Twitter is an interesting place to watch people express themselves. It all feels ephemeral. While some are obviously playing roles, far more comments are made by average people revealing themselves. Recently I was following one of the many tags aimed at the election. I think it was the convergence of #Romnesia and #ThingsObamaVotersSay. What struck me about the latter tag was the number of times the tweeters invoked food stamps. In their view, being on food stamps is a vile thing done by vile people. It's a terrible program symbolizing a lack of moral character. In short, those who oppose the President also oppose feeding hungry children. I'm not really sure how you open a conversation with someone whose core belief involves citizens starving in the street.
If these figures can be believed (and I think they can) your average food stamp family is (white) employed and raising children. The family is given about $70 a week. Yet the conversation in the tags is not about people with jobs. It's not about children. It's not about trying to feed a family on $70 a week or why so many jobs in America pay poverty wages. It's about those lazy (often black) people that feel entitled. American residents, thinking food is something due them. Thinking their kids should sleep with full bellies, or even simply not on empty ones.
Of course this is classism and racism converging. When faced with a specific person on food stamps most of these folks will say they don't mean that person, they mean the other persons. The underserving persons. You know, the food stamp people. Not this particular food stamp person. The mythical food stamp person they've created in their head. The one their unexamined biases would prefer to see turned away from food, shelter, and medical care. The grasshopper to their ant.
To me when you say food stamps, I think of myself as a hungry kid. I think of the child my brother told me about a year or so ago. The child who spilled their Salvation Army Thanksgiving dinner and burst into frantic tears at the loss of a meal. The child who kept crying when the meal was replaced, because getting two chances at hot food was so hard to believe. I heard that story at a table with more than my kids could possibly eat. I remembered being the kid who would have sobbed at the ruined turkey. When you say food stamps to me, I'm not thinking about a mythical person I made up in my head. I'm thinking about my life, the lives of my peers, the life of that child in that shelter sobbing over a ten cent roll.
Recently our area began offering free breakfast to all the children at all the schools. The hungry kids were hesitant to claim the free meal because of the scorn from the full kids. The hope is that with the principals taking their meals there, with the staff encouraging everyone to get a good start to their day, that the hungry kids will stop being afraid of someone knowing who they are. The idea has it's opposition. A number of parents are concerned that people will come to rely on the free breakfast. They might expect it. Kids who can eat at home may choose to eat at school. What kind of country would this be if people knew they could always have a meal waiting? How could we ever succeed if hunger didn't drive us? These are the thoughts of people who have always eaten. As Jacques Prevert wrote in La Grasse Matinee "que de barricades pour six malheureuses sardines..."
