At this week’s Washington Regional Association of Grantmakers Annual Meeting, Ralph Smith, Senior Vice President of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, noted that it seems that it’s not okay to say the “p” (poverty) word in polite society. That it’s right up there with the other “bad” words: politics, race, class, sex.
Only to be discussed in the company of those who love and know us. At home. In the safety of common experience, education and economic status.
Add to this that to talk about poverty you have to address race, class, politics and often sex and gender, and, well, forget it.
I am, of course, smugly convinced that this doesn’t apply to me, as a bold, concerned citizen who speaks her mind.
And then I remember all the times friends from Africa have asked me direct questions about race or poverty while walking down Washington, D.C. streets. Sometimes they loudly use phrases like, “Why do white people…” or “Why are black people…” or “What about the people sleeping outside…?”
These questions generally spurn an instinctive, fast, hushed reaction of, “Oh, let’s talk about that once we get home.”
I don’t want to offend, after all.
My African friends generally think this is insane. Race and economic status are given points of reference in their society, where people are labeled, without insult or offense, as “white,” “brown,” “dark,” “light” and are often known by their professions—and therefore economic standing—before their names. “Where is The Carpenter?” “Have you seen The Professor?”
I guess it’s easier to talk about poverty and race when the differences are not as vast—when the majority of people are of a common race and economic status.
When one is at home.
The embarrassment of disclosure must come along when the disparities appear, coinciding with the literal embarrassment of riches.
Which may be another reason, along with those Siobhán mentioned last week, that philanthropists often prefer to give anonymously. And why it is perhaps so important, as she reminded us, that, “The public use of our money can say so much. Putting big money and names to our work can speak to what we share as women, what we want as women and the society we want to shape as women.”
Money talks, if given a voice. Money creates movements.
If in doubt, think Gates, the cause of AIDS in Africa and how his bandwagon is about as packed as an African bush taxi.
Seems an appropriate time to be thinking about AIDS in Africa anyway, as today we mark World AIDS Day, and have the opportunity to reflect on an illness that seems more and more to be a mark of the inequities of race, gender and yes, the “p” word than just a disease.
