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Getting to Know the Poor Rosser: Getting to Know the Poor Comment Getting to Know the Poor Ezra Rossert INTRODUCTION The theme of the World Bank's principal publication in 2000/2001, the World Development Report, was "Attacking Poverty." Such a focus is not surprising given the centrality of fighting poverty to the mission of the World Bank.1 However, what was noteworthy about the 2000/2001 Report was the prominent way the Bank featured what it called the "voices of the poor." 2 The perspectives of poor people informed both the Report's descriptions of the challenges of poverty and the Report's proposed policy responses. By incorporating the lives, language, and experiences of the poor directly into the Report, the Bank participated in a larger trend in changing how poverty is understood: from international aid and development organizations to academics and journalists, portrayals of poor people have taken center stage in the discussion of poverty and development policy. In the popular press, a market has even emerged for books whose primary contribution is to introduce middle- and upper-class readers to the t Associate Professor, American University Washington College of Law; Research Affiliate, National Poverty Center, University of Michigan; M.Phil, Cambridge; J.D., Harvard Law School; B.A., Yale University. The author thanks Shailaja Fennell, whose observations and teaching helped inspire this article, Kaaryn Gustafson, who graciously shared the page proofs of her book, and the editors of the Yale Human Rights and Development Law Journal. 1. The World Bank proclaims that it has "made the world's challenge - to reduce global poverty - our challenge." About Us - Challenge, WORLD BANK, http://go.worldbank.org/DM 4A380WJ0 (last visited Mar. 4, 2011). Expanding on this idea, the institution's mission statement reads: "To fight poverty with passion and professionalism for lasting results. To help people help themselves and their environment by using resources, sharing knowledge, building capacity and forging partnerships in the public and private sectors." About Us, WORLD BANK, http://www.worldbank.org/about (last visited Mar. 4, 2011). 2. See WORLD BANK, WORLD DEVELOPMENT REPORT 2000/2001: ATTACKING POVERTY 3 Box 1 (2001) [hereinafter WDR 2000/2001] (explaining that the "Voices of the Poor" study was conducted as background for the Report and consisted of participatory studies involving more than 60,000 poor people around the globe). 66 Published by Yale Law School Legal Scholarship Repository, 2011 1 Yale Human Rights and Development Law Journal, Vol. 14 [2011], Iss. 2, Art. 3 2011] Getting to Know the Poor 67 challenges of being poor. Barbara Ehrenreich catapulted to fame with Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, in which she briefly put her professional career to one side and tried to make ends meet in a series of low wage jobs.3 Although Ehrenreich's book can be dismissed as merely a well-publicized stunt - after all, she left her job but not the security of her profession, connections, or possibility of exit - her narrative provided readers a (comfortable) window from which to consider the hardships faced by service workers. 4 More serious works on the lives of the poor, although generally providing greater context and citation counts, have similarly found in the lives of the poor the material to frame policy critiques. Books written by academics and journalists provide rich descriptions of everything from how the poor make decisions to the inadequacy of their housing. The goals vary, but a unifying foundation of such scholarship involves an in-depth portrayal of the lives of members of the particular disadvantaged community, often using their own words. In American Dream: Three Women, Ten Kids, and a Nation's Drive to End Welfare, New York Times writer Jason DeParle used the life histories of a small group of poor women to question the standard assumptions about the personal characteristics of welfare recipients.5 In a related book, David Shipler uses an abundance of quotations from poor individuals to share their work struggles, indignities, family dynamics, and aspirations with readers in his aptly titled The Working Poor: Invisible in America.6 Countless other books focus on a wide range of sub-groups of the poor: the homeless, 7 drug addicts,8 women,9 children,10 racial and ethnic minorities," rural poor, 12 inner-city poor, 13 3. BARBARA EHRENREICH, NICKEL AND DIMED: ON (NOT) GETTING BY IN AMERICA (2001). 4. In NICKEL AND DIMED, Ehrenreich went from one service job - as a waitress, a maid, an apparel clerk - to another and argued that these workers subsidize the lifestyles of the middle and upper classes. EHRENREICH, supra note 3. But see Steven Malanga, The Myth of the Working Poor, CITY J., Autumn 2004, at 3 (arguing that Ehrenreich rigged her "experiment" by never staying long enough at a job to get promoted); ADAM W. SHEPHARD, SCRATCH BEGINNINGS: ME, $25, AND THE SEARCH FOR THE AMERICAN DREAM (2008) (describing a year-long effort to disprove Ehrenreich through a similar counter-experiment). 5. JASON DEPARLE, AMERICAN DREAM: THREE WOMEN, TEN KIDS, AND A NATION'S DRIVE TO END WELFARE (2004). 6. DAVID K. SHIPLER, THE WORKING POOR: INVISIBLE IN AMERICA (2004). 7. See, e.g., JONATHAN KOZOL, RACHEL AND HER CHILDREN: HOMELESS FAMILIES IN AMERICA (1987). 8. See, e.g., TANYA TELFAIR SHARPE, BEHIND THE EIGHT BALL: SEX FOR CRACK COCAINE EXCHANGE AND POOR BLACK WOMEN (2005). 9. Ruth Sidel in particular has written a series of portrayal books related to women and poverty in the United States. See, e.g., RUTH SIDEL, UNSUNG HEROINES: SINGLE MOTHERS AND THE AMERICAN DREAM (2006); RUTH SIDEL, ON HER OWN: GROWING UP IN THE SHADOW OF THE AMERICAN DREAM (1990); RUTH SIDEL, WOMEN AND CHILDREN LAST: THE PLIGHT OF POOR WOMEN IN AFFLUENT AMERICA (1986). Sidel is joined by many other authors. See, e.g., SHARON HAYS, FLAT BROKE WITH CHILDREN: WOMEN IN THE AGE OF WELFARE REFORM (2003). 10. See, e.g., ANNETTE LAREAU, UNEQUAL CHILDHOODS: CLASS, RACE, AND FAMILY LIFE (2003); JILL DUERR BERRICK, FACES OF POVERTY: PORTRAITS OF WOMEN AND CHILDREN ON WELFARE (1995). 11. See, e.g., WILLIAM JULIUS WILSON, MORE THAN JUST RACE: BEING BLACK AND PooR IN https://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/yhrdlj/vol14/iss2/3 2 Rosser: Getting to Know the Poor 68 YALE HUMAN RIGHTS & DEVELOPMENT L.J. [Vol. 14:2 immigrants, 14 and the disabled.15 The shared characteristics of such works - whether written primarily for an academic audience or the general public - are a reliance on the voices of the poor, coupled with rich descriptions of the physical environment occupied by the poor, to paint a portrait of lives impacted by poverty and limited opportunities. The demand for, and the utility of, what - borrowing from the World Bank - might be called the "poor voices" literature is directly related to the distance between most readers and the poor. Readers and policymakers are interested in such studies because they do not have knowledge of the poor; they are not friends with the poor, and because of class divisions only encounter the poor infrequently. The separation in lived experience between the rich and the poor is exacerbated when the poor community being profiled is from another country or lives on a different continent. Almost inevitably, literature billed as a first-hand account of poverty ends up being mediated by the development institution or the scholar. Thus, while the poor voices literature seems to give great weight to the perspective of the poor individuals or community being profiled, the poor remain the subjects of study and rarely the authors of change. The objectification and consumption of the experiences of the poor by those seeking to understand them is not limited to popular and academic literature. Recognizing the consumptive aspects of the poverty portrayal literature does not mean the entire poor voices category should be disparaged. There is value in moving from the objective, paternalistic perspective of the privileged expert to a perspective that takes into account, or even prioritizes, the knowledge the poor have of their own hardships and challenges. But the danger, that in consuming the voices of the poor we permit ourselves to remain distant from the poor and their struggles, needs to be recognized. In this brief essay, I explore what the poor voices literature says about our society and about our obligations to the poor. Though the focus is on the poor voices literature, the value and limitations of such work extend to the other ways in which we try to acquaint ourselves with the domestic and international poor. There is nothing new about journalists, scholars, and activists using portrayals of the poor and even the words of the poor to attempt to shed light on disadvantaged THE INNER CITY (2009). 12. See, e.g., CYNTHIA M. DUNCAN, WHY POVERTY PERSISTS IN RURAL AMERICA (1999). Additionally, Lisa Pruitt has written extensively on the invisibility of the rural poor and the urban lens that is usually applied when considering poverty programs. See, e.g., Lisa R. Pruitt, Missing the Mark: Welfare Reform and Rural Poverty, 10 J. GENDER RACE & JUST. 439 (2007). 13. See, e.g., KATHERINE S. NEWMAN, NO SHAME IN MY GAME: THE WORKING POOR IN THE INNER CITY (1999); JAY MACLEOD, AIN'T NO MAKIN' IT: ASPIRATIONS AND ATTAINMENT IN A Low-INCOME NEIGHBORHOOD (1987). 14. See, e.g., ALEJANDRA MARCHEVSKY & JEANNE THEOHARIS, NOT WORKING: LATINA IMMIGRANTS, LOW-WAGE JOBS, AND THE FAILURE OF WELFARE REFORM (2006). 15. See, e.g., A ROUTE OUT OF POVERTY?: DISABLED PEOPLE, WORK AND WELFARE REFORM (Gabrielle Preston ed., 2006). Published by Yale Law School Legal Scholarship Repository, 2011 3 Yale Human Rights and Development Law Journal, Vol.
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