette? What is in the cooler? Who paid for that? You should check out the Showtime documentary Reversal of Fortune. My contention is that we could have handed each of those people in that trailer park $100K after Katrina and they would end up right back in the trailer park. Because the problem is not with the amount of assistance, but the decisions people make when they get that assistance. In her case, it appears she has chosen to spend whatever money she has on beer and cigarettes, live for free, and complain to anyone within earshot. Very easy, but completely unsuccessful.

We should absolutely love and help these people, but after 2 years of inaction, the help should come in the form of a nice firm shove. No more money. If you want a meal and a place to sleep, you show us three jobs you applied for today. Breathe into this, piss into this, here is a free account to safely hide and access the money you made. Okay, now give me a hug and go have something to eat.

At this point, the people who are still "displaced" have nothing to do with Hurricane Katrina.

I would compare James's response to this:

I grew up in a family where my dad takes ANY mistake as a sign of weakness. If I (or anyone else, for that matter) screws up, then he will remember it forever, hold it over me for just as long, and count it as a sign of failure. He was raised this way, his mother was raised in the same way, and her parents in the same way. I come from several generations of no-tolerance with any mistake whatsoever.

As you can imagine, this is a little bit of an unhealthy way to live. People should probably be able to forget to lock a door from time to time, or maybe be a few minutes late in coming home without being labeled as a failure and a screw-up.

However, I was raised this way. I was also home-schooled, in some part as an attempt to make sure that all the other "screw-ups" who are walking around in the world didn't get their chance to screw me up further. So! Healthy, right? But it's my legacy! It's the way I was socialized, the way I was raised, what I was taught was normal and healthy and all that sort of thing.

Does that then make it ok for me to project those unhealthy viewpoints and social standards upon my husband and (hypothetical) kids? Because that's what I tend to do; I tend to make my husband feel like if he does something "wrong", I am not going to give him any mercy, and am going to remember it forever. Is it ok for me to make my kids feel this way? Why not? I was raised in this manner. It's all I know. My default reaction to someone "screwing up" is to wonder what the hell is wrong with them, because if they cared, they wouldn't have forgotten to lock that door. They must either be an idiot or an asshole, one of the two. It can't just be an honest to goodness mistake.

This is an unhealthy attitude that has been bred into me and my family (and extended family, and a large group of family friends) for generations. But that doesn't make it any more right. And it doesn't give me any excuse to continue behaving this way.

Making excuses for people's behavior doesn't help them AT ALL. It doesn't matter if they were raised in a certain way. They can overcome that! Humans are made with a wonderful and incredible resilience. We can't just continue to give people a pass to behave in certain ways and make poor decisions (especially financial ones) with the blanket excuse of "well, they were raised that way!"

Hey Elise

Thanks for being honest about that. I hope I didn't indicate that I support complacency.

What are some of the things you guys know about generational poverty as opposed to situational?

Situational poverty and generational poverty are the same thing in that they are both poverty. When you get out of the terminology and the rhetoric and into the facts, you have a person (or set of people) who is/are without money or any immediate appreciable prospects of gaining money.

Whether it's someone who has HAD money and loses it because of something out of their control or loses it because of their own bad choices, or someone who grew up with no money and has never known what it would be like to HAVE money, it's all poverty.

Someone who has grown up in an entrepreneureal household and has been taught the ins and outs of buying, growing and selling businesses is obviously going to have a leg up on me, who has none of the above. However, I can still start a business, look at other people in the world who are successful at business (not people I know or have ever been around, mind you) and try to emulate them. I can read books, or listen to recorded lectures, or ask advice. I am not necessarily doomed because I have no situational or generational knowledge of how to run a business, because I can ACQUIRE knowledge of how to run a business. It might not be pretty, it will certainly be extremely hard work, and I might fail a time or two, but the information is out there. I just have to want to seek it.

So, someone who has situational poverty (which I am reading as poverty due to a specific set of circumstances) has the opportunity to look at what they did in the past, or what someone they know did in the past, and emulate that. They can draw upon past experiences, and use that for their benefit.

Someone who has generational poverty (which I am reading as poverty so bred into the family and social structure that it seems like the norm) also has the opportunity to look OUTSIDE their "normal" social trends, and see people who are NOT living in poverty. Because there are plenty of people in America who are not living in poverty, and who broadcast their financial successes all over the place. And I'm just not going to buy the theory that those who live in generational poverty can't possibly have the brain power to look at people who are NOT in poverty (those they are emulating by buying the expensive clothes and possessions) and think "hmm, I would like that. I would like to have financial security".

It doesn't take any amount of breeding or brainwashing or intelligence to look at someone who is doing something better than you, or at someone who has things that you wish you had, and realize that they are doing something right. And that you could try to do it that way as well. At the very least, you can't just sit there and do nothing or sit there and continue doing what you've done in the past and hope that somehow, a miracle will occur.

Animals are smarter than that. Rats are smarter than that. And humans are WAY smarter than that. It's a problem of passing the buck and expecting to be taken care of, and not WANTING to put forth a (massive, albeit) effort to change their situation and put things in their control. Because to have things in their control would mean that they had to work really hard to get them that way. And they just don't want to do that. It seems that they are more concerned with getting what they feel is "owed to them" than getting what they could go out and conquer and work for. That is a losing attitude, and you don't have to look far in any direction to find rampant examples to support that contention. And, conversely, examples of what to do to turn that mindset around.

It's a victim's mentality, pure and simple. To foster that only creates more victims.

Nice topic, Regan! Good discussion :)

And humans are WAY smarter than that. It's a problem of passing the buck and expecting to be taken care of, and not WANTING to put forth a (massive, albeit) effort to change their situation and put things in their control.

Or...dropping out of school because your household needs you to bring in money, your parents deciding that you could bring in assistance money if you'd get pregnant at 14, needing to care for loved ones, etc. Picking up on what society expects from you and stepping into those roles...

There are all kinds of push and pull factors. Do 1/3 of African american guys drop out of school because they want to pass the buck? That would be kind of startling.

I'm totally glad you're interested in this. Your basic idea of generational vs. situational is alright. It's really so much more than financial though, and most of factors are subtle and extremely significant. Sorry if I seem like I'm using jargon and rhetoric. I've been doing grad work in an education program that focuses on impoverished areas, so I'm sure it's leaking out a little. If you do want to get down into the facts a bit, these books are really good to start looking at some of the different things involved:

A Framework for Understanding Poverty

Bridges Out of Poverty: Strategies for Professionals and Communities

Interesting, James. I will check out those references.

I'm also glad you are taking an interest in the subject, even as far as to further educate yourself in order to help these people.

However, don't you ever worry, even a little bit, that all the rhetoric and "strategies for understanding poverty" just lead to more TALKING about and making excuses for the poverty, rather than addressing it specifically? Even "addressing it" means taking a pretty hard line?

Hey Elise

Oh, I totally do. I actually prefer not to talk about it. Most of the time when people are discussing it, they do it in third person. "What should the church be doing?" That kind of stuff. It often seems voyeuristic to me.