Playing the Blame Game - On the Victims

In an essay titled, "Katrina's Silver Lining", David Brooks writes in today's NYT that the storm has provided an opportunity for extremely poor people to do a lot better.

David, have you met Barbara? I think you two would hit it off.

Brooks outlines the typical conservative explanations for poverty: teenagers having babies, men that can't commit to a woman or a workplace, and poor social skills. Gee, no wonder his buddies were so slow to respond to the disaster. Who'd want to save this lot of lazy, sex-crazed, illiterates? They probably wear their pants low, too.

The solution that he proposes: rebuild New Orleans as a middle class city, and then integrate the poor into it. The poor will learn what Brooks calls "middle-class skills" and standards of behavior. They will then take these skills and build a better life. Brooks cites the Clinton program, "Moving to Opportunity" as an example of a successful cultural integration. What he doesn't mention is that although the progam worked well for many of the children, the parents saw no increase (either immediately or over time) in earnings or job opportunities. That makes cultural integration difficult to maintain, if not impossible. Unless, of course, Brooks is proposing government subsidies. But he's not; he proposes tax cuts for the working poor, many of whom don't actually pay taxes.

People like Brooks can't wrap their minds around the notion that widespread poverty is created by institutions and ignorance just like his. They like their poor noble and tragic, or unquestionably deserving. What a person's poverty has to do with their infidelity is beyond me, but to conservatives of Brooks' ilk, it's just karmic retribution for not obeying a moral code, and lacking access to the social training that bred the middle class. What is this middle-class skill set and why is it so valuable? Cut through the bullshit: Brooks is suggesting that if poor people changed their names from Diamonte and Tiffany, wore different clothes, and changed their tastes, they'd be more employable. Katrina's silver lining is the opportunity to colonize the culture of the poor.

But what do you expect from a crowd that bombed a city to give its children a better place to live?