Anyway, we had like three topics to cover and none got covered well. But the lady who sat across from me was a visiting scholar from china. She teaches english as a chinese university. We had to bring posters showing our cultural identities, and since I'm not italian or irish, or anything but poor white farming stock, my poster ended up with a lot of family on it. I had pictures of my sons, my dad, my grampa and a big picture of my cousins and any kids they had. It also had christian symbols and veres and scrapbooking stickers of farming and hand tools and yarn and glitter spray, because everything is better with glitter.
So this chinese lady is sitting across from me looking at the pictures of my kids, and I swear, she is just astounded at the fact that not only did I have three, but I had three sons. She told us there at the table that in china they are only allowed on child a couple and that she has a twelve year old daughter she left in china for her visit in the United States. I knew they were only allowed one kid, but it seems like the reality of eveyone just having one child is a bit disturbing when a whole country has to follow the rule. They have no little siblings to play with. The parents spend their whole lives entertaining and playing with their one child. It sounds kinda sad, i think.
But, I also was silly last night. One of the diversity topics was poverty, we had to read a whole book on poverty, written by a so called poverty expert. And a whole room full of people are sitting there listening to a supposed expert talk about poverty and kids. And they start throwing up all these statistics that kids who live in poverty all drop out of school and don't do well on their assessments. Kids in poverty end up as adults in long term poverty. And blah blah blah on and on and on all this bleak stuff about kids in poverty and these people, some of whom I am positive know this is bullshit just taking it in. And I just couldn't be the good kid and be quiet.
I spoke up, I asked. What if instead of looking at income, they looked at drug and alcohal use in the home, weather or not the child used english as a first language, how often the family moves, weather or not the child or another child in the house is devolopmentally disabled.
I know, poor kids all have these issues disproportionate to better off kids. But with all the extra scrutiny that gets focused on poor families, there are richer kids who might also have problems in school and at home who are ignored. As a member of "the poor" I am sick and tired of hearing that poor people are either lazy and worthless or doomed. I get tired of being told how unlikely it is that my kids or I will ever be anything but poorly dressed trash sitting on the edges of society. DOn't these people know that the kids are aware of this stuff. That they know people don't expect much more the subsistance from them, so why should they try for anything more?
Anyway, I spoke up. I was like "look, there has never ever been a time in my life when I didn't qualify as in poverty, and I think these statistics are too simplistic" And then there was a bit of debate and I was embarassed because this kind of thing is not in character for me, and then two other women in the room were like "we've been/are there too and we agree" and I was feeling a little better.
I am so caught between wanting to forget that I was ever one welfare or homeless and living in dad's livingroom, or a teen mom or follish enough to marry that idiot man. And then there are times when I wish I coudl work with kids who are there were I was. Hopeless and clueless and needing someone who cared to take them by the hand and kick them in the ass and motivate them to do what they really wanted instead of doing what was easy because they were afraid of failing and being told they weren't good enough. Instead I work with papmered private school kids who wouldn't know hard times if they hit them in the face with a 2x4.
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