The New York Times
Op-Ed Columnist
Where Is the Love?
By Nicholas D. Kristof
Published: November 27, 2013
When I’ve written recently about food
stamp recipients, the uninsured
and prison
inmates, I’ve had plenty of pushback from readers.
A reader named Keith reflected a
coruscating chorus when he protested: “If kids are going hungry, it is because
of the parents not upholding their responsibilities.” A reader in Washington
bluntly suggested taking children from parents and putting them in orphanages. Jim asked: “Why should I have to
subsidize someone else’s child? How about personal responsibility? If you
procreate, you provide.”
After a recent column about an uninsured
man who delayed seeing a doctor about a condition that turned out to be colon
cancer, many readers noted that he is a lifelong smoker and said he had it
coming. “What kind of a lame brain
doofus is this guy?” one reader asked. “And like it’s our fault that he couldn’t
afford to have himself checked out?”
Such scorn seems widespread,
based on the comments I get on my blog
and Facebook page -as well as on polling and on government policy. At root,
these attitudes reflect a profound lack of empathy.
A Princeton University psychology
professor, Susan Fiske,
has found that when research subjects hooked up to neuro-imaging machines look
at photos of the poor and homeless, their brains often react as if they are
seeing things, not people. Her analysis suggests that Americans sometimes react
to poverty not with sympathy but with revulsion.
So, on Thanksgiving, maybe we
need a conversation about empathy for fellow humans in distress.
Let’s
acknowledge one point made by these modern social Darwinists: It’s true that
some people in poverty do suffer in part because of irresponsible behavior,
from abuse of narcotics to criminality to laziness at school or jobs. But
remember also that many of today’s poor are small children who have done
nothing wrong. Some 45 percent of
food stamp recipients are children, for example. Do we really think that kids
should go hungry if they have criminal parents? Should a little boy not get a
curved spine treated properly because his dad is a deadbeat? Should a girl not
be able to go to preschool because her mom is an alcoholic?
Successful
people tend to see in themselves a simple narrative: You study hard, work long
hours, obey the law and create your own good fortune. Well, yes. That often works
fine in middle-class families. But
if you’re conceived by a teenage mom who drinks during pregnancy so that you’re
born with fetal alcohol effects, the odds are overwhelmingly stacked against
you from before birth. You’ll perhaps never get traction.
Likewise, if you’re born in a
high-poverty neighborhood to a stressed-out single mom who doesn’t read to you
and slaps you more than hugs you, you’ll face a huge handicap. One
University of Minnesota study found that the kind of parenting a
child receives in the first 3.5 years is a better predictor of high school
graduation than I.Q.
All
this helps explain why one of the strongest determinants of ending up poor is
being born poor. As Warren Buffett puts it, our life outcomes often depend on the “ovarian lottery.”
Sure, some people transcend their circumstances, but it’s callous for those
born on second or third base to denounce the poor for failing to hit home runs.
John
Rawls, the brilliant 20th-century philosopher, argued for a
society that seems fair if we consider it from behind a “veil of
ignorance” — meaning we don’t know whether we’ll be born to an investment
banker or a teenage mom, in a leafy suburb or a gang-ridden inner city, healthy
or disabled, smart or struggling, privileged or disadvantaged. That’s a shrewd
analytical tool — and who among us would argue for food stamp cuts if we
thought we might be among the hungry children?
As we celebrate Thanksgiving, let’s
remember that the difference between being surrounded by a loving family or
being homeless on the street is determined not just by our own level of virtue
or self-discipline, but also by an inextricable mix of luck, biography, brain
chemistry and genetics. For those
who are well-off, it may be easier to castigate the irresponsibility of the
poor than to recognize that success in life is a reflection not only of
enterprise and willpower, but also of random chance and early upbringing.
Low-income
Americans, who actually encounter the needy in daily life, understand this
complexity and respond with empathy. Researchers
say that’s why the poorest 20 percent of Americans donate more to
charity, as a fraction of their incomes, than the richest 20 percent. Meet
those who need help, especially children, and you become less judgmental and
more compassionate.
And compassion isn’t a sign of
weakness, but a mark of civilization.
A version of
this op-ed appears in print on November 28, 2013, on page A31 of the New York
edition with the headline: Where Is the Love?
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