Piss Poor Parenting

Time chugs along and the conversation about poverty that began in the wake of Hurricane Katrina has been supplanted by a thousand other trifling stories.

The stories about poverty quickly disappear when Lindsay Lohan crashes her car or Paris Hilton calls off her wedding announcement. These horrendous girls get on my nerves, but they serve as a springboard for a discussion I’d like to have today about behavior, class, poverty and my favorite subject: white people bullshit.

The Associated Press today reported today that there’s a difference in opinion when wealthy and poor folks are asked about the root cause of poverty.

Wealthier folks seem “evenly split on whether poverty is caused by external factors or by people not making enough effort” while poorer folks “were almost twice as likely to say factors beyond their control are responsible for their impoverished state.”

It’s interesting to note the following two stories, which detail that poorer folks are actually more generous and philanthropic than their wealthier counterparts.

From New England:

Connecticut ranks first when it comes to making money, but joins New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Rhode Island in falling to the very bottom of the 2004 Generosity Index, according to the Catalogue for Philanthropy. Mississippi held onto its title as the most giving state for the eighth consecutive year. Following right behind are Arkansas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Alabama and Tennessee.

But it’s not just here – this story out of England draws the same conclusion:

"It is staggering to think that, although the better-off have more money than ever before, it is the poorer people in society who are giving their money away to good causes.”

What motivates poorer folks to give more freely, here and abroad, I wonder?

Do societal, cultural, religious, and regional differences factors into the equation?

I tried to think of an example to illustrate this division in thinking about wealth and poverty – so I decided to look into issues regarding education.

I’ve heard numerous white folks lament the deplorable state of the public school system here in the city of St. Louis. These folks seem content to send their children off to private Catholic schools, justifying their rationale with any number of reasons. I especially do not understand why someone who isn’t Catholic would send their child into a Catholic environment and the only motivator I can come up with is this: white people bullshit.

I want to ask anyone who sends their child to private school if their child, fundamentally, deserve a better education that someone else’s child?

Do you really believe that the public school system is that horrendous?

And if you think that, why are you not doing a damn thing about it?

Don’t you understand that poorer children with less educational opportunity face a greater challenge in life than their wealthier counterparts?

And if you admit that -- what the FUCK do you think will happen to these children in the long-term?

What kind of adults will they grow up to become?

And speaking of adults and a Catholic institution that has, for centuries, protected thousands of child molesters – does that institution really deserve your financial support?

Does that really serve the best interest of your child – to teach them that a misogynistic institution that protects child molesters is “better” than learning besides a child from a different socio-economic, cultural or ethnic background?

Is your child really safer being schooled in that world?

What values are your children learning in that environment in the first place?

Are the hundreds of millions of dollars spent sending children to private school making this community, this country any better?

Couldn’t that money go into numerous other projects, ventures and organizations?

Do you accept that across this nation there is disparity in resources, materials, teaching staffs and expectations?

And who do we blame for these differences?

Callous politicians, indifferent parents, bratty kids, underpaid teachers or a political and social system that fundamentally fails to address why all these factors come into play?

I wish I knew the answers, but one thing is for sure: poverty exists.

But is poverty best defined by an absence of cash or more by an absence of consideration for others?

I know that I frequently have few nice things to say about the Catholic Church – or most churches -- or most religious people -- up on this blog. The reason for that is that they often stand in deliberate, willful and unflinching opposition to my understanding of Jesus’ teachings.

And while there are any number of Catholic organizations that aid, assist and protect the poor, have Catholic schools in our city abandoned their Catholic principles and simply become the refuge of the privileged and the racist?

I’ll leave you with this story, of a certain Brother Kenneth Hoagland, who decided to cancel the Kellenberg Memorial High school’s prom, in light of students’ parents spending $20,000 to rent a house in the Hamptons for a post prom party fit for the Lindsay Lohan/Paris Hilton generation:

"It is not primarily the sex/booze/drugs that surround this event, as problematic as they might be. It is rather the flaunting of affluence, assuming exaggerated expenses, a pursuit of vanity for vanity's sake — in a word, financial decadence. Each year it gets worse, becomes more exaggerated, more expensive, more emotionally traumatic…We are withdrawing from the battle and allowing parents full responsibility. Kellenberg is willing to sponsor a prom, but not an orgy."

Now that’s some Catholicism I can understand and support...but you should know that some parents are now planning on hosting an off-site event in protest of a Catholic school’s decision to be…well…Catholic.

Talk about a piss-poor excuse for parenting…

Posted October 18, 2005 02:36 PM