Stupid, insensitive politician alert.

[lykomancer]

Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer compared government assistance for low-income families to "feeding stray animals".


“My grandmother was not a highly educated woman but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed. You're facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don't think too much further than that. And so what you've got to do is you've got to curtail that type of behavior. They don't know any better."



Classism will be the last great -ism to come crashing down, because people are always willing to blame the poor and lower-class for their situation.

"If they just got a job..."
"If they just worked harder..."
"If they focused on getting an education..."
"If they saved some money..."
"If they weren't so lazy..."

NO.
No one deserves to live in poverty.

This isn't a lifestyle choice; this is a systematic failure.

Comments

[individual.livejournal.com]

Wow, what the fuck. I can't believe he actually even said that. Does he think the majoirty of people who're in poverty actually chose that life? I don't even... it's really digusting what some people think. Especially with things like this.

[lykomancer.livejournal.com]

It's a fundamental lack of understanding about how poverty works.

One of the major problems that I see with the American system links poverty and education in an endless cycle: public school funding is drawn from property tax. The parts of town with low property value tend to be where the poor live, and because the property value/taxes are so low, the schools receive shitty funding and the kids get shitty education. Poor elementary and high school education tends to make it a) less likely that those students will go to college, b) more likely that they didn't get good sex education and might end up pregnant, c) so that those kids don't get half the opportunities and tools that kids at public schools in wealthier parts of town get.

So the poor stay poor and the middle-class looks down on them. ...what? The middle-class went to public school, too! So that's no excuse for poverty!
...except that it is, because of the huge gap between public schools in middle-class neighborhoods and working-class or poor neighborhoods.

ARGH.