The word “Poor”
After pondering it all week, I think we should get rid of this word (as it’s used to oppose the word "rich").
I know that we (humanity) still haven’t gotten the hang of the concepts of racism and sexism, and why it’s important to redress their wrongs for the health of our whole species - but I still hold out hope that soon we’ll come to the same realization about economic discrimination.
And when we do, "poor people" - a direct, not even thinly-veiled insult - is going to become the next "nigger". It’ll become a term we were all ashamed to have ever used.
Just as it’s wrong to perpetuate an association between "dark-skinned" and "animalistic"; or between "womanly" and "weak"; it’s inarguably wrong, I think, to perpetuate the association between "not having access to or ownership of material wealth" and "being bad". If you look closely, in fact, all three of those associations are versions of the same thing: Dehumanization. They all say, or insinuate, that people with those characteristics are less human.
Do you think that association isn’t really present, or isn’t a big deal? Look at what the word means: A poor meal isn’t fit for eating. A car poorly built isn’t fit for driving. A poor performance fails to entertain. A "poor person"….what? Isn’t fit for living? Fails to properly be a human being?
The sad thing is, people do think this way, even though it’s mostly unconscious still. I bet that even some of my readers, if they search their feelings, will realize that they’ve got a lot of really cruel assumptions built into their programming. We shouldn’t feel guilty for having them - this is all stuff we were taught from infancy, by people who were taught it from infancy too - but that doesn’t excuse continuing to think that way. It doesn’t excuse continuing to dehumanize people who don’t have access to wealth, and by doing so, justifying their suffering from not having enough to live by designating them the "poor" members of the species. It’s okay that we’re drowning in excess while others starve, as long as those others are "poor" specimens, right? That’s just like culling the herd…right?
These are terrible ideas, and they live in the words we choose, even if we don’t intend to "mean" them. And words that mean terrible things hurt people, even when the wound is so deep and so old that all the nerves are dead.
It will take a long time, I think, for the reality of economic discrimination to really sink in, and for real healing to begin. But in the meantime, at least, I’m making this pledge: I will not call anyone "poor", or refer to "poor people" or "the poor" anymore. It’s a slur and I refuse to use it.
(I’m skipping the part here where I argue that economically-disadvantaged people are not only not worse than other people, but are quite often better, because being rich, like being obese, does its own damage - maybe I’ll go there later, but for now I’m taking it as obvious and given.)
I’d love to hear other people’s ideas for replacing the term, though. "Economically disadvantaged" is true but hollow-sounding. "Simple folk" sounds insulting even though denotatively it’s not. In fact, most of the terminology I can find relating to the segment (a vast majority in every case I can think of) of every country’s population that is economically under-resourced is either a slur from the get-go, or has become one over time.
It may be time for a new word! Give me your ideas, if you have any, and I’ll organize a vote if there are enough. In the meantime, it’ll probably be a good exercise for me, at least, to simply not refer to "them" as a "them group" at all.
For one thing, relative to my peers and my nation (but not globally), I am one.
One of the not-poor. ;)
Originally published at *Transcendental *Logic. You can comment here or there.