
An Ode to a 'Poor Black Kid' I Never Knew: How Forbes Gets Poverty Wrong - pitdesi
http://www.good.is/post/an-ode-to-a-poor-black-kid-i-never-knew-how-forbes-gets-it-wrong/
======
ap22213
Having started at the (US) 99th percentile and having luckily risen to the 2nd
percentile, I'll say that the most difficult part was learning 'the language'
of the middle class. By language, I mean all the nuanced understandings,
cultural concepts, non-verbal stuff that is impossible to gain without being
in it. And, as an adult I'm still learning.

One example that I've recently become frighteningly aware of is that I have a
vastly different understanding of what 'property' means than those who came
from middle class US cultures. It's taken many years for me to understand this
because in fact I know and understand the English definition of property as
well as my counterparts. But, there are subtle differences in meaning that
fundamentally filter my perspective. For instance, I never understood why my
college friends became upset when I borrowed things and never returned them,
nor why they thought it bizzare that I'd tell them, of my stuff, to just keep
it.

There are countless other examples. The article particularly makes me think of
my adult friends and their relationships, in and out, rarely 'settling down'
from an outsider view. But, just because they get divorced a lot and re-
married, or cheat a lot, etc. It doesn't mean that their social conventions
are any less valid than those of the middle class America. There are strong
social consistencies and social language, unfortunately reinforcing.

My models are very different still, the semantics don't align right with my
current environment, and today I have difficulty teaching my son the middle
class way.

~~~
anateus
In the interest of learning the middle, and upper middle class's vocabulary I
respectfully make the correction that you probably meant that you went from
the 1st percentile, to the 98th (of income, I believe you imply).

I've seen my parents make a climb in socioeconomic "position" similar to
yours, and I've found that much as you found one of the fundamental things
that separate the "classes" is awareness of taboos, and even more importantly,
when taboos can be violated! My observations seem to indicate that the level
of "taboo observance" is distributed in a bell curve over the incomes.

~~~
ap22213
Thanks for the correction. I used that twist of view to allude to and separate
out the so-called '1%', of which appears to me to have a separate 'language'
in itself.

------
byrneseyeview
This article alludes to the "bee sting" theory of poverty (see
[http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/03/30/...](http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/03/30/the_sting_of_poverty/?page=full)
).

That brings up an interesting question: in historical terms, the subject of
this story is quite well-off; he's not always physically at risk, he has ready
access to probably non-toxic food, he has shelter, etc. Over a long enough
timeline, his life is pretty good. Even his home situation--mom is a
prostitute, but he can't tell anyone lest the authorities separate them--is in
all likelihood less common than it might have been centuries ago.

So if these conditions are so awful that we can't possibly expect people to
improve without fixing said conditions, how do we explain historical economic
growth. We're descended from people who had _really_ miserable lives: sleep in
a cave, hope you can hunt or gather enough food to stay alive, go to sleep
hungry more often than not, risk death by infection every time you get a cut
that's more than skin deep, and reproduce through what any modern person would
call serial rape. Beings that were physiologically human (basically us, but
probably lactose intolerant) had to deal with all of those circumstances, and
managed to bequeath to the next generation some slightly less miserable
circumstances.

It comes back to the anthropic principle: if misery is a strong disincentive
for progress, how did we progress to the point that we have leisure time to
discuss this?

(I've asked the same question on Quora here: [http://www.quora.com/How-do-
adherents-to-the-bee-sting-theor...](http://www.quora.com/How-do-adherents-to-
the-bee-sting-theory-of-poverty-explain-historical-economic-growth) . I am
very interested in the answers.)

~~~
vacri
_We're descended from people who had really miserable lives: sleep in a cave,
hope you can hunt or gather enough food to stay alive, go to sleep hungry more
often than not_

This is pure conjecture.

 _risk death by infection every time you get a cut that's more than skin deep_

Reasonable point, but nothing to hang your hat on - it's the same for many
poor people today that have poor access to medicine

 _and reproduce through what any modern person would call serial rape._

And we're back to just making stuff up again to make it sound like people in
poverty have it easy.

The poor black kid in the story doesn't have access to self-sufficiency that
your hunter-gatherers had. Where are the animals he can hunt? Where is the
food he can simply gather? He has markedly different restrictions on his life,
but you're ignoring all that to try and paint him as wealthy compared to "ye
olde ignorant savage"

~~~
white_devil
I believe his point was that it should be possible for <hardship-experiencing-
people> to gradually improve their living conditions even despite their
hardships.

~~~
triclosan
I think he(and maybe you) underestimate how bad it is. Just because your
shitty situation gradually improves, it doesn't make it a good situation, it
makes it a slightly better shitty situation.

~~~
white_devil
Yes, but the gradual improvement might have been happening over a long period
already, and as a result, the situation wouldn't be bad anymore.

~~~
triclosan
again, underestimating how shitty things are. going from property to turning
tricks is a huge step up.

------
ImprovedSilence
Fantastic read.

Being an aspiring entrepreneur, I tend to look to others that have made it,
and see what I can learn from them. I became fascinated with biographies
autobiographies of everyone from Richard Branson and Steve Jobs to Lance
Armstrong to Anthony Kedis (red hot chili peppers). The single best one of
them I've read is "From Pieces to Weight" by 50 cent. It written so well that
you don't just understand why he made the decisions he did (becoming a drug
dealer) you understand that you would have very likely make the same
decisions, should you have been in his shoes. It really opens up another
perspective on an individuals behavior, and has made me that much less quick
to judge.

------
frankydp
Although I agree that the original post was naive, I do not think that the
misleading vividness and hasty generalization employed by Jefferson addresses
the issue to which the OP was referring. There is massive hardship across all
low income families but the use an outlier scenario does not negate the valid
argument that having goals and knowing that there is a prize to win at the end
of the race, is a strong motivator.

I inferred that a lack of hope and knowledge of an achievable future, is one
of the primary causes of lower performing low income students.

~~~
andylei
> misleading vividness

what?

> hasty generalization

there are no generalizations here. the article says that the author of the
forbes article (as well as you), as a person or privilege, does not understand
poverty and thus has no idea how to solve the problem. if anyone is making
"hasty generalizations", its the author of the forbes article, who thinks that
poor kids simply aren't trying hard enough.

> the use an outlier scenario

how do you know this is an outlier scenario?

> having goals and knowing that there is a prize to win at the end of the
> race, is a strong motivator

i doubt anyone would disagree with this statement, but it's irrelevant.

the original forbes article suggests that having goals and determination are
sufficient for escaping poverty. this article makes the argument that even
with goals and determination, escaping poverty is still extremely difficult;
furthermore, the very condition of poverty undermines the ability to develop
goals and determination.

~~~
burgerbrain
I think it is pretty safe to say that _"acts out in school to get suspensions
to stop your mother from being a prostitute"_ is an outlier.

I acted out in primary school. I did it because I was an asshole who didn't
respect education. I suspect my peers were the same.

~~~
darklajid
Just for reference, since you're now directly comparing two schools (yours and
the one in the linked article) here, how would you characterize the
similarities or differences between your school and one described as

"a primarily low-income, high-minority middle school serving sixth- through
eighth-graders"?

~~~
burgerbrain
Yeah, that sounds about like my school.

However, I find it very hard to believe that _any_ school in the world can
attribute most of it's student unruliness to children trying to get kicked out
so that their mothers cannot be prostitutes.

------
stablechaos
My mother and grandmother have devoted their lives to outreach to the low-
income community. From what they have told me, "poverty" is not at the heart
of this issue. Most of these parents have self-destructive habits which will
persist regardless of the degree of social engineering thrown at the problem.
The only thing that will save children like the one in the article is one-on-
one support from caring individuals around him.

------
wglb
The Gene Marks article is breathtakingly out of touch. He really ought to get
to know some seriously poor people. Perhaps live among them for a time.

------
js2
At least this kid tried to gain some perspective before writing about it -
<http://scratchbeginnings.com/>

------
gradschool
Is it off topic to wonder how the story of the badly behaved boy and his
mother ended? Presumably with the police involved, they got separated and she
was "protected" even more, albeit deprived of a livelihood. Maybe in another
era, the consensus was that sex work was such a great job that legal penalties
were needed to disincentivize it or there wouldn't be enough women left to be
wives and housekeepers. In these more enlightened times, we consider it such a
horrible job that anyone who would do it must be crazy or coerced, and needs
to be shown that there are alternatives, but we retain the legal penalties in
case we're not sure.

------
abstractnonsens
Learning requires only access to education and a stable living environment...
and then of course actually doing it.

Internet has mostly taken care of access to education. That leaves only living
conditions and motivation as precursors to success.

~~~
guard-of-terra
Motivation for grade hunting is a tricky thing. I don't understand where
people are supposed to take that.

Boredom counter clicks like hell when near any education system featuring
grades.

~~~
fallous
How does "education" equate to "grade system"? Are you mistaking credentials
for education?

------
Anechoic
To be honest, I don't know that this article is HN material (but I didn't flag
it). That said, thank you for posting this. Poverty is not just something you
can "The Secret" your way out of.

~~~
pitdesi
There's a hazy line, but it gratifies my intellectual curiosity (as someone
who is relatively ignorant of the subject) so I submitted it.

From: <http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

What to Submit: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That
includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a
sentence, the answer might be: _anything that gratifies one's intellectual
curiosity._

------
michaeldhopkins
At least of a few of the teachers outraged about Forbes will be working Google
Scholar into their curricula because of the article.

------
paulhauggis
"How best to prioritize learning to read rigorously over scheming to get home
and be the man of the house in the stead of the father who left? How best to
find joy in school with so much hate and embitterment poisoning the rest of
your life?"

How can we fix this? The problem is that no matter how much our teachers may
push students to do better and work harder in school, their home life may work
against it.

It's one of the side-effects of freedom. To some degree, there will never be a
way to fix it. Unless we can control what happens when they get home.

~~~
Indy_Dh
You are bringing up the argument for Welfare, Universal Healthcare, etc., that
there is nothing that the schools can do. The problems that these kids are
facing stems from the fact that they live in poverty. This leads to issues
such as the one mentioned by the author. The only way to solve the problem
would be to try to figure out a decent Social Benefits system for the poor, to
where poor parents do not feel the need to resort to prostitution, drugs,
drinking, etc.

~~~
anamax
> try to figure out a decent Social Benefits system for the poor, to where
> poor parents do not feel the need to resort to prostitution, drugs,
> drinking, etc.

Why do you think that the lack of a "decent Social Benefits system" is the
reason why they do prostitution, drugs, drinking?

To put it another way, you seem to be assuming that someone drinks because
they're poor. Could it be (for some/many) that they're poor because they
drink?

