Shame

I grew up in a small town, up here in the Northwest Corner.  The fathers of most of my classmates worked at union labor in mills -- in mills producing lumber, paper, or aluminum. 

Many of my high school classmates -- especially those who remained in my home town -- have led lives that seem, to me, somewhat narrow and unadventurous.  And yet, as I read their own accounts every five years in reunion class books, I realize that they themselves find their lives to have been happy, satisfying, and warmly family-oriented.  Their self-respect is obvious.

Nicholas Kristof, a columnist for the New York Times, arrived in high school nineteen years after me.  He also was born and reared in the Northwest Corner, in Yamhill, Oregon (only about 80 miles across the Columbia river from my own home town).  His column tomorrow is a tribute to one of his own classmates, Kevin Green, who died this month at the age of 54.

Nicholas served as his high school's student body president and newspaper editor, en route to a Harvard Phi Beta Kappa career, followed by a law degree from Magdalen College, Oxford on a Rhodes scholarship.  Kevin, like his dad, stayed in Yamhill, working at blue collar jobs. 

But, as is usually the case in small towns, the two boys knew each other well in high school.  They took vocational courses together.  They both belonged to Future Farmers of America.  And -- as shown in the photo -- they were teammates, running cross country together.

Unlike most of the guys from similar backgrounds who I knew in high school, things didn't go well for Kevin after graduation.  Those nineteen years had made a radical difference in small town life in the Northwest.  The union  labor jobs that ensured middle class lives for my classmates were drying up.  Kevin went from job to job, on a downward spiral, as one business after another closed, in and around Yamhill.  He became injured and was laid off.  His girl friend left him, taking their two sons with her.  His health deteriorated.

Some of his problems were exacerbated by his own poor decisions.  But most of us make our share of poor decisions.  Reading Kevin's story, it's obvious that the root cause was the changing economy of the  Northwest Corner -- and of the nation in general. 

It could have been worse.  Because of his physical disabilities, federal and state government provided various forms of financial assistance.  But government couldn't provide Kevin with self-respect.

Kristof's column essentially laments the lack of empathy by the well-off for the lives and problems faced by those left behind -- and that is a point well worth making, especially because it affects profoundly our nation's political decisions.  

But there's another problem I see, one that is systemic rather than personal.

Go to India.  Go to rural Africa.  Or South America.  You will find far more poverty, as we understand it, than you will in America.  And more poor health.  But -- and I don't mean to exaggerate --  among the poor who have at least enough to eat and a roof over their heads, you will find many people leading happier lives than you might, perhaps, find in Yamhill, Oregon.  And I think the reason is self-respect.

Because of our own history and, perhaps, our lingering Calvinist philosophy, Americans have done a wonderful job of making poverty a moral failing.  In our efforts to build an economy by laissez-faire economics, we have not been satisfied to reward "success" with money.  We have found it necessary also to punish those who can't, or won't, succeed financially by heaping scorn and shame upon them.  By denying them self-respect.  Maybe we don't even realize what we're doing, but we have countless little ways of humiliating those to whom we feel financially -- and thus morally -- superior.

And I don't know the answer.  Government programs can take the edge off poverty.  Jobs programs, if they worked as intended, would give back some self-respect to those who benefitted.  But I don't know how the government can help change the mindset of those of us who look down on fellow citizens -- and that's a change that needs somehow to be made.

Kevin died of various ailments, problems that stemmed back from his inability to work.  And his eventual inability to get even poor paying jobs stemmed from his various ailments.  And his sense of shame fed into both his inability to work and his failure to manage properly his own health.  He was caught up in a vicious circle, a vicious circle that is all too familiar to too many, in most parts of the country.

I have trouble diagnosing just what went wrong in that odyssey from sleek distance runner to his death at 54, but the lack of good jobs was central to it. Sure, Kevin made mistakes, but his dad had opportunities for good jobs that Kevin never had.

If Kevin's life were an isolated tragedy, it would be tragedy enough.  But it's not.  His life ended up as a life of desperation -- one that's repeated innumerable times across the face of one of the wealthiest nations on Earth.