Regarding Small People

By John Ballard

The mini-flap triggered by the "small people" remark by the Swedish chairman of the board at BP shows more than a language flub by someone whose mother tongue is not English. That moment (among others) illustrates how hungry reporters are for anything out of the ordinary that might pass as news, how willing political types are to pounce on ersatz news, and how shallow an empty-headed audience can be to lap up anything they are fed. And this instance also reveals how hypersensitive we are as a culture to class differences.

Egalitarian ideals sound good on paper. We all stand and cheer at the mention of all men are created equal  but that ideal looks threadbare under close examination. And no where does it look worse than when income and lifestyle become the metric. Nothing annoys a hard-working American worse than another American not at work. It's hard to say which non-working fellow American is more frustrating, the one independently wealthy or someone unemployed. Of the two, the idle rich man is tolerated -- even admired -- more than someone without a job. Senator Hatch delivered himself of remarks as ignorant as those spoken today by Representative Barton, and both hinge on class consciousness. James Carville's cri de coeur says "We want our fair share of oil revenues ...we want to be treated like we matter...We assume the risks with little reward..." he's talking in terms of social class an income distribution.

A surge of victim blaming frequently follows tragedies. In the wake of floods, fires, civil unrest and ethnic conflict a few voices can always be heard suggesting that had the victims been more [pick a term: careful, calm, responsible, constrained, educated, polite, sensible, sober, peaceful] tragedy would be less or ameliorated altogether. Katrina was a case study in blaming the victims but fortunately, since the oil disaster has a clear perpetrator, its victims are perceived as innocent. In both cases, Katrina and this artesian deep water crude oil gusher, those who suffer most are the working poor, a nameless, faceless part of society without which America could not function, living hardscrabble lives with dignity and pride.

I heard a radio interview a few days ago with someone who has earned his living for years with a chain mail safety glove in one hand and a knife in the other. He works as an oyster shucker. This man along with many others essential to all economic activity, does a necessary job without which the oyster business could not be competitive. I know without watching him that he's good at his job. Damn good. No one does that work for years and remains unproductive. What makes him get up in the morning and start his day? What makes him live and act as he does? Fortunately for us all, most of us are not attracted to the same work or live for the same goals.

�

Following Katrina I wrote what follows. In the aftermath of the oil disaster I repeat it here.

My
career has been in the public, serving cafeteria patrons, working with
those who produce the food. I have met and loved many thousands of the
public, their friends and families, watched their children grow, learned
to admire their energy and accomplishments. I also understood that my
job, along with those of fifty or a hundred others, depended on their
discretionary spending.

Behind the scenes I worked with people
who would never go "out to eat" in the cafeteria sense, at least not two
or three times a week - or even daily - as our best customers did. They
enjoyed pizza or other fast food. They might treat themselves to a
full-service restaurant from time to time, but they had no use for
places that charged more for service and image than for food.

But
enough about me. And enough about you, for that matter. Let's back up
and look at the picture. What we see is a contrast in values.

We
see a population of people who would never eat in a cafeteria earning a
living by working in one. It's not too different from any other
workplace where people make new cars but drive to work in old ones, who
clean houses for a living but live in a house with a rodent problem, who
work in a grocery store but eat an unbalanced diet of starches, fats
and carbs.

On the other hand, I once lived in a suburban
neighborhood where substance abuse victims all happened to be
"functional." They had good jobs, six-figures in some cases, but came
home every day and organized their afternoons and evenings around their
alcohol intake. They could afford it. They could also afford the
resulting health problems and other consequences.

I watched a
line of customers in a newly opened cafeteria in a very upscale
community with family after family consisting of a grey-templed dad and
his much-younger, fashion-conscious, pretty young wife and mother to his
second family, all going out to eat. There were so many kids we had to
order in another fleet of high chairs. All because they could afford it. Second chances to get it right with trophy wives thanks to a good income.

My
point is this: there are a great many lifestyles and choices in
America. We can argue that they are all determined by income, but that
is demonstrably untrue. It's not about income, it's about choices. And
before you jump to the conclusion that I'm about to condemn those who
"choose" to be poor, back off. I have a great respect and admiration for
those who, whether by choice or circumstance, are living poor. They
include old people who can no longer work, simple people who would
rather live humbly and have more time in their life for travel and
study, those who for religious reasons eschew wealth - I'm thinking of
the Amish and Catholic Worker types. Remember the old saying about all
work and no play. That, too, is part of the American Dream.

And
there is a vast population of people in our society whom we can call
the working poor. They work, but remain poor. Why? Is it because they
like being poor? Why, no. If you could choose to be good-looking or in
good health or respected would you choose to be ugly or sick or
hated? Of course not. But often we are not who or where we are because
of choice. We are there because that is where we are and being someplace
else is not part of our imagination.

How can the person born
blind understand about colors? How can the person who is deaf know about
musical harmony? And how can the infant born into what we
condescendingly refer to as an "underclass" know that there could have
been some alternative? At what point does the toddler begin to make
"choices" about whether or not he wants to continue a lifestyle? What
are the dynamics that produce an occasional boot-straps success despite a
"poverty" mentality?

I do not have an answer to these questions,
and I do not propose to find any.

What I do propose, however, is
that whatever the reasons, however it happened, there are a lot of
people in America who do not have what I describe as a "suburban
mentality." For them life is just as challenging, just as exciting, just
as painful, just as rewarding as it is for anyone else. They know that
when they get up in the morning they have to eat, live, love, worry,
rejoice and rest just like everyone else. The family structure may not
be ideal, they have more problems as the result of that lifestyle than
they would elsewhere, but elsewhere is not where they are.

They
have not come to America, like immigrants, with a vision of success,
working to buy into the American Dream. Nor have they jumped out of bed
one morning and said "This is the pits! I can't stand living like this!
No matter what it takes, I'm gonna work my ass off til I get the hell
outta here!"

No, not everyone is mad as hell and not gonna take
it any more. It not only takes hard work, creativity and sometimes a
good break or two, it also takes role models, encouragement and a
stubborn resolve on the part of the individual that is rare in the human
population. Remember, we aren't talking about third-generation college
grads whose parents, grandparents and extended family would look good in
a magazine article.

We are talking about people who have grown
up very differently. "Work" is not something you do because you like it.
It is something you do because you need the money. If you learn to like
it later, that's great - maybe even necessary. But as soon as you learn
to like what you do, where is the motivation to do something else? If
you are in tolerably good health, get a cold beer from time to time,
enjoy your tobacco, play cards, and have good sex, why in the world
would you want to change? I know a lot of so-called "successful" people
who would toss it all in to have that much.

Transportation for
the simple lifestyle is walking, public transportation, catching a ride
with someone else or driving some old piece of a car that will have to
be replaced pretty soon. (After Katrina I wrote here "If someone 'orders' an evacuation that order
is as alien as it comes. It presumes a car, and the means to buy gas,
and a destination, and the means to feed and shelter yourself in a place
you have never even seen. It presumes you know the way, and I'm not
speaking of maps." Now, following the poisoning of the Gulf with crude oil, methane and toxic solvents, I watch news reports of whole industries crashing and burning. Along with seafood and tourism the Gulf coast is facing an economic crisis that depends even more heavily on the petroleum industry. Never imagine God has no sense of irony.)

Health care for the working poor has meant getting over being sick. If you
can't get over it you take over the counter meds. If it gets worse you
go to the emergency room and hope they can help. (If the GOP succeeds in overturning the Affordable Care Act this will continue, but that part of life among the working poor may improve in a few years.) Dental work is about
the same. Get over it. Take something for the pain. And if it gets too
bad, find a dentist to pull the tooth. If they get bad enough, have them
all pulled and find a cheap lab that will make you some more for two
hundred dollars. Then you can smile like you used to, with teeth.

The people I am describing are not optional
to our economy. Their lifestyle "choices" are as basic to the American economic infrastructure as coins and
credit. Not everyone makes a good
income. Somebody is working for low wages, the
so-called "minimum wage." Somebody is working for even less.
And they are not from the middle class,
They are the young, the inexperienced, the old, those between jobs and lately the under-employed. The best of them - the cores of their respective professions - will be there,
year after year, generation after generation, doing a good good job,
putting in their days and weeks, teaching the more transitory around
them how to work well because those in a supervisory capacity are on
their way elsewhere and have not been trained to be teachers. I have
watched good poor people doing honorable work and doing it well for my
entire career. When I think of what happened to those people because of
the hurricane it makes me want to cry.

�

That stream of consciousness poured out of me following Katrina. Now, five years later, the same people and more are being visited by another hardship not of their making. It is too soon to predict the final outcome, but the consequences of this catastrophe will be grim. It's hard to imagine that any amount of money will be enough to compensate for what has been and continues to be destroyed. 

And as I mentioned above, the irony is that the same industry responsible for this mess is most likely the one which will ultimately furnish the revenue needed to make whole those who are being hurt. I am reminded of the children of irresponsible parents trapped in a sad cycle of repeated neglect and abuse.

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