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This week in the Class War
by JS Magruder, Unknown News
whynotresist.blogsome.com March 3, 2008
Years ago, my parents sold their home and, like many people their age, moved into a
condominium. It was the sort of place where the monthly assessment charge was higher than
market rent for comparable flats. Still, it suited their needs at that point and had the
outward appearance of being a nice, if not elegant place. The residents were quite another
matter.
Each year at the holidays, the building's board of directors would get together and with
the help of a local agency, collect a donation from all the residents as a gift to a needy
family. That sounded thoughtful the first I heard of it -- until my mother told me that the
board directors would take it to
the family personally and make a big show of bestowing
their generosity upon the selected deserving poor. She was horrified, and rightly so.
Charity, she reasoned, ought to be done for the person receiving it -- not to fulfill the
social needs of the person performing it. There's quite a bit to be said for anonymity.
That was 1985, and today we regularly applaud "public charity," whether it is humiliating
children with free lunches that announce to all the world they are free,
or reality television exploiting the needy whilst having them exude proper gratitude for
the cameras, the sickening trend continues.
I am probably the only person in Nebraska taking exception to a baseball player
returning to his hometown (with a reporter and photographer from the NY Times in tow) to
(get this) bestow a gift of a trip to Disney World on a needy family (hand-picked to be
"deserving").
If that isn't enough to make you lose your lunch, read the comments congratulating the
ball player for being such a "class act." Even if it sounded like a great idea to Joba
Chamberlain (and again, I can't fault the guy for this because if that's all you know,
then that's all you know)
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If you've grown up in the era of celebrities performing public charity, it is difficult to translate that back down to a person-to-person level.
Pretty soon we all think we should have a camera there to applaud us for our generosity-or a publicly displayed plaque, mention in a newsletter, and so on.
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doesn't he have an agency representing him that could reign him
in and suggest a less vulgar way to give back to his community? Even if the family members
don't feel personally humiliated, it's still humiliating. I don't care how wonderful a
time they have in Florida -- it is still demeaning.
The problem is that we're so accustomed to everything being done in the public eye and
expecting some sort of acknowledgement or praise for it that it tends to transform the act
of giving into an act of self-promotion. If you've grown up in the era of celebrities
performing public charity, it is difficult to translate that back down to a
person-to-person level. Pretty soon we all think we should have a camera there to applaud
us for our generosity-or a publicly displayed plaque, mention in a newsletter, and so on.
We want to be praised as "class acts" when our actions are gauche. We want to be
acknowledged as generous no matter how vulgar our generosity -- it is after all about us, not
the poor slobs on the receiving end. We've accepted reality television as tangible
reality, and I'm afraid that will take at least a generation to un-learn. I don't really
see it happening.
From the moment alms became tax deductible, we were socially screwed. The entire process
is sanitized, turned into an exchange. Aside from the question of whether it is still
charity if one is receiving something in exchange (other than the intangibles of providing
help) what is the social impact of a system where the upper classes only contribute to
charity for their personal benefit? While the lines between charity and philanthropy are
clearer (philanthropy exists to enable the rich to continue exploiting the poor, whilst
saving on their tax bill), what about those in the middling classes? If I send a donation
to the ACLU without putting in any elbow grease volunteering am I really doing any good?
In terms of paying bills -- probably, but again, the social benefits are lost.
People will argue that more charitable acts will be performed if people are more
comfortable doing them -- so where's the harm? If it is the only way to get people to part
with a buck, then why be critical? I'm critical because it was a collectively learned
behavior to distance ourselves from that, which makes us uncomfortable. It was a learned
behavior to check off the pre-suggested donation box on a mass mailing and send off the
check with nary a second thought. It was a learned behavior to not only find it
acceptable, but to actually derive some sick sort of pride from wearing a t-shirt
announcing your support of everything from medical research to public radio. Hell,
shouldn't we at least have some involvement in the causes we support? At some point, we
decided not.
Individuals can help each other without making a big production of it. You can give
someone money as a "loan" knowing the money will never be repaid -- and then never mention
it again. It takes a bit of thought, but it can be done. Or you can call in the media and
send a family to an amusement park. What a class act.
© by the author.
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