By now, many of you may have read or at least seen excerpts from Linda Tirado's HuffPost blog post titled,
"This Is Why Poor People's Bad Decisions Make Perfect Sense". I read it a couple of weeks ago and have been stewing on it every since.
Linda is a very articulate, well spoken woman. However... I am angry with her well written blog post for perpetuating the theory that poverty begets poverty. Jesus, does that attitude feel like nails on a chalkboard to me!
I, like Linda, can speak to being poor and intelligent because I have been as poor as any first world child can be. And it is generational in my family. My mother lived in a "home" with no plumbing, no true insulation, no refrigeration... where river rats crawled on her in her sleep.
The poverty continued on for me. I remember the excitement for the beginning of the month when food stamps came and I knew we would have food in the fridge again for a couple of weeks. The excitement when a kind stranger came to the door on Christmas Eve with a cardboard box of a few gifts for my brother and myself as that would be the only gifts we would get for Christmas. I remember washing the outside of a man's trailer in the trailer park we lived in so that I could get a fresh $20 bill at 9-years-old and go buy myself a brand new back to school outfit and feel like the "other" kids at school... if only for one day... in clothes that were new and actually fit me.
That abject, degrading poverty is where my similarities with Linda ends.
Unlike Linda, I made a cognisant choice to change my path. Just like washing that man's trailer... I knew that if I worked hard and avoided the stereotypical trappings of poverty... I could get out.
First off... Linda (as intelligent as she is) excuses her unplanned children:
"Poverty is bleak and cuts off your long-term brain. It's why you see people with four different baby daddies instead of one. You grab a bit of connection wherever you can to survive. You have no idea how strong the pull to feel worthwhile is. It's more basic than food. You go to these people who make you feel lovely for an hour that one time, and that's all you get. You're probably not compatible with them for anything long-term, but right this minute they can make you feel powerful and valuable. It does not matter what will happen in a month. Whatever happens in a month is probably going to be just about as indifferent as whatever happened today or last week. None of it matters. We don't plan long-term because if we do we'll just get our hearts broken. It's best not to hope. You just take what you can get as you spot it."
Do you think I didn't seek men to fulfill the hole in my heart left by my own
absentee father? Of course I did... but I also knew that condoms are an amazing (and very effective way) to prevent unwanted births. As are birth control pills. And how did a poor girl raised in rural Maine possibly afford birth control? I got off my ass and started working at the age of 14. By the age of 17 I actually worked 2 jobs while going to high school and graduating at the top 10% of my class.
Linda also smokes... which I have never done. First off, Linda, you are selfish... every $7 you spend on a pack is $7 of healthy food you are stealing from your poor children. She whines, "
I smoke. It's expensive. It's also the best option. You see, I am always, always exhausted. It's a stimulant." I might excuse that ridiculous option if it were not for your children you are stealing from... as well as chancing taking their mother from as she dies of self-induced lung cancer.
Linda is raising children with the most self-defeatist attitude I can even imagine: "
I make a lot of poor financial decisions. None of them matter, in the long term. I will never not be poor..."
Bullshit, Linda. You know what... I had every excuse of a shitty childhood of poverty and abuse that I could have started popping out babies with multiple baby daddies at age 15. Living on welfare. Sitting on my ass watching Jerry Springer while smoking my stimulating cigarettes.
But, I CHOSE not to be financially poor (or poor in any other manner, for that matter). I CHOSE a father for my 3 children who would be an amazing provider and daddy. (Even though our first child was unplanned... I knew that I was with a man who was a good man, a good person and this, in turn, reflects in him being a great father. All of these women who want to degrade the father of your babies, what does that say for you in laying down with these less-than-stellar men???)
I was a poor person whose good decisions make perfect sense. And how dare you, Linda, give other poor people a reason to stay helpless. How dare you give them excuses to raise their children in generational hopelessness and poverty.
I am here to tell them that you can make good choices... great choices. You can choose to work hard and pull yourself out. You can choose to provide an amazing life and sense of hope for your own children.
Shame on you, Linda.
