By
NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF, Published:
November 27, 2013
When
I’ve written recently about food stamp recipients, the uninsured and prison inmates, I’ve had plenty of pushback
from readers.
A reader named Keith reflected a coruscating
chorus when he protested: “If
kids are going hungry, it is because of the parents not upholding their
responsibilities.”
A reader in Washington bluntly suggested
taking children from parents and putting them in orphanages.
Jim asked: “Why should I have to subsidize someone else’s child? How
about personal responsibility? If you procreate, you provide.”
After a recent column about an uninsured man
who delayed seeing a doctor about a condition that turned out to be colon
cancer, many readers noted that he is a lifelong smoker and said he had it
coming.
“What kind of a lame brain doofus is this
guy?” one reader asked. “And like it’s our fault that he couldn’t afford to
have himself checked out?”
Such scorn seems widespread, based on the
comments I get on my blog and Facebook page — as well as on
polling and on government policy. At root, these attitudes reflect a profound lack of empathy.
A Princeton University psychology professor, Susan Fiske, has found that when research
subjects hooked up to neuro-imaging machines look at photos of the poor and homeless, their brains
often react as if they are seeing things, not people. Her analysis suggests
that Americans sometimes react to poverty not with sympathy but with revulsion.
So, on Thanksgiving, maybe we need a
conversation about empathy for fellow humans in distress.
Let’s acknowledge one point made by these
modern social Darwinists: It’s true that some people in poverty do suffer in
part because of irresponsible behavior, from abuse of narcotics to criminality
to laziness at school or jobs. But remember also that many of today’s poor are small children who have
done nothing wrong.
Some 45 percent of food stamp recipients are
children, for example. Do we really think that kids should go hungry if they
have criminal parents? Should a little boy not get a curved spine treated
properly because his dad is a deadbeat? Should a girl not be able to go to
preschool because her mom is an alcoholic?
Successful people tend to see in themselves a
simple narrative: You study hard, work long hours, obey the law and create your
own good fortune. Well, yes. That often works fine in middle-class families.
But if you’re conceived by a teenage mom who
drinks during pregnancy so that you’re born with fetal alcohol effects, the
odds are overwhelmingly stacked against you from before birth. You’ll perhaps
never get traction.
Likewise, if you’re born in a high-poverty
neighborhood to a stressed-out single mom who doesn’t read to you and slaps you
more than hugs you, you’ll face a huge handicap. One University of Minnesota study found that
the kind of parenting a child receives in the first 3.5 years is a better
predictor of high school graduation than I.Q.
All this helps explain why one of the strongest determinants of ending up poor is being born poor.
As Warren Buffett puts it, our life outcomes often depend on the “ovarian lottery.” Sure, some
people transcend their circumstances, but it’s callous for those born on second
or third base to denounce the poor for failing to hit home runs.
John Rawls, the brilliant 20th-century
philosopher, argued for a society that seems fair if we
consider it from behind a “veil of ignorance” — meaning we don’t know whether
we’ll be born to an investment banker or a teenage mom, in a leafy suburb or a
gang-ridden inner city, healthy or disabled, smart or struggling, privileged or
disadvantaged. That’s a shrewd analytical tool — and who among us would argue for food stamp cuts if we
thought we might be among the hungry children?
As we celebrate Thanksgiving, let’s remember that the difference between being surrounded by a loving
family or being homeless on the street is determined not just by our own level
of virtue or self-discipline, but also by an inextricable mix of luck,
biography, brain chemistry and genetics.
For
those who are well-off, it may be easier to castigate the irresponsibility of
the poor than to recognize that success in life is a reflection not only of
enterprise and willpower, but also of random chance and early upbringing.
Low-income Americans, who actually encounter
the needy in daily life, understand this complexity and respond with empathy. Researchers say that’s why the poorest 20
percent of Americans donate more to charity, as a fraction of their incomes,
than the richest 20 percent. Meet those who need help, especially children, and
you become less judgmental and more compassionate.
And compassion isn’t a sign of weakness, but a mark of civilization.
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