Big Idea: It's Time to Change the Way We Talk About Poverty

By Jason Wesco, Executive Vice-President of the Community Health Center of Southeast Kansas in Pittsburg

“Whatever happened to the idea…that we all do better when we all do better?” 

                                                            -- Former Senator Paul Wellstone

I live in the poorest town in the poorest county in Kansas. For years, our most critical natural resource was coal. It was the sole reason for the town’s founding.  We built a community around it. From England and Scotland and Wales we came, from Italy and Slovenia, from Alabama. We blasted coal, we dug coal, we loaded coal, we shipped coal out by railcar. Speaking thirty languages, with white skin, with black skin, breaking our backs, ruining our lungs to feed our families, to build a future, coal formed our culture. By 1913, 12,000 of us mined 7.2 million tons of it.

But then the coal fields played out.   

What happens when the economic engine that drives a community sputters to a halt? Who leaves, and who gets left behind? It is a seemingly never ending story that affects all of us. It is happening as you read this, where you read this. It may not be Slovenian coal miners who have a story to tell in your community.  Instead, it may be first generation immigrants in a meat packing plant or seventh generation Kansans working two minimum wage jobs. It may be the nice young family across the street or your elderly uncle who lives alone. It may be you.  

In Kansas and our country, we work harder than we did fifty years ago, but wages, adjusted for inflation, have stagnated. We are decimating rural communities, we are getting older, we are becoming sicker, we live in isolation and we are losing our sense of place, our community.  

Are we so busy longing for a Kansas that no longer exists that we don’t see the Kansas that does? That Kansas looks pretty bleak for the 875,000 Kansans who likely aren’t making ends meet.

We have choices to make. We can choose whether these trends are acceptable or not. If they are not, we can look for someone to blame. And generally what we do is blame the poor for being poor. Blame is easier than confronting large and harsh realities or changing an idealized vision of our communities (even if that vision died with Main Street years ago). We talk about bootstraps for people who can’t even afford shoes.

Or, we can attempt to understand these trends and the very real and immediate impact they have, today, in our communities, on our friends and neighbors. We can get busy doing something. Here's a start:

• We must stop blaming individuals for their circumstances. No one wants to be laid off, poor, sick and without hope. 

• We must stop believing the only way to “make money” is to reduce labor costs. We must stop thinking the minimum wage is a livable wage. In my community, it takes about $38,000 annually for a family of three to be self-sufficient. Two people working full-time, minimum wage jobs earn about $30,000 per year.

• We must stop pretending we live in a classless Kansas. We can seek to understand not only trends, but the particular plight of those in our community who are not getting by.

• We must start believing we can do something. We can change our minds.  We can question our biases. We can make new policy.  

• We can be kind. 

These views do not necessarily reflect those of Humanities Kansas, its board of directors, or staff. 

Spark a Conversation

Explore

• Poverty USA
• Play Spent, an online experience about surviving poverty and homelessness
• County Health Rankings in Kansas
• Income Inquality publications from the US Census Bureau

Read

• Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth by Sarah Smarsh. HK's Instagram Book Club is reading and discussing "Heartland" in September 2019. Join us!

• Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond

• A Framework for Understanding Poverty by Ruby Payne

• Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of Family and Culture in Crisis by J.D. Vance

• Janesville: An American Story by Amy Goldstein

• Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America by Barbara Ehrenreich

• Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools by Jonathan Kozol

Watch

• The Creek Runs Red 
• The Florida Project 
• People Like Us: Social Class in America
• Rich Hill 
• Winter's Bone

About Jason Wesco

Though trained in the humanities, Jason Wesco has dedicated his career to expanding access to healthcare for Kansans. He is the Executive Vice-President of the Community Health Center of Southeast Kansas with the mission to: "Do all the good you can, in all the ways you can, for all the people you can, for just as long as you can." The CHC/SEK provides care for more than 55,000 patients every year. Wesco also serves on the HK Board of Directors. He lives in an old brick house on an old brick street in Pittsburg with his wife and two daughters who are carrying on the proud tradition of strong southeast Kansas women.