October 7, 2021 • 60 mins
Poor people have always been shamed. Writer, producer and award-winning journalist Mary O’Hara says that’s not new, but the last 40 years of government and corporate interests have created a focused initiative to demonize people who need financial and social assistance. Between the creation of the Welfare Queen trope in the 80’s and vilifying single mothers in the 90’s, most people do whatever they can to not be associated with safety nets. They’re ashamed. In this powerful conversation, Laverne and O’Hara break down the larger game at play, the lasting effects of experiencing poverty, and the importance of people sharing their stories.
Please rate, review, subscribe and share The Laverne Cox Show with everyone you know. You can find Laverne on Instagram and Twitter @LaverneCox and on Facebook at @LaverneCoxForReal.
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Show References:
The Shame Game: https://www.shamegamethebook.com/
Project Twist-It: https://www.projecttwistit.com/
Project Twist-It on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNLum6yi4QnBbQf0HF_ojdw
Pro-Publica Report - 25 Billionaires Pay Fraction in Taxes:
https://www.propublica.org/article/how-we-calculated-the-true-tax-rates-of-the-wealthiest
Urban Institute report on poverty rate: https://www.urban.org/research/publication/2021-poverty-projections-assessing-impact-benefits-and-stimulus-measures
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the Laverne Cox Show, a production of Shondaland
Audio in partnership with My Heart Radio. The federal minimum
which has been the same for more than a decade,
and you're kind of like, well, when you look at
the numbers, had it just followed inflation from it will
be like in all, which is what it should be,
(00:21):
you know. But that's done to push and push and
pushing this idea of people being undeserved. Hello everyone, and
welcome to Laverne Cox Show. I'm Laverne Cox. So I
(00:42):
believe it was January. I remember being in line, the
very long line that day at housing court, and tears
started streaming down my face. I was trying to keep
it together, but I was completely falling apart. One of
my greatest spheres has always been becoming homeless. And here
(01:04):
I was holding an eviction notice in my hand that
the sheriff had put on my door, and all my
neighbors had seen, and I was just crying and just
kind of losing my my my ship. I was thirty
seven years old and couldn't pay my rent in a
low income building. I was living in a UM government
subsidized low income building at the time in Manhattan, and
(01:27):
the whole point of the building is to keep people
from becoming homeless, and here I was unable to pay rent.
There I just felt, um, like all of the sort
of narratives around being a piece of ship because I
was poor and being lazy, even though I was working
really hard at the time, like a lot of it
was unpaid work, so I knew I wasn't lazy, but
(01:49):
I was still internalizing like this narrative, and then like
all the internalized racism too. It was just a ship
storm of shame and a ship storm of I'm not enough.
And Brine Brown tells us. A shame functions in two
different ways. It tells us that we're not enough, and um,
if we're able to get over that, it says, you know,
(02:09):
who do you think you are? You're too big for
your bitches, And in that moment, I was feeling both,
you know, pursuing this dream of wanting to be an actor.
I mean, you're a black transperson. There's never been a
famous black transactor. I mean, you are insane and delusional,
and now you're about to be homeless. It was really scary.
(02:29):
It was very, very scary, and I was able to
meet with the lawyer and we were able to work
out a payment plan and I was able to catch
up um on my rent. And the sad thing is
that two years later, in um February, I was there again.
I was there in housing court another time. I was
thirty nine, I was about to turn forty, and it
(02:51):
was just like, what's going on. The shame that I have,
The shame that still sort of losing my body, around
not being able to support myself, around being poor, is
really really deep inside me um till this day. And
now I literally epitomized the American dream. People are like, well,
(03:13):
if Laverne Costs can do it, why can't you do it?
And I'm really critical of those narratives because I know
that even though it was tenuous that I've I've made
it this far. I know that like a lot of
privilege allowed me to be where I'm at today. And so, yeah,
a lot of stuff that I'm working through. And there
(03:34):
is a woman named Mary O'Hara who happened to write
a book. Mary O'Hara is an award winning journalist, author
and producer. She is a graduate of Cambridge University and
a former full right scholar at UC Berkeley. Mary is
the author of two books, one of which is The
Shame Game, Overturning the toxic poverty narrative, and its founder
(03:56):
of the multi platform anti poverty initiative project Twisted. In
she was named Best Foreign Columnist at the Southern California
Journalism Awards. Please enjoy my conversation with Mary O'Hara. Hello,
(04:16):
Mary O'Hara, Welcome to the podcast. How are you feeling today?
You know, I'm done, okay, not too about all things considered.
Very good, very good. I am so excited to have
you here today because, um, this is something I think
about all the time. I'm always always thinking about shame.
I'm thinking about It's been a huge issue in my
(04:38):
life in a lot of different ways. Shame around being
trans shame around raised, and the shame around class that
I've internalized is really really deep, and it's something that
even as I'm no longer poor and working class, it's
something that persists, which is really interesting. What I know
about shame is that so much of shame it's about
(05:00):
the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves and the stories
that we've internalized from structures, and so can we start,
can you tell us from your research, from your work,
what the predominant narrative around poverty is that can be
shaming for a lot of people. Yeah. Sure. First of all,
I'm so glad to be on this podcast. I think
(05:21):
it's a great show. I love how it is with
matters that matter to me, So I'm really pleased to
be here. Thank you. I appreciate that well. As a
person with lived experience of poverty myself, I grew up
in poverty as a child and young person, I completely
hear what you're saying about the shame that you carry
with you even when you've moved beyond that situation. What
(05:42):
it does now part of the reason that we feel
that shame is because it permeates our cultures. It runs
through the politics, the economics, the entertainment, the media, it's everywhere.
And essentially what the dominant poverty the narrative, the story
we're told in the US and the UK, the two
(06:04):
countries I'm interested in, is that if you are poor,
it's your fault. Right, you must be poor because you
are lazy, you are idle, You've made a lifestyle choice
apparently to be poor. According to this narrative, The flip
side of that narrative is that people who are wealthy
um are so purely because of their own efforts, not
(06:26):
that they've been assisted by anyone or anything. It's done
to them and their talents. And that's a very tantalizing
aspect of the narrative because it reinforces the idea that
if you are poor, you're poor because you are economically
supposed to be poor because you're not doing anything about
it and all of that. Of course it's absolute nonsense,
(06:49):
but it's a powerful, powerful story. Yeah, it makes me
think about my own life as well. And there was
there was a point my mother put herself through school
while she was raising us, through her undergraduate work while
she was raising us. And I remember there was one
point when we were kids that we had we had
a paper route that so as a family, we like
(07:12):
went in sort of delivered papers, and then we also
collected bottles and cans so that we could um, you know,
sort of turn them in to be recycled to get
money for that. And then my mother had a job
working as the church secretary, and she had like another
job to which I forget what it was. Cirly, so
I'm like, wait, and I think about the experiences of
(07:35):
like what people say, poor people are just lazy. I'm like,
wait a minute. My mother had like four jobs at
one point and we were still struggling, and we were
unwelfare at one point, and there was such shame around that.
As an adult too, I um lived in government subsidized
housing for many years, which really saved my life. And
(07:57):
I was on Medicaid, which is um in the United
States health care for poor people. And it's really easy
to um let your Medicaid slip because you have to
like fill out new information every year and it has
to be exactly right, and it's very intense, and so
it's just and I was thinking, when I was in
(08:17):
living in government subcess housing and I was on Medicaid,
I was actually working very hard to So it's like
I'm aware of that narrative and I internalized that narrative.
And for me, so much of my experience as a
poor person as a child and as an adult is like,
let's not let people know that you're poor. Let's like
project that I am, you know, looking good and everything
(08:42):
is okay. My mother would always say that. My grandmother
would say make sure that your rent is paid, if
your lights are turned off, if your water is turned off,
no one knows that. But if your rent isn't paid,
you're on the street and everyone will know. So even
in that narrative, it's like it's about not letting people
know that you're struggling, and that is the shame of it,
(09:04):
Like I'm not enough and people are going to find out. Well,
that's absolutely right. It's completely fundamental to the experience of
being poor is that you're ashamed of being poor. I mean,
when you ask people who fit the definition of what
it is to be poor if they're poor, people will
usually say no, oh no, I'm I'm I'm okay, I'm okay. Now,
(09:25):
the problem with that is it then becomes easy to
underestimate the problem, to think that it's not as big
a problem as it is. But it profoundly affects us psychologically, emotionally.
To not be able to provide for ourselves and provide
for our family is one of the most sort of
soul destroying things that a person can live with. You
(09:46):
go out into your community, you don't want people to
think that you're a bad mother or you know that
you're just not pulling your weight or you haven't pulled
up your bootstraps, as that ridiculous saying goes, and you
carry it with you. It's a I don't know, it's
like a burden that sort of lives inside you. It
runs through you when you when you can leave poverty,
(10:07):
but poverty never leaves you. Yeah, it stays with you.
And you know, much like yourself. I grew up in
public housing in the North of Ireland, which is part
of the UK, and my parents relied on the welfare system,
the safety net that we had government subsidized housing, and
(10:27):
we lived around other poor and low income people because
that's what happens that people you're surrounded by. Now, there's
a lot of support in those communities. People do an
awful lot to help each other. They're very resilient, but
they also understand that the wider society season is different.
I mean, even as a five or six year old, um,
(10:48):
I knew something wasn't quite right. I knew we weren't
like other people. And I you know, we know from
the research. I know from my work that the long
term impacts of that are profound, and you know, to
all intents and purposes, I'm a successful person. You know
I've done okay in life, but you bet that I
worry about money all the time, even when I shouldn't
(11:09):
be thinking about it. It just stays with me because
having nothing or next to nothing in a culture that
lionizes wealth and success is an extraordinary thing to try
to liver with it. So it's not just that you're
deprived of material things, right, It's not just like you
can't make your bills from time to time, or that
(11:30):
you can't put food on the table. It's that you're
not deemed to be fully human in a society where
you're perpetually demonized for the circumstances that you find yourself in.
And poor people and low income people are in those
circumstances because we exist in systems that keep us are
they're designed to keep poor people poor. Like you say,
(11:53):
the welfare system, how many hoops do you have to
jump through to prove that you're in desperate need? And
how much energy does that take away from the things
that you know would probably help you um a bit
more in your day to day life. Um, you turn
up with the welfare office, you're made to feel like
you're they're with the begging bowl um that you're not
(12:15):
entitled to be there. And when you think about tens
and tens of thousands of people are working per just
like your mother would have been, people holding down jobs
that are really badly paid, whilst the people who own
those companies and corporations line their own pockets and you know,
celebrate tax breaks. I mean, it's an extraordinarily unfair system,
(12:38):
and it's morally wrong and it is inhumane. One of
the most um, I think agregious, I think is the
right word. Disturbing, egregious, stunning. Examples of this is are
here in the United States are largest employer, Walmart. Many
of the employees of Walmart have to go on snap
(13:01):
on food stands because the wages that they're making at
the largest employer in the country are not enough wages
for them to be able to eat. And the Walton
family is one of the wealthiest families obviously in the country.
So that kind of that disparity, and we we can
(13:24):
talk about other corporations as well here in the United
States that you know, do union busting and do all
sorts of things, and they're getting very very wealthy at
the at the top, and then their workers are barely
surviving and they're working very hard, and we still call
those people lazy. So it's like I initially wanted to
have this conversation to talk about the shame part of it,
(13:44):
but it's like the policy piece of it, and the
shame that we internalize is so constantly reinforced. I was
thinking about the materialism too, because it's also not just
about not having access to material, you know, things, it's
also culture. It also like if you can't afford to
go to the movies and everyone's referencing this movie, it's
(14:06):
like you're outside of culture. And so much of culture
here in the United States is about like what we've
consumed and being sort of outside of that. It's you're
outside of of culture in general. But I feel like
the Internet, I do feel like there's a shift in
young people talking about like having a critical relationship to
(14:26):
billionaires and corporations and having a critical relationship to wealth
now more than you know, maybe ten years ago. I
don't do you feel the shift happening? Well, this is
a really interesting aspect of this. My latest boat, which
obviously called The Sham Game, came out of a wider
anti poverty project that I run called Project Twisted, where
(14:50):
for the past three and a half years I've been
connecting with organizations, grassroots researchers, entertainers, people across the culture
to try and challenge this dominant narrative. As part of that,
we worked with a lot of young people. Were run
live events where young people presented to live audiences and
(15:12):
theaters their ideas for how we can change things, you know,
And it was absolutely apparent to me that these kids
got it. They understood, they could see with clear eyes.
They're not old enough to have been sort of made
cynical about the world, you know. The same kind of
(15:32):
kids are in the environmentalism, for instance. They got the
stigma of poverty, they got the shame of poverty, and
they really wanted to talk about it and they really
wanted to challenge it. And after we held our events,
those young people went out and set up their own
little projects and online and you know, media projects. They
(15:54):
did a census to look at what young people's attitudes were.
I think absolutely they're more willing and not take this
sitting down. I also think that this generation is in
a moment of change more generally, and that includes the
movement around racism, around women's rights, around trans writes about
all of this. You know, it's a very interesting moment
(16:15):
in the culture in terms of elevating voices of people
who have been oppressed and suppressed for so long and
so successfully that they're just baiting down. And I think
young people are going to screw this. You know, we're
being told that we're going to have less in our
bank accounts than previous generations. We're told we can't afford
to buy our own home and raise a family without
(16:37):
doing four jobs. So yeah, I think young people are helping,
and not include younger kind of policy makers as well,
who have been reshipping the conversation on this the last
eighteen months has been fascinating. Younger policy makers, aligned with
younger grassroots activists, allied with others who have been working
in this arena for a long time, understand that in
(17:00):
many ways it's a make or break situation. The you know,
the billionaire wealth over the course of the pandemic through
the roof, absolutely through the roof. You know, we had
this whole discourse about essential workers and how important they are.
And guess what we realized our society would fall apart
without these people we just pay them not a to
do it. And I think there's a grown realization that
(17:23):
that is not just unsustainable, but it's morally screwed up.
And both that and poverty are political choices. Poverty doesn't
exist because people want to be poor. It's a political choice.
And for instance, there are welfare systems and other wealthy
(17:44):
nations around the world that do create a safety net
for people. You know, it's not about pol your bootstraps up.
It's about being given a safety net that becomes a
springboard that helps you. And you know what, it helps
the wider society. It is the public good. It's good
for everyone if people at the top pay their fair
(18:04):
share of tax and people at the bottom of the
social scale aren't way down with the sorts of burdens
that cause genuine tragedies and people's lives. You know, you
get a big medical bill, you come pit, you're screwed,
you lose your heyes, you're living out of your car suddenly,
it's you know, these have huge traumifications. Yeah, it's there's
just there's so much there. I'm sure you're familiar with
(18:25):
the pro publica report that just came out about the
wealthiest I think the wealthiest men because they're all men
in the world and what they're what they're paying taxes.
I pay more money in taxes than the richest people
in the world who are billionaires. Everybody out, everybody is
paying more money than the richest people in the world
(18:46):
in taxes. Yes, So the pro public A report and
a lot of the others that have come out UM,
certainly over the past six months are very clear. It
was interesting that you were looking at a decade as
your barometer for saying shifting that UM, it's exponentially growing. UM.
Who needs that much money? Who needs that much? You
(19:07):
don't need it. What's been interesting to me in the
past few months is that reports like this come out
all the time. I know this because they're always in
my inbox. So the nerd that is me rummage in
a run and these things is aware of it. And
sometimes I wanted to bang my head off a wall
because I'm like, why is it everybody else hearing about this? UM?
But I think the pandemic is enabled more people to
(19:29):
become aware of this because it's just being reported more
and then people are going to understand what We'll hold
on a minute, so I'm being told that taxpayers are
subsidized in me because I need snap, I need food stamps.
But the organization that should be paying me a living
wage has had a huge tax brick. But they're not
(19:50):
painted in the same light. They're not painted as intergenerational
wealth pilferers, you know what I mean. It's just it's
so hypocritical on every level, and they get those tax
breaks and they don't actually raise wages. I think COVID
is a really interesting conversation to have because a lot
of the initial here in the United States anyway, the
initially PPP loans that were given to businesses were so
(20:14):
they would not lay off workers, right so that they
would be able to retain their workforce. And we saw
that that did not happen often that those workers were
not paid more. And then too, what has happened because
we had direct aid? I just I found this um
this this report from the Urban Institute, a prominent liberal
(20:34):
leaning think tank in Washington, this week projects poverty levels
in the US will sit at seven point seven percent
through the end of one down from thirteen point nine.
The decline can be attributed to a suite of policies,
including stimulus checks, enhance unemployment insurance payments and eligibility supplemental
nutrition Assistance Program SNAP payments, and refundable child tax credits.
(21:00):
So during a global pandemic, because people absolutely needed assistance
and insisted on it, And ironically, we had a Republican
president here in the United States who insisted on giving
direct checks to people that we were able to reduce poverty.
(21:20):
And if we can do it during a pandemic, why
can't we do it all the time? I mean, I
think it sort of blows up the myth. Now we're
talking about inflation, right, but like so that the inflation
conversation comes up whenever we want to sort of, you know,
invest in people. How do you think the impact of
COVID has changed the conversation or hasn't changed the conversation
around poverty. Well, it's a really really interesting one because
(21:44):
it's still fluid. We don't know what the endpoint is
going to be. But one of the things that definitely
happened in the United States and in other wealthy countries
that harbor this belief in the sort of, you know,
the laziness of poor people is the that make meant
that a lot of people who really believed that everything
they achieved in their lives was down to just them
(22:05):
and their own hard work suddenly realized that ship the
system doesn't necessarily work for everybody, and people who perhaps
had never been in financial difficulty before suddenly found themselves
in deep financial difficulty. That changes the conversation, because the
tantalizing thing about the poverty narrative is that divides people,
(22:28):
It polarizes people. It helps a certain group of society
believe that they deserve everything they have, and if you
don't have, you are undeserving. The last eighteen months is
blown that out of the water, because it's patently obvious
that we rely on systems to help us, to help
all of us. And we've been fortunate enough that the
(22:48):
discourse was beginning to shift a little bit before there
was more of a high profile given to questions around
poverty and what it does to people, on how we
can help people, and now we've had an opportunity ready
to do that. And obviously, going forward, their predictions that
child poverty in America could be reduced by five million,
which I mean that is a serious amount of children
(23:10):
as a direct result of policies that two years ago
would have been knocked out of the water because they
would have been deemed as reinforcing welfare dependency. And it's
become harder um too pump out that particular narrative because
it's doom what it's designed to do, which is to
(23:31):
lift people out of poverty and to give them a
fighting chance. So we're now gathering evidence that really really matters,
and we're saying what people do with the money that
they get, and we're able to talk about the fact that, oh,
you know, when all the politicians and think tanks were
saying that if you give poor people money, they'll just
(23:51):
go out and blow it on drugs and gambling. Well
guess what. That does not happen. They spend it on
their children, They invest in their homes and their families
and their unity. And because we're a consumer economy, it
actually is better for the economy because they's been the
money right exact exactly. Poor and low income people get
money in their pockets and they spend it. Rich people
(24:13):
put it offshore or handed off to the next generation,
and it does nothing. So this is why the common
good aspect of this really matters. But we're in this
peculiar experiment at the moment where enough is being done
to make really big changes in people's lives, and that
helps dismantle this narrative that has basically taken root over
(24:37):
the past forty years. I mean it's not new. People
were always blamed for being poor, but it has been
particularly prevalent in the past sort of four decades. And
you know, I always think about the person whose pocket
that money is going into. What does that mean for
that person? What can they feed their families? You know?
(24:58):
And the cultural point you made is really important because
you know, can you bring your kid Doom Museum to
the theater? You know? Can can you have some money
just to let your child see what the possibilities of
the world are, rather than having to try to protect
them from this constant barrage of blaming and shamming that
goes on. I think it's a really unusual and interesting time. Well,
(25:21):
many of those programs are said to expire, um, so
it'll be really interesting to see what happens. This is
a good time to take a little break. We'll be
right back though, Okay, we're back. As a black person,
(25:43):
I always think about the role of the narratives around
welfare and race and how they play themselves out in
the United States here specifically, And I'm curious about your
perspective on race poverty in the United States versus the
UK specific pick la Do you feel it plays itself
out in the same way in the UK that it
(26:03):
does in the here in the United States, it's not.
It's not exactly the same, but it's the same in
the sense that there are higher rates of poverty among
people of color, and black people in particular tend to
be in the lowest economic strata of society. So that
is pretty similar in the sense that just the physical
(26:24):
reality of the numbers tells us that if you are black,
you are more likely to be living in poverty. So
that's the same. The narrative that reinforces, that that entrenches
that is similar on a broad level in the UK
and America, But it hasn't It has a different kind
of hue because of America's history UM specifically obviously with
(26:47):
slavery and the intergenerational denial of wealth to black people
in black communities, and that is fundamental now one of
the one of the real interesting moments in the history
of this UM And I won't go on about too much,
because otherwise it's just like going down a rabbit hole.
But the symbol of welfare in the nineteen eighties was
(27:13):
this idea of the welfare queen. Right. It was a
completely racialized trope, and it was deliberate and it absolutely
made it easier in subsequent years for cuts to welfare
that helped poor families. Now I'm sure your listeners will
(27:35):
be more than familiar with this, but essentially it, you know,
one woman becomes this mythic stereotype for people who live
high on the hog on welfare. I mean that in
itself was ridiculous because frankly, you don't live high in
the hog when you're scrapping around for like, you know,
scraps under the table. But it absolutely married, and there's
(27:58):
lots of great resources around. This married the idea of
welfare in America to race, and it fed into that
normalization of associating race with poverty. Again, you add on
to that the idea that poor people are lazy, and
(28:19):
suddenly a million different stereotypes come into play. It was
a very effective true and it wasn't just the you know,
people on the right who bought entered you know, the
Clinton administration did some serious damage, and especially to women
who needed help, women with children. It was, you know,
which is why also single mothers were demonized as well.
(28:43):
So and this this put down very very deep roots
and that becomes a symbol. But because the historic discrimination
around black people in black communities has meant that they
have been more poor than other groups in society, then
you don't I mean it's not even dog whistles. I
(29:03):
mean it's you know, the narrative physically is poor equals
black equals let's say, yeah, and then to not internalize
shame around that as a black person, right, like the
levels of shame that I've internalized around that as a
black person not being that stereotype. It's also not just
about you know, needing assistance in being lazy. It's also
(29:25):
being uneducated. It's also being unkempt. And so there's all
this respectability politics that I've deeply internalized. There's just so
many layers to the shame when it's intersectional like that,
and when it's race and class and the demonizing of
single mothers continues to this day, and it is, um
(29:46):
it's very personal for me, and I know I shouldn't
take things personally. But my mom was a single mother
and and I turned out pretty well. You know, I
turned out pretty well. And there's this narrative that, like,
particularly conservatives in this country, push that like single motherhood
is like ruining the country and we need to parent households,
and like, I'm sure that's lovely. I don't have that
(30:07):
experience personally, but like to demonize a woman who worked
so hard to take care of her kids, who like sacrifice,
and who did everything she could, and I know so
many other mothers who are doing the same thing, it's
just so utterly disrespectful. It's inhumane, and it pisces me off.
(30:27):
I'm sorry, that was just still little rand um. Well,
you know, it pisses me off to That's why I
started writing about this stuff. But the the internalizing of
shame in general is very, very destructive and disorient and
and it's very effective for the people who want to
keep people done. It's a very effective tool because we
(30:51):
start to blame ourselves for things that we're finding difficult. Uh.
I recall so many occasions where I was in situations
at school or when I got to university where I
did not understand the social codes. I did not understand
the way people spoke to each other or the signal
and that they did. When I went from my first
(31:12):
like proper job after college, I didn't know how to
even do an interview properly. You know it was it
holds you back in so many ways and you're ashamed
on so many levels that almost it's like keep closing
on yourself, right, And then if you're an ambitious person,
I admit I really wanted to be the best I
could be. Um, you don't want to be labeled and
(31:36):
you certainly don't want to be pitied. And one of
the things in the UK that used to be said
a lot if you complained or brought up issues around
poverty and the experience of poverty, well so you've got
a chip on your shoulder and I'm like, what what
are you even talking about? I've got to SI, this
is my reality. Don't do down my reality. For the
(31:57):
first part of my career, I didn't focus on these
issues because I still was carrying that um shame and
didn't want to be pigeonholed as as this is my
whole identity. But as I got older, and especially in
the wake of the financial crisis, and they're just so
much like trauma around poverty going on and poor people
(32:18):
being attacked again and again again. I felt like I
had to spick up. And what I found, and it's
fascinating to me, is that once you start talking about
these things, once you start challenging they perceived understanding of
these things, you find it there are people everywhere who
want to do the same. And when I was building
(32:39):
Project Twisted, I thought, oh, my god, is anybody going
to talk to me for this? Is anybody gonna do?
And I had authors, musicians, poets, kids who had made
their very first film in their public house, and complex
just said yes, please, can I be part of this?
Can I be part of this? It made me realize
that there was no real movement to run this stuff,
(33:01):
you know, you, there was no way to connect with people.
It was very reassuring to find so much work going on,
especially creatively, to challenge these stories that we're told. But
we needed to find ways to talk to each other.
So at the end of October, for instance, in the UK,
there's going to be a working Class Writers Festival for
the first time that is champion in the voices of
(33:23):
people from those backgrounds, and you know, as diverse as
it's possible to get people normally excluded from the culture,
and that really that really tells me that there is
a willingness to not just take this anymore. But here's
the thing. As much and you brought up the point
(33:44):
about things experiment that are helping people, as much as
that progress is happening, if we look at the history
of shaming poor people, the people who do the organizations
that they're not going to take this sitting down. They're
going to be on the attack, and especially in the
US with in the terms next year, I would guess
(34:05):
that in our current polarized society there is going to
be an awful lot more of this. And how that
plays out well, I think determine what happens in the
years afterwards. They know shaming people works and dividing people
also works. What I love about twist it and and
what you just said is that if we have more
media representations where people get to tell their stories, then
(34:28):
narrative can begin to change. And then what I know
about shame, according to Berne Brown's work anyway, is that
when we speak our shaming story um and are met
with empathy, the shame dissipates, and I was just thinking
about like that on an inter personal level, and that
like in the context of an auditorium, But then what
would that look like in the context of like poor
(34:50):
people getting to tell their stories in the context of
government and actually being greeted with empathy instead of your lazy,
your lazy, you're lazy. I think too, What's what I
find curious? And I'm not familiar with the UK, but
what I feel like is happening here in the United
States with the poverty narrative. What takes a more media
space are sort of cultural wars around like now mask
(35:14):
and vaccines, trans people in sports, and so what the
Conservative Party here does is like sort of weaponizes cultural
issues that are usually based in racism, transphobia, UM, xenophobia,
et cetera. And so they use that to divide working
class people and then they're like doing tax breaks there
(35:35):
for rich people. They're you know, doing austerity programs, are
cutting you know things, But then people aren't even paying
attention and don't even aware of that because we're in
this cultural war thing. So it's like this whole sort
of divide and conquer thing. And I often think like
what if all working class people of all races like
got together and said, okay, wait a minute, wait a minute,
(35:57):
like okay, like, how is it that the richest man
in the world are paying nothing like zero in taxes.
I'm paying more, but people who make less money than
me are paying more, like not just just a percentage
of their income, just in terms of the actual number
(36:18):
than these billionaires. Yeah, you know, this is so this
is so right because one of the things about being
poor it's it's exhausted. It is exhausted, either because you're
doing four jobs and trying to bring up some kids
and find some child car but also you're trying to
process so much. You're trying, you know, you're carrying so
much trauma from the poverty that you are less able
(36:43):
to find time, just time to my life and get together.
It's so infuriating. I know, it's just I know, when
that pro Publica report came out, I was so instantly.
But the billionaires have so much money, we can't even
compute it. Yeah, and you refuse to let you let
your workers unionize. That's the fundamental thing, isn't it. People
don't get their rights given to them by those with power.
(37:05):
They have to fight for them. And unions have been
like in the history of working people, unions have been
absolutely fundamental to not just the amount the money that
goes into people's pockets, but horse if their work environment
is you know, health insurance, like just you know, a
five day work week as opposed to like working at
(37:26):
them any of the week. From my union as an actor,
like so that we're the turnaround and the hours and
there's so many things that my union protects me from
as an actor that it's invaluable. And unions have been
decimated in this country. And another thing that Reagan did
and started, you know in the eighties, and that's where
the UK and America are absolutely singing from the Samim
(37:47):
shade because Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher did that in
unison attacked the unions. By the late seven days, unions
were still pretty strong. And then come the eighties absolutely decimated.
And with it where is and the narrative and the
narrative to when you watch when when you see the narrative,
unions are terrible teachers and unions, I mean they're just
(38:08):
so routinely demonized as like holding back progress like that.
It's been so successful. What I marvel at is how
brilliant Republicans are in this country at propaganda, getting getting
a message, saying it over it. It could be a
(38:29):
complete lion fabrication, but get everybody getting on the same page,
saying it over and over and over again, relentlessly until
it almost seems like it's the truth. So it's and
that the Democratic Party or liberals or the left do
not have a response that is commiserated to the attack
that is happening from the right. There is not a desire,
(38:50):
a willingness to exercise power in the same way for
the people. And it is it's it's it's shocking to me.
It really is shock king to me that Democrats have
are so feckless and how and and don't understand exactly
what they're up against. They really when Joe Biden wants
to be bipartisan with a party that thinks he's stole
(39:12):
an election, well it's the classic you bring a knife
to a gunfight, you know, But you're absolutely right, You're
so spot on, because that's exactly why the narrative does
what it does. It's simple, and it's repeated over and
over and over again until people believe that it is
the absolute truth. And there's and I think it's I
think it's because of corporate interests for Democrats that ultimately
(39:36):
they are serving the same corporate interest is Republicans. I
think that's part of it. I think the media is
part of it. But it's just it's like, it's I
furious and get a clue, Get a clue these people are.
They're not playing fair. It's like literally Texas abortion. I mean,
it's like it's happening right now. Actually, this is the moment.
(39:57):
And what it is so sad about them not link
to being willing to end that filibuster, is that this
is the moment. If we don't do Philipbus reform right now,
if we don't do election reform right now, if we
don't do Supreme Court Supreme Court we need to expand
the court, all of these things. If we don't change
the system fundamentally in a legislative way, we're screwed, probably
(40:20):
for a generation. Yeah, I agree, I completely agree. And
this missed opportunity will disillusion so many people too, because
the fight that went on last year to do what
people did to you know, get the Drump administration gone. Um,
you know, people will go, well, why did I fight
so hard when they didn't fight for me, And it's like,
(40:41):
it's so hard to have any kind of hope and
I don't at this moment, and I'm like, I want
to be a hopeful, positive person, but it it's like, yeah,
I hear you. But they're helping positive moves on that.
So like the Poor People's Campaign here in the US,
for instance, right, which is very much about building an
(41:02):
ally this of you know, profile in the verious different
aspects of this, like the impact on people of color,
but also going you know what, they turned me against
you because it suits them to turn me against you
when we have the same interests, we have the same dreams,
you know, we have the same goals for our families.
So I think there's a realization of that, there's a
(41:24):
realization that this division of people, this shaming of people,
only happens because it's effective. So the question becomes harder
you kinteract something that has been so effective, mainly because
it's so simple, but also because it is propagated by
a media that is either complicit in this message or
(41:47):
actively promoting this message. And there's a lot of thought
going into this right now, and the language that we
use is crucial. The way we frame discussions is crucial.
Who gets to say when and to who is crucial. Right.
So the empathy point you make is a really important
one because it's strengthens it gives us more power and
(42:11):
self respect um. But it takes it away from pity
because the thing that doesn't get discussed a lot around
the shaming is this. We we can see the overt
shaming and blaming and calling people Lisa, but historically the
people who have set out to help poor people are
often doing it well meaning, but from a position of
(42:32):
paternalism or pity, and that does not work anymore than
vilifying and blaming people works because guess what, people who
are poor are, just like everybody else, have agency and
they are the experts in their own situation, right absolutely,
(42:53):
So that's who we listen to. And there is more
of that happening and in politics and in eider society,
but I think it's still quite early days and it's
very fragile. It's a very fragile situation up and precisely
for the points that you make, because it cuts across
this binary, divided cultural space that we inhabit, and the
(43:16):
tools and techniques that have been used to keep people
done for a very long time are going to keep
being used for as long as they're effective. Absolutely, absolutely. Um.
It feels sort of insurmountable here in the States to
me sometimes because so much when we have a democratic presidency, Senate,
(43:38):
and House and then we still can't get things done
because of the filibuster, and that the filibuster becomes a
cover for Democrats to protect corporate interest, right so that
they have to keep the filibuster in place to use
as an excuse so that they can like you know,
please their corporate donors. And so then we don't get
an equality Act, we don't get like a four the
(43:58):
people like the democracies on the line, and then all
these programs that we could be doing a fifteen dollar
minimum way it really should be twenty five dollars right now,
fighting for fifteen dollars for like twelve years. Yeah, I
mean the federal minimum wage has been the same for
more than a decade, and you're kind of like, well,
when you look at the numbers, had it just followed
inflation from nine, it would be like forty in all,
(44:21):
which is what it should be, you know. But but
that's that's done to push and push and pushing this
idea of people being undeserved, and uh like, Fight for
Fifteen has done a brilliant job in recent years of
putting this out there, getting media attention. It's been a
very effective campaign in terms of people realizing it. But
(44:41):
you're absolutely right, we shouldn't be stuck on the fifteen dollars.
It should be much more. That is the lowest possible
threshold people cannot live on. That people can't live on that.
And I don't have the source, but there was a
recent report that noted that the current minimum wage, which
is like seven dollars an hour in most American cities,
(45:01):
you can't rent a one bit froom apartment for that. Okay,
it's that time again. A lot more is coming though,
we're back. You tell this story in your book about
(45:25):
the intersection of disability and poverty, which is which is
really important to talk about because you talk about in
the book how you know this is in the UK,
how so many people with disabilities had to like jump
through all these hoops to prove that they were disabled
and unable to work, and often died in the process.
(45:46):
Do you want to relay one of the stories from
your book about this. Yeah. So, basically after the financial crisis,
when the UK introduced absolutely awful austerity program, it affected
the groups that you expected to effect really badly, women,
people of color, etcetera, but also disabled people. So they
wanted to cut benefits for disabled people and they use
(46:09):
this poverty narrative to justify it. They put in place,
you know, work requirements. Look into America by the way,
That's what they were getting their ideas from, and they
kind of very long and complicated story short. Disabled people
were having to go to say for interviews, right. Um.
I met people who got to their interview and the
(46:30):
person who's deciding whether or not they're getting any financial
support says that if they could get on the bus,
that means they're fine. They can get a job right now.
If you've got a chronic illness and four days of
the week you can't move, but it just so happened
that you have managed to get out of bed that day.
I had whistleblowers come to me who were working in
(46:51):
employment centers deciding whether people get unemployment benefit, and they
were being incentivized to not give people what they're entire to,
including people who were dying of cancer, and thousands and
thousands of disabled people. Um. One story I came across
was a person who had a heart attack during the
(47:11):
interview when they were being told that they were fit
to work. I mean, there are so many stories. There
are so many stories of suicides as a result of this,
People who were being hunded have been denied their say,
housing support, they weren't getting their housing support, and people
losing three or four stone and then killing themselves because
(47:32):
they just couldn't cope anymore. I mean, it was a
hounding of disabled people and I have to sell around.
I'm so glad you brought this topic up because it's
many of the discussions around this, and around diversity in
general and social justice in general. Disabled people are often ignored,
and there are great movements like crypto vote, for instance,
(47:53):
that are pushing back against this. But you know, as
a society, what the hell are we doing? You know,
what are we doing when we're not providing the proper
safety net and support systems for people with disabilities. It's
a huge number of people. Most of us will get
a disability at some point if we're lucky enough to
(48:14):
live a long time. It's a society wide issue, and
in the UK, I mean it's a sham. It's an
absolute sham on that country that it did what it did.
And my book before this documents and a lot more detail,
um if you know, if people want to check that out,
But it's an active object, cruelty and certainly drummed home
(48:34):
to me the degree to which these things are political choices.
Absolutely absolutely, So there's the there's the policy piece and
and how that's functioning and movement organizing to begin to
do that. But on a personal level, I mean even
for me at this stage, and I've done so much
work on shame in my own personal life, but you know,
(48:57):
I have like in my head narratives around like, well,
I don't want to theme Tachi and new vote reach
and like I don't want to seem like I mean,
it's just it just kind of keeps going in terms
of like shame around poverty and them and ghetto and like.
But then like for individuals out there who are struggling
with with shame around being poor and working class, now
(49:18):
having had that in their path, what can we begin
to do? I think talking about it is is crucial, Um,
what what would what would you suggest? Yeah? I completely agree,
And you know the fact that we talked about how
poverty is bloody exhausting, right, So you know, not everyone
can be an activist. Absolutely, not everyone can be a spokesperson.
(49:39):
Not everyone wants to be a spokesperson. And that is
absolutely okay because there are people who will do those things.
But in our everyday lives and our everyday existences, it's
like any of the other great social injustices of our time.
You know, in our interactions with people, do we call
them out when they denigrate people, when they make a
(50:00):
dismissive comment or use a demeaning kind of stereotype to
talk about people on poverty, Like, we all need to
call them out. We need to be conscious that all
of us have a responsibility to do that. Um, those
of us that can't tell our stories will and should
tell our stories. And this one is very interesting to me,
(50:25):
and I'd be really interested to hear if it's something
that you come across a lot as well. So when
I'm talking about these issues from a personal experience, and
people will say things like, well, look at your your
proof that if you put yourself up by your bootstraps.
You know you can do whatever you you got out, well,
why can't everybody else get out? All right? And that
(50:45):
only makes me more determined to tell my story because
I know for a fact that no matter how hard
I worked or what natural talents I was given, I
relied on the social and welfare structures around me to
be a springboard. I had access to free health care
as a child. I had free education, free education university.
(51:07):
The government paid me to go to university, So yeah,
I had to take advantage of it. I had to
do the work. But don't tell me and people like
me that, because we have been seen to succeed by
society's norms, that the other people who don't fit that
particular picture must be lazy. And I think unless we
(51:27):
talk about that, unless we confront those misunderstandings, those perceptions
in our everyday lives, then people will only believe the
stories that they're told. And let's face facts of them.
Because if you're from a poor background, the chances are
almost everyone you know is from the same background. If
you're from a wealthy background, when do you ever encounter
(51:48):
people from poor backgrounds, unless it's say, you're cleaner or
you're cook or something, and you probably don't talk to
them anyway. So those of us that can shoot talk
about it and do it publicly, and elephant voices that
are marginalized. You know, I think about privilege, right, I
think about that every black trans person doesn't have the
(52:08):
same privileges that I had in the privilege even though
we were poor. My mother was a teacher and corrected
my grammar all the time, and the kids may offended
means that I talked proper. But then I also begged
my mother to let me audition for the Alabama School
to Find Arts, which was in Birmingham, Alabama, four hours
north of Mobile, and so I was in the dorms there,
and not only was that a wonderful arts education, I
(52:29):
was surrounded by kids from very privileged backgrounds and I
got to see it's different level of possibility that I
wouldn't have seen if I weren't in that school. And
then I also learned how to make white people comfortable.
And that one of the crucial things about surviving, I
think as a black person in America is learning how
(52:49):
to make white people comfortable. And I don't it sounds funny,
but but but I don't think. But I don't think
we should have to do that. I don't think re
black person gets the skills to know how to do
that or even wants to do that. And I'm not
suggesting they should, but like in my space of survival,
I just sort of learned how to do that and
(53:11):
I look a certain way. And then even with all
of that privilege, I you know, I had to loan
debt and credit card debt and I didn't become famous
till I was forty one years old. So so even
with all of the you know, I was poor. So
I mean, poverty is really not an advantage and we
you know, but I think, I mean, I lived most
of my adult life like working in restaurants for tips
(53:34):
and barely surviving. And and I'm actually really grateful for
that because I think if I had become famous in
my twenties, I wouldn't have an understanding of like how
poor people are continually demonized, how hard it is to
just survive in the world, and I wouldn't have a
critical awareness of that. And I know that this system
(53:55):
has always been set up to to elevate one or
two people, like we look throughout history, particularly as a
black person. I'm aware of this that, like, you know,
there's been a few elevated here and there throughout the
history of America, and that's sort of how the system
functions as well. Let's like elevate a few and say
oh they can do it, then anybody can do it. Yeah,
And that's how these narratives functioned because you know, they say, oh,
(54:18):
there's that person, you know, as if that person is
representative of an entire community or should carry the identity
of an entire community on their shoulders. But it allows
people to go, well, you know, people get by some people.
You know Obama as president, you know, you get that
kind of nonsense. But you know, each and every one
of us has the circumstances around us that we have
(54:40):
various degrees of privilege, various degrees of alienation and isolation
and all of that. But fundamentally, if we have systems
in place they don't deliberately and actively keep people done,
then they're just as more opportunity. And that matters. It
matters on so many offals, and not least so that
(55:01):
you don't walk around your whole life feeling ashamed of
where you came from. Yeah, before I asked my last
question that I asked all my guests, is there something
you want to leave the people with as we go
go forward into this continued to struggle for our own
sort of lifting our own shame and then lifting the
cultural shame around poverty. Yeah, don't be part of the problem.
(55:25):
You know, just don't be part of the problem. Um.
It's understandable that as a culture we've absorbed all these
messages and it's convenient to just go along with whatever
the status cool with, but be question and be critical
if you're not. If you're the sort of person that's
lived a life where you haven't had to struggle or
you haven't had to fight, just keep a roof over
(55:46):
your head. Just ask yourself once in a while if
you really did it all yourself? Or was it that
or was it that grid school and all the other
privileges that you had, And just don't accept the messages
that you're told at face failure. Yeah, I love that
we always have to be critical. So I end um
(56:08):
every podcast with the question, um, what else is true?
And this question comes from my somatic therapy based in
the community resiliency model, and the idea is both and
if there's something challenging us in our lives or even
in our body, and we sort of become what we
focus on. We can focus on the difficulty, or we
can focus on the thing that is neutral and positive
(56:29):
and that thing that helps us get through. So for
you today, Mary O'Hara, for you, what else it's true?
Oh wow? Um? I think it's true that human rights
and human dignity are necessary for all of us to
live the best life that we can live. And it's
(56:50):
true that as individuals we can make a difference, but
together we can make a hell of a bigger difference
than on our own. Mm hmmm. Amen. Amen. And it's like,
you know, it keeps coming up on the podcast. A
lot of these episodes have been about like mental health
and well being and connection. Connect Him is coming back
(57:14):
to love and connection for me over and over and
over again. And so what we can do together makes
me think about like how do we then connect to
each other? And we connect through telling the truth of
our stories, um, with the things that we have in
common and our shared humanity. And as we can begin
to do that, then maybe maybe there's hope that we're
(57:37):
not alone. No, we're not, Thank you so much. Mary
O'Hara is the author of the shame Game, Overcoming the
Toxic Poverty Narrative, and also your previous book, Austerity Bites.
Are you on social media? Can folks on follow you
on on anyway? Yeah? Sure, I'm I'm on Twitter, easy
to find Mary O'Hara one and on Instagram. Mary Uhara writer,
(58:01):
so fairly simple, love it, Thank you so much. I'm
so grateful for you and your work. Project Twisted is awesome.
There's actually a YouTube channel for a project Twisted, and
there's just some great um content there from young people
that I love and I love hearing people's lived experiences
in their story, so I encourage people to go and
check that out as well. Thank you and thank you
(58:23):
for having me. It was an absolute delight, Mary O'Hara.
The biggest takeaway from me after that conversation is an invitation,
I think to myself, an invitation to everyone out there
(58:44):
who's listening to critically interrogate the assumptions that we've made
about poverty in general, about people who are poor, and
how we've internalized those messages in relationship to ourselves. If
we are not struggling with poverty or never have. What
(59:06):
is our relationship to our own wealth and privilege and
how does that relate to narratives that we've heard and
or internalized around people who might be struggling. And I
think we have to change the story first. When we're
talking about shame, we internalize shame, We shame ourselves, and
(59:29):
then we can shame other people. And we live in
a culture that shames other people and blames people for
situations that it might not be their fault. So I
invite you um think about changing the narratives that you
have in your head, in your social circles, and maybe
you know more globally around poverty, think about your own
(59:53):
personal staken in your own personal part in it, and
then what are the systems in place? Thank you so
much for listening to the Laverne Cox Show. Join me
next week for my second conversation with my incredible therapist
Jennifer Byrne Flyer to go even deeper into the tools
(01:00:17):
of the community resiliency model. So much of this step
is connected, It's all connected. Please rate, review, subscribe and
share with everyone you know. You can find me on
Instagram and Twitter at Laverne Cox and on Facebook at
Laverne Cox for Real. Until next time, Stay in the loud.
(01:00:42):
The Laverne Cox Show is a production of Shonda land
Audio in partnership with I Heart Radio. For more podcasts
from Shonda land Audio, visit the I Heart Radio app,
Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to the Laverne Cox Show, a production of Shondaland
Audio in partnership with My Heart Radio. The federal minimum
which has been the same for more than a decade,
and you're kind of like, well, when you look at
the numbers, had it just followed inflation from it will
be like in all, which is what it should be,
(00:21):
you know. But that's done to push and push and
pushing this idea of people being undeserved. Hello everyone, and
welcome to Laverne Cox Show. I'm Laverne Cox. So I
(00:42):
believe it was January. I remember being in line, the
very long line that day at housing court, and tears
started streaming down my face. I was trying to keep
it together, but I was completely falling apart. One of
my greatest spheres has always been becoming homeless. And here
(01:04):
I was holding an eviction notice in my hand that
the sheriff had put on my door, and all my
neighbors had seen, and I was just crying and just
kind of losing my my my ship. I was thirty
seven years old and couldn't pay my rent in a
low income building. I was living in a UM government
subsidized low income building at the time in Manhattan, and
(01:27):
the whole point of the building is to keep people
from becoming homeless, and here I was unable to pay rent.
There I just felt, um, like all of the sort
of narratives around being a piece of ship because I
was poor and being lazy, even though I was working
really hard at the time, like a lot of it
was unpaid work, so I knew I wasn't lazy, but
(01:49):
I was still internalizing like this narrative, and then like
all the internalized racism too. It was just a ship
storm of shame and a ship storm of I'm not enough.
And Brine Brown tells us. A shame functions in two
different ways. It tells us that we're not enough, and um,
if we're able to get over that, it says, you know,
(02:09):
who do you think you are? You're too big for
your bitches, And in that moment, I was feeling both,
you know, pursuing this dream of wanting to be an actor.
I mean, you're a black transperson. There's never been a
famous black transactor. I mean, you are insane and delusional,
and now you're about to be homeless. It was really scary.
(02:29):
It was very, very scary, and I was able to
meet with the lawyer and we were able to work
out a payment plan and I was able to catch
up um on my rent. And the sad thing is
that two years later, in um February, I was there again.
I was there in housing court another time. I was
thirty nine, I was about to turn forty, and it
(02:51):
was just like, what's going on. The shame that I have,
The shame that still sort of losing my body, around
not being able to support myself, around being poor, is
really really deep inside me um till this day. And
now I literally epitomized the American dream. People are like, well,
(03:13):
if Laverne Costs can do it, why can't you do it?
And I'm really critical of those narratives because I know
that even though it was tenuous that I've I've made
it this far. I know that like a lot of
privilege allowed me to be where I'm at today. And so, yeah,
a lot of stuff that I'm working through. And there
(03:34):
is a woman named Mary O'Hara who happened to write
a book. Mary O'Hara is an award winning journalist, author
and producer. She is a graduate of Cambridge University and
a former full right scholar at UC Berkeley. Mary is
the author of two books, one of which is The
Shame Game, Overturning the toxic poverty narrative, and its founder
(03:56):
of the multi platform anti poverty initiative project Twisted. In
she was named Best Foreign Columnist at the Southern California
Journalism Awards. Please enjoy my conversation with Mary O'Hara. Hello,
(04:16):
Mary O'Hara, Welcome to the podcast. How are you feeling today?
You know, I'm done, okay, not too about all things considered.
Very good, very good. I am so excited to have
you here today because, um, this is something I think
about all the time. I'm always always thinking about shame.
I'm thinking about It's been a huge issue in my
(04:38):
life in a lot of different ways. Shame around being
trans shame around raised, and the shame around class that
I've internalized is really really deep, and it's something that
even as I'm no longer poor and working class, it's
something that persists, which is really interesting. What I know
about shame is that so much of shame it's about
(05:00):
the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves and the stories
that we've internalized from structures, and so can we start,
can you tell us from your research, from your work,
what the predominant narrative around poverty is that can be
shaming for a lot of people. Yeah. Sure. First of all,
I'm so glad to be on this podcast. I think
(05:21):
it's a great show. I love how it is with
matters that matter to me, So I'm really pleased to
be here. Thank you. I appreciate that well. As a
person with lived experience of poverty myself, I grew up
in poverty as a child and young person, I completely
hear what you're saying about the shame that you carry
with you even when you've moved beyond that situation. What
(05:42):
it does now part of the reason that we feel
that shame is because it permeates our cultures. It runs
through the politics, the economics, the entertainment, the media, it's everywhere.
And essentially what the dominant poverty the narrative, the story
we're told in the US and the UK, the two
(06:04):
countries I'm interested in, is that if you are poor,
it's your fault. Right, you must be poor because you
are lazy, you are idle, You've made a lifestyle choice
apparently to be poor. According to this narrative, The flip
side of that narrative is that people who are wealthy
um are so purely because of their own efforts, not
(06:26):
that they've been assisted by anyone or anything. It's done
to them and their talents. And that's a very tantalizing
aspect of the narrative because it reinforces the idea that
if you are poor, you're poor because you are economically
supposed to be poor because you're not doing anything about
it and all of that. Of course it's absolute nonsense,
(06:49):
but it's a powerful, powerful story. Yeah, it makes me
think about my own life as well. And there was
there was a point my mother put herself through school
while she was raising us, through her undergraduate work while
she was raising us. And I remember there was one
point when we were kids that we had we had
a paper route that so as a family, we like
(07:12):
went in sort of delivered papers, and then we also
collected bottles and cans so that we could um, you know,
sort of turn them in to be recycled to get
money for that. And then my mother had a job
working as the church secretary, and she had like another
job to which I forget what it was. Cirly, so
I'm like, wait, and I think about the experiences of
(07:35):
like what people say, poor people are just lazy. I'm like,
wait a minute. My mother had like four jobs at
one point and we were still struggling, and we were
unwelfare at one point, and there was such shame around that.
As an adult too, I um lived in government subsidized
housing for many years, which really saved my life. And
(07:57):
I was on Medicaid, which is um in the United
States health care for poor people. And it's really easy
to um let your Medicaid slip because you have to
like fill out new information every year and it has
to be exactly right, and it's very intense, and so
it's just and I was thinking, when I was in
(08:17):
living in government subcess housing and I was on Medicaid,
I was actually working very hard to So it's like
I'm aware of that narrative and I internalized that narrative.
And for me, so much of my experience as a
poor person as a child and as an adult is like,
let's not let people know that you're poor. Let's like
project that I am, you know, looking good and everything
(08:42):
is okay. My mother would always say that. My grandmother
would say make sure that your rent is paid, if
your lights are turned off, if your water is turned off,
no one knows that. But if your rent isn't paid,
you're on the street and everyone will know. So even
in that narrative, it's like it's about not letting people
know that you're struggling, and that is the shame of it,
(09:04):
Like I'm not enough and people are going to find out. Well,
that's absolutely right. It's completely fundamental to the experience of
being poor is that you're ashamed of being poor. I mean,
when you ask people who fit the definition of what
it is to be poor if they're poor, people will
usually say no, oh no, I'm I'm I'm okay, I'm okay. Now,
(09:25):
the problem with that is it then becomes easy to
underestimate the problem, to think that it's not as big
a problem as it is. But it profoundly affects us psychologically, emotionally.
To not be able to provide for ourselves and provide
for our family is one of the most sort of
soul destroying things that a person can live with. You
(09:46):
go out into your community, you don't want people to
think that you're a bad mother or you know that
you're just not pulling your weight or you haven't pulled
up your bootstraps, as that ridiculous saying goes, and you
carry it with you. It's a I don't know, it's
like a burden that sort of lives inside you. It
runs through you when you when you can leave poverty,
(10:07):
but poverty never leaves you. Yeah, it stays with you.
And you know, much like yourself. I grew up in
public housing in the North of Ireland, which is part
of the UK, and my parents relied on the welfare system,
the safety net that we had government subsidized housing, and
(10:27):
we lived around other poor and low income people because
that's what happens that people you're surrounded by. Now, there's
a lot of support in those communities. People do an
awful lot to help each other. They're very resilient, but
they also understand that the wider society season is different.
I mean, even as a five or six year old, um,
(10:48):
I knew something wasn't quite right. I knew we weren't
like other people. And I you know, we know from
the research. I know from my work that the long
term impacts of that are profound, and you know, to
all intents and purposes, I'm a successful person. You know
I've done okay in life, but you bet that I
worry about money all the time, even when I shouldn't
(11:09):
be thinking about it. It just stays with me because
having nothing or next to nothing in a culture that
lionizes wealth and success is an extraordinary thing to try
to liver with it. So it's not just that you're
deprived of material things, right, It's not just like you
can't make your bills from time to time, or that
(11:30):
you can't put food on the table. It's that you're
not deemed to be fully human in a society where
you're perpetually demonized for the circumstances that you find yourself in.
And poor people and low income people are in those
circumstances because we exist in systems that keep us are
they're designed to keep poor people poor. Like you say,
(11:53):
the welfare system, how many hoops do you have to
jump through to prove that you're in desperate need? And
how much energy does that take away from the things
that you know would probably help you um a bit
more in your day to day life. Um, you turn
up with the welfare office, you're made to feel like
you're they're with the begging bowl um that you're not
(12:15):
entitled to be there. And when you think about tens
and tens of thousands of people are working per just
like your mother would have been, people holding down jobs
that are really badly paid, whilst the people who own
those companies and corporations line their own pockets and you know,
celebrate tax breaks. I mean, it's an extraordinarily unfair system,
(12:38):
and it's morally wrong and it is inhumane. One of
the most um, I think agregious, I think is the
right word. Disturbing, egregious, stunning. Examples of this is are
here in the United States are largest employer, Walmart. Many
of the employees of Walmart have to go on snap
(13:01):
on food stands because the wages that they're making at
the largest employer in the country are not enough wages
for them to be able to eat. And the Walton
family is one of the wealthiest families obviously in the country.
So that kind of that disparity, and we we can
(13:24):
talk about other corporations as well here in the United
States that you know, do union busting and do all
sorts of things, and they're getting very very wealthy at
the at the top, and then their workers are barely
surviving and they're working very hard, and we still call
those people lazy. So it's like I initially wanted to
have this conversation to talk about the shame part of it,
(13:44):
but it's like the policy piece of it, and the
shame that we internalize is so constantly reinforced. I was
thinking about the materialism too, because it's also not just
about not having access to material, you know, things, it's
also culture. It also like if you can't afford to
go to the movies and everyone's referencing this movie, it's
(14:06):
like you're outside of culture. And so much of culture
here in the United States is about like what we've
consumed and being sort of outside of that. It's you're
outside of of culture in general. But I feel like
the Internet, I do feel like there's a shift in
young people talking about like having a critical relationship to
(14:26):
billionaires and corporations and having a critical relationship to wealth
now more than you know, maybe ten years ago. I
don't do you feel the shift happening? Well, this is
a really interesting aspect of this. My latest boat, which
obviously called The Sham Game, came out of a wider
anti poverty project that I run called Project Twisted, where
(14:50):
for the past three and a half years I've been
connecting with organizations, grassroots researchers, entertainers, people across the culture
to try and challenge this dominant narrative. As part of that,
we worked with a lot of young people. Were run
live events where young people presented to live audiences and
(15:12):
theaters their ideas for how we can change things, you know,
And it was absolutely apparent to me that these kids
got it. They understood, they could see with clear eyes.
They're not old enough to have been sort of made
cynical about the world, you know. The same kind of
(15:32):
kids are in the environmentalism, for instance. They got the
stigma of poverty, they got the shame of poverty, and
they really wanted to talk about it and they really
wanted to challenge it. And after we held our events,
those young people went out and set up their own
little projects and online and you know, media projects. They
(15:54):
did a census to look at what young people's attitudes were.
I think absolutely they're more willing and not take this
sitting down. I also think that this generation is in
a moment of change more generally, and that includes the
movement around racism, around women's rights, around trans writes about
all of this. You know, it's a very interesting moment
(16:15):
in the culture in terms of elevating voices of people
who have been oppressed and suppressed for so long and
so successfully that they're just baiting down. And I think
young people are going to screw this. You know, we're
being told that we're going to have less in our
bank accounts than previous generations. We're told we can't afford
to buy our own home and raise a family without
(16:37):
doing four jobs. So yeah, I think young people are helping,
and not include younger kind of policy makers as well,
who have been reshipping the conversation on this the last
eighteen months has been fascinating. Younger policy makers, aligned with
younger grassroots activists, allied with others who have been working
in this arena for a long time, understand that in
(17:00):
many ways it's a make or break situation. The you know,
the billionaire wealth over the course of the pandemic through
the roof, absolutely through the roof. You know, we had
this whole discourse about essential workers and how important they are.
And guess what we realized our society would fall apart
without these people we just pay them not a to
do it. And I think there's a grown realization that
(17:23):
that is not just unsustainable, but it's morally screwed up.
And both that and poverty are political choices. Poverty doesn't
exist because people want to be poor. It's a political choice.
And for instance, there are welfare systems and other wealthy
(17:44):
nations around the world that do create a safety net
for people. You know, it's not about pol your bootstraps up.
It's about being given a safety net that becomes a
springboard that helps you. And you know what, it helps
the wider society. It is the public good. It's good
for everyone if people at the top pay their fair
(18:04):
share of tax and people at the bottom of the
social scale aren't way down with the sorts of burdens
that cause genuine tragedies and people's lives. You know, you
get a big medical bill, you come pit, you're screwed,
you lose your heyes, you're living out of your car suddenly,
it's you know, these have huge traumifications. Yeah, it's there's
just there's so much there. I'm sure you're familiar with
(18:25):
the pro publica report that just came out about the
wealthiest I think the wealthiest men because they're all men
in the world and what they're what they're paying taxes.
I pay more money in taxes than the richest people
in the world who are billionaires. Everybody out, everybody is
paying more money than the richest people in the world
(18:46):
in taxes. Yes, So the pro public A report and
a lot of the others that have come out UM,
certainly over the past six months are very clear. It
was interesting that you were looking at a decade as
your barometer for saying shifting that UM, it's exponentially growing. UM.
Who needs that much money? Who needs that much? You
(19:07):
don't need it. What's been interesting to me in the
past few months is that reports like this come out
all the time. I know this because they're always in
my inbox. So the nerd that is me rummage in
a run and these things is aware of it. And
sometimes I wanted to bang my head off a wall
because I'm like, why is it everybody else hearing about this? UM?
But I think the pandemic is enabled more people to
(19:29):
become aware of this because it's just being reported more
and then people are going to understand what We'll hold
on a minute, so I'm being told that taxpayers are
subsidized in me because I need snap, I need food stamps.
But the organization that should be paying me a living
wage has had a huge tax brick. But they're not
(19:50):
painted in the same light. They're not painted as intergenerational
wealth pilferers, you know what I mean. It's just it's
so hypocritical on every level, and they get those tax
breaks and they don't actually raise wages. I think COVID
is a really interesting conversation to have because a lot
of the initial here in the United States anyway, the
initially PPP loans that were given to businesses were so
(20:14):
they would not lay off workers, right so that they
would be able to retain their workforce. And we saw
that that did not happen often that those workers were
not paid more. And then too, what has happened because
we had direct aid? I just I found this um
this this report from the Urban Institute, a prominent liberal
(20:34):
leaning think tank in Washington, this week projects poverty levels
in the US will sit at seven point seven percent
through the end of one down from thirteen point nine.
The decline can be attributed to a suite of policies,
including stimulus checks, enhance unemployment insurance payments and eligibility supplemental
nutrition Assistance Program SNAP payments, and refundable child tax credits.
(21:00):
So during a global pandemic, because people absolutely needed assistance
and insisted on it, And ironically, we had a Republican
president here in the United States who insisted on giving
direct checks to people that we were able to reduce poverty.
(21:20):
And if we can do it during a pandemic, why
can't we do it all the time? I mean, I
think it sort of blows up the myth. Now we're
talking about inflation, right, but like so that the inflation
conversation comes up whenever we want to sort of, you know,
invest in people. How do you think the impact of
COVID has changed the conversation or hasn't changed the conversation
around poverty. Well, it's a really really interesting one because
(21:44):
it's still fluid. We don't know what the endpoint is
going to be. But one of the things that definitely
happened in the United States and in other wealthy countries
that harbor this belief in the sort of, you know,
the laziness of poor people is the that make meant
that a lot of people who really believed that everything
they achieved in their lives was down to just them
(22:05):
and their own hard work suddenly realized that ship the
system doesn't necessarily work for everybody, and people who perhaps
had never been in financial difficulty before suddenly found themselves
in deep financial difficulty. That changes the conversation, because the
tantalizing thing about the poverty narrative is that divides people,
(22:28):
It polarizes people. It helps a certain group of society
believe that they deserve everything they have, and if you
don't have, you are undeserving. The last eighteen months is
blown that out of the water, because it's patently obvious
that we rely on systems to help us, to help
all of us. And we've been fortunate enough that the
(22:48):
discourse was beginning to shift a little bit before there
was more of a high profile given to questions around
poverty and what it does to people, on how we
can help people, and now we've had an opportunity ready
to do that. And obviously, going forward, their predictions that
child poverty in America could be reduced by five million,
which I mean that is a serious amount of children
(23:10):
as a direct result of policies that two years ago
would have been knocked out of the water because they
would have been deemed as reinforcing welfare dependency. And it's
become harder um too pump out that particular narrative because
it's doom what it's designed to do, which is to
(23:31):
lift people out of poverty and to give them a
fighting chance. So we're now gathering evidence that really really matters,
and we're saying what people do with the money that
they get, and we're able to talk about the fact that, oh,
you know, when all the politicians and think tanks were
saying that if you give poor people money, they'll just
(23:51):
go out and blow it on drugs and gambling. Well
guess what. That does not happen. They spend it on
their children, They invest in their homes and their families
and their unity. And because we're a consumer economy, it
actually is better for the economy because they's been the
money right exact exactly. Poor and low income people get
money in their pockets and they spend it. Rich people
(24:13):
put it offshore or handed off to the next generation,
and it does nothing. So this is why the common
good aspect of this really matters. But we're in this
peculiar experiment at the moment where enough is being done
to make really big changes in people's lives, and that
helps dismantle this narrative that has basically taken root over
(24:37):
the past forty years. I mean it's not new. People
were always blamed for being poor, but it has been
particularly prevalent in the past sort of four decades. And
you know, I always think about the person whose pocket
that money is going into. What does that mean for
that person? What can they feed their families? You know?
(24:58):
And the cultural point you made is really important because
you know, can you bring your kid Doom Museum to
the theater? You know? Can can you have some money
just to let your child see what the possibilities of
the world are, rather than having to try to protect
them from this constant barrage of blaming and shamming that
goes on. I think it's a really unusual and interesting time. Well,
(25:21):
many of those programs are said to expire, um, so
it'll be really interesting to see what happens. This is
a good time to take a little break. We'll be
right back though, Okay, we're back. As a black person,
(25:43):
I always think about the role of the narratives around
welfare and race and how they play themselves out in
the United States here specifically, And I'm curious about your
perspective on race poverty in the United States versus the
UK specific pick la Do you feel it plays itself
out in the same way in the UK that it
(26:03):
does in the here in the United States, it's not.
It's not exactly the same, but it's the same in
the sense that there are higher rates of poverty among
people of color, and black people in particular tend to
be in the lowest economic strata of society. So that
is pretty similar in the sense that just the physical
(26:24):
reality of the numbers tells us that if you are black,
you are more likely to be living in poverty. So
that's the same. The narrative that reinforces, that that entrenches
that is similar on a broad level in the UK
and America, But it hasn't It has a different kind
of hue because of America's history UM specifically obviously with
(26:47):
slavery and the intergenerational denial of wealth to black people
in black communities, and that is fundamental now one of
the one of the real interesting moments in the history
of this UM And I won't go on about too much,
because otherwise it's just like going down a rabbit hole.
But the symbol of welfare in the nineteen eighties was
(27:13):
this idea of the welfare queen. Right. It was a
completely racialized trope, and it was deliberate and it absolutely
made it easier in subsequent years for cuts to welfare
that helped poor families. Now I'm sure your listeners will
(27:35):
be more than familiar with this, but essentially it, you know,
one woman becomes this mythic stereotype for people who live
high on the hog on welfare. I mean that in
itself was ridiculous because frankly, you don't live high in
the hog when you're scrapping around for like, you know,
scraps under the table. But it absolutely married, and there's
(27:58):
lots of great resources around. This married the idea of
welfare in America to race, and it fed into that
normalization of associating race with poverty. Again, you add on
to that the idea that poor people are lazy, and
(28:19):
suddenly a million different stereotypes come into play. It was
a very effective true and it wasn't just the you know,
people on the right who bought entered you know, the
Clinton administration did some serious damage, and especially to women
who needed help, women with children. It was, you know,
which is why also single mothers were demonized as well.
(28:43):
So and this this put down very very deep roots
and that becomes a symbol. But because the historic discrimination
around black people in black communities has meant that they
have been more poor than other groups in society, then
you don't I mean it's not even dog whistles. I
(29:03):
mean it's you know, the narrative physically is poor equals
black equals let's say, yeah, and then to not internalize
shame around that as a black person, right, like the
levels of shame that I've internalized around that as a
black person not being that stereotype. It's also not just
about you know, needing assistance in being lazy. It's also
(29:25):
being uneducated. It's also being unkempt. And so there's all
this respectability politics that I've deeply internalized. There's just so
many layers to the shame when it's intersectional like that,
and when it's race and class and the demonizing of
single mothers continues to this day, and it is, um
(29:46):
it's very personal for me, and I know I shouldn't
take things personally. But my mom was a single mother
and and I turned out pretty well. You know, I
turned out pretty well. And there's this narrative that, like,
particularly conservatives in this country, push that like single motherhood
is like ruining the country and we need to parent households,
and like, I'm sure that's lovely. I don't have that
(30:07):
experience personally, but like to demonize a woman who worked
so hard to take care of her kids, who like sacrifice,
and who did everything she could, and I know so
many other mothers who are doing the same thing, it's
just so utterly disrespectful. It's inhumane, and it pisces me off.
(30:27):
I'm sorry, that was just still little rand um. Well,
you know, it pisses me off to That's why I
started writing about this stuff. But the the internalizing of
shame in general is very, very destructive and disorient and
and it's very effective for the people who want to
keep people done. It's a very effective tool because we
(30:51):
start to blame ourselves for things that we're finding difficult. Uh.
I recall so many occasions where I was in situations
at school or when I got to university where I
did not understand the social codes. I did not understand
the way people spoke to each other or the signal
and that they did. When I went from my first
(31:12):
like proper job after college, I didn't know how to
even do an interview properly. You know it was it
holds you back in so many ways and you're ashamed
on so many levels that almost it's like keep closing
on yourself, right, And then if you're an ambitious person,
I admit I really wanted to be the best I
could be. Um, you don't want to be labeled and
(31:36):
you certainly don't want to be pitied. And one of
the things in the UK that used to be said
a lot if you complained or brought up issues around
poverty and the experience of poverty, well so you've got
a chip on your shoulder and I'm like, what what
are you even talking about? I've got to SI, this
is my reality. Don't do down my reality. For the
(31:57):
first part of my career, I didn't focus on these
issues because I still was carrying that um shame and
didn't want to be pigeonholed as as this is my
whole identity. But as I got older, and especially in
the wake of the financial crisis, and they're just so
much like trauma around poverty going on and poor people
(32:18):
being attacked again and again again. I felt like I
had to spick up. And what I found, and it's
fascinating to me, is that once you start talking about
these things, once you start challenging they perceived understanding of
these things, you find it there are people everywhere who
want to do the same. And when I was building
(32:39):
Project Twisted, I thought, oh, my god, is anybody going
to talk to me for this? Is anybody gonna do?
And I had authors, musicians, poets, kids who had made
their very first film in their public house, and complex
just said yes, please, can I be part of this?
Can I be part of this? It made me realize
that there was no real movement to run this stuff,
(33:01):
you know, you, there was no way to connect with people.
It was very reassuring to find so much work going on,
especially creatively, to challenge these stories that we're told. But
we needed to find ways to talk to each other.
So at the end of October, for instance, in the UK,
there's going to be a working Class Writers Festival for
the first time that is champion in the voices of
(33:23):
people from those backgrounds, and you know, as diverse as
it's possible to get people normally excluded from the culture,
and that really that really tells me that there is
a willingness to not just take this anymore. But here's
the thing. As much and you brought up the point
(33:44):
about things experiment that are helping people, as much as
that progress is happening, if we look at the history
of shaming poor people, the people who do the organizations
that they're not going to take this sitting down. They're
going to be on the attack, and especially in the
US with in the terms next year, I would guess
(34:05):
that in our current polarized society there is going to
be an awful lot more of this. And how that
plays out well, I think determine what happens in the
years afterwards. They know shaming people works and dividing people
also works. What I love about twist it and and
what you just said is that if we have more
media representations where people get to tell their stories, then
(34:28):
narrative can begin to change. And then what I know
about shame, according to Berne Brown's work anyway, is that
when we speak our shaming story um and are met
with empathy, the shame dissipates, and I was just thinking
about like that on an inter personal level, and that
like in the context of an auditorium, But then what
would that look like in the context of like poor
(34:50):
people getting to tell their stories in the context of
government and actually being greeted with empathy instead of your lazy,
your lazy, you're lazy. I think too, What's what I
find curious? And I'm not familiar with the UK, but
what I feel like is happening here in the United
States with the poverty narrative. What takes a more media
space are sort of cultural wars around like now mask
(35:14):
and vaccines, trans people in sports, and so what the
Conservative Party here does is like sort of weaponizes cultural
issues that are usually based in racism, transphobia, UM, xenophobia,
et cetera. And so they use that to divide working
class people and then they're like doing tax breaks there
(35:35):
for rich people. They're you know, doing austerity programs, are
cutting you know things, But then people aren't even paying
attention and don't even aware of that because we're in
this cultural war thing. So it's like this whole sort
of divide and conquer thing. And I often think like
what if all working class people of all races like
got together and said, okay, wait a minute, wait a minute,
(35:57):
like okay, like, how is it that the richest man
in the world are paying nothing like zero in taxes.
I'm paying more, but people who make less money than
me are paying more, like not just just a percentage
of their income, just in terms of the actual number
(36:18):
than these billionaires. Yeah, you know, this is so this
is so right because one of the things about being
poor it's it's exhausted. It is exhausted, either because you're
doing four jobs and trying to bring up some kids
and find some child car but also you're trying to
process so much. You're trying, you know, you're carrying so
much trauma from the poverty that you are less able
(36:43):
to find time, just time to my life and get together.
It's so infuriating. I know, it's just I know, when
that pro Publica report came out, I was so instantly.
But the billionaires have so much money, we can't even
compute it. Yeah, and you refuse to let you let
your workers unionize. That's the fundamental thing, isn't it. People
don't get their rights given to them by those with power.
(37:05):
They have to fight for them. And unions have been
like in the history of working people, unions have been
absolutely fundamental to not just the amount the money that
goes into people's pockets, but horse if their work environment
is you know, health insurance, like just you know, a
five day work week as opposed to like working at
(37:26):
them any of the week. From my union as an actor,
like so that we're the turnaround and the hours and
there's so many things that my union protects me from
as an actor that it's invaluable. And unions have been
decimated in this country. And another thing that Reagan did
and started, you know in the eighties, and that's where
the UK and America are absolutely singing from the Samim
(37:47):
shade because Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher did that in
unison attacked the unions. By the late seven days, unions
were still pretty strong. And then come the eighties absolutely decimated.
And with it where is and the narrative and the
narrative to when you watch when when you see the narrative,
unions are terrible teachers and unions, I mean they're just
(38:08):
so routinely demonized as like holding back progress like that.
It's been so successful. What I marvel at is how
brilliant Republicans are in this country at propaganda, getting getting
a message, saying it over it. It could be a
(38:29):
complete lion fabrication, but get everybody getting on the same page,
saying it over and over and over again, relentlessly until
it almost seems like it's the truth. So it's and
that the Democratic Party or liberals or the left do
not have a response that is commiserated to the attack
that is happening from the right. There is not a desire,
(38:50):
a willingness to exercise power in the same way for
the people. And it is it's it's it's shocking to me.
It really is shock king to me that Democrats have
are so feckless and how and and don't understand exactly
what they're up against. They really when Joe Biden wants
to be bipartisan with a party that thinks he's stole
(39:12):
an election, well it's the classic you bring a knife
to a gunfight, you know, But you're absolutely right, You're
so spot on, because that's exactly why the narrative does
what it does. It's simple, and it's repeated over and
over and over again until people believe that it is
the absolute truth. And there's and I think it's I
think it's because of corporate interests for Democrats that ultimately
(39:36):
they are serving the same corporate interest is Republicans. I
think that's part of it. I think the media is
part of it. But it's just it's like, it's I
furious and get a clue, Get a clue these people are.
They're not playing fair. It's like literally Texas abortion. I mean,
it's like it's happening right now. Actually, this is the moment.
(39:57):
And what it is so sad about them not link
to being willing to end that filibuster, is that this
is the moment. If we don't do Philipbus reform right now,
if we don't do election reform right now, if we
don't do Supreme Court Supreme Court we need to expand
the court, all of these things. If we don't change
the system fundamentally in a legislative way, we're screwed, probably
(40:20):
for a generation. Yeah, I agree, I completely agree. And
this missed opportunity will disillusion so many people too, because
the fight that went on last year to do what
people did to you know, get the Drump administration gone. Um,
you know, people will go, well, why did I fight
so hard when they didn't fight for me, And it's like,
(40:41):
it's so hard to have any kind of hope and
I don't at this moment, and I'm like, I want
to be a hopeful, positive person, but it it's like, yeah,
I hear you. But they're helping positive moves on that.
So like the Poor People's Campaign here in the US,
for instance, right, which is very much about building an
(41:02):
ally this of you know, profile in the verious different
aspects of this, like the impact on people of color,
but also going you know what, they turned me against
you because it suits them to turn me against you
when we have the same interests, we have the same dreams,
you know, we have the same goals for our families.
So I think there's a realization of that, there's a
(41:24):
realization that this division of people, this shaming of people,
only happens because it's effective. So the question becomes harder
you kinteract something that has been so effective, mainly because
it's so simple, but also because it is propagated by
a media that is either complicit in this message or
(41:47):
actively promoting this message. And there's a lot of thought
going into this right now, and the language that we
use is crucial. The way we frame discussions is crucial.
Who gets to say when and to who is crucial. Right.
So the empathy point you make is a really important
one because it's strengthens it gives us more power and
(42:11):
self respect um. But it takes it away from pity
because the thing that doesn't get discussed a lot around
the shaming is this. We we can see the overt
shaming and blaming and calling people Lisa, but historically the
people who have set out to help poor people are
often doing it well meaning, but from a position of
(42:32):
paternalism or pity, and that does not work anymore than
vilifying and blaming people works because guess what, people who
are poor are, just like everybody else, have agency and
they are the experts in their own situation, right absolutely,
(42:53):
So that's who we listen to. And there is more
of that happening and in politics and in eider society,
but I think it's still quite early days and it's
very fragile. It's a very fragile situation up and precisely
for the points that you make, because it cuts across
this binary, divided cultural space that we inhabit, and the
(43:16):
tools and techniques that have been used to keep people
done for a very long time are going to keep
being used for as long as they're effective. Absolutely, absolutely. Um.
It feels sort of insurmountable here in the States to
me sometimes because so much when we have a democratic presidency, Senate,
(43:38):
and House and then we still can't get things done
because of the filibuster, and that the filibuster becomes a
cover for Democrats to protect corporate interest, right so that
they have to keep the filibuster in place to use
as an excuse so that they can like you know,
please their corporate donors. And so then we don't get
an equality Act, we don't get like a four the
(43:58):
people like the democracies on the line, and then all
these programs that we could be doing a fifteen dollar
minimum way it really should be twenty five dollars right now,
fighting for fifteen dollars for like twelve years. Yeah, I
mean the federal minimum wage has been the same for
more than a decade, and you're kind of like, well,
when you look at the numbers, had it just followed
inflation from nine, it would be like forty in all,
(44:21):
which is what it should be, you know. But but
that's that's done to push and push and pushing this
idea of people being undeserved, and uh like, Fight for
Fifteen has done a brilliant job in recent years of
putting this out there, getting media attention. It's been a
very effective campaign in terms of people realizing it. But
(44:41):
you're absolutely right, we shouldn't be stuck on the fifteen dollars.
It should be much more. That is the lowest possible
threshold people cannot live on. That people can't live on that.
And I don't have the source, but there was a
recent report that noted that the current minimum wage, which
is like seven dollars an hour in most American cities,
(45:01):
you can't rent a one bit froom apartment for that. Okay,
it's that time again. A lot more is coming though,
we're back. You tell this story in your book about
(45:25):
the intersection of disability and poverty, which is which is
really important to talk about because you talk about in
the book how you know this is in the UK,
how so many people with disabilities had to like jump
through all these hoops to prove that they were disabled
and unable to work, and often died in the process.
(45:46):
Do you want to relay one of the stories from
your book about this. Yeah. So, basically after the financial crisis,
when the UK introduced absolutely awful austerity program, it affected
the groups that you expected to effect really badly, women,
people of color, etcetera, but also disabled people. So they
wanted to cut benefits for disabled people and they use
(46:09):
this poverty narrative to justify it. They put in place,
you know, work requirements. Look into America by the way,
That's what they were getting their ideas from, and they
kind of very long and complicated story short. Disabled people
were having to go to say for interviews, right. Um.
I met people who got to their interview and the
(46:30):
person who's deciding whether or not they're getting any financial
support says that if they could get on the bus,
that means they're fine. They can get a job right now.
If you've got a chronic illness and four days of
the week you can't move, but it just so happened
that you have managed to get out of bed that day.
I had whistleblowers come to me who were working in
(46:51):
employment centers deciding whether people get unemployment benefit, and they
were being incentivized to not give people what they're entire to,
including people who were dying of cancer, and thousands and
thousands of disabled people. Um. One story I came across
was a person who had a heart attack during the
(47:11):
interview when they were being told that they were fit
to work. I mean, there are so many stories. There
are so many stories of suicides as a result of this,
People who were being hunded have been denied their say,
housing support, they weren't getting their housing support, and people
losing three or four stone and then killing themselves because
(47:32):
they just couldn't cope anymore. I mean, it was a
hounding of disabled people and I have to sell around.
I'm so glad you brought this topic up because it's
many of the discussions around this, and around diversity in
general and social justice in general. Disabled people are often ignored,
and there are great movements like crypto vote, for instance,
(47:53):
that are pushing back against this. But you know, as
a society, what the hell are we doing? You know,
what are we doing when we're not providing the proper
safety net and support systems for people with disabilities. It's
a huge number of people. Most of us will get
a disability at some point if we're lucky enough to
(48:14):
live a long time. It's a society wide issue, and
in the UK, I mean it's a sham. It's an
absolute sham on that country that it did what it did.
And my book before this documents and a lot more detail,
um if you know, if people want to check that out,
But it's an active object, cruelty and certainly drummed home
(48:34):
to me the degree to which these things are political choices.
Absolutely absolutely, So there's the there's the policy piece and
and how that's functioning and movement organizing to begin to
do that. But on a personal level, I mean even
for me at this stage, and I've done so much
work on shame in my own personal life, but you know,
(48:57):
I have like in my head narratives around like, well,
I don't want to theme Tachi and new vote reach
and like I don't want to seem like I mean,
it's just it just kind of keeps going in terms
of like shame around poverty and them and ghetto and like.
But then like for individuals out there who are struggling
with with shame around being poor and working class, now
(49:18):
having had that in their path, what can we begin
to do? I think talking about it is is crucial, Um,
what what would what would you suggest? Yeah? I completely agree,
And you know the fact that we talked about how
poverty is bloody exhausting, right, So you know, not everyone
can be an activist. Absolutely, not everyone can be a spokesperson.
(49:39):
Not everyone wants to be a spokesperson. And that is
absolutely okay because there are people who will do those things.
But in our everyday lives and our everyday existences, it's
like any of the other great social injustices of our time.
You know, in our interactions with people, do we call
them out when they denigrate people, when they make a
(50:00):
dismissive comment or use a demeaning kind of stereotype to
talk about people on poverty, Like, we all need to
call them out. We need to be conscious that all
of us have a responsibility to do that. Um, those
of us that can't tell our stories will and should
tell our stories. And this one is very interesting to me,
(50:25):
and I'd be really interested to hear if it's something
that you come across a lot as well. So when
I'm talking about these issues from a personal experience, and
people will say things like, well, look at your your
proof that if you put yourself up by your bootstraps.
You know you can do whatever you you got out, well,
why can't everybody else get out? All right? And that
(50:45):
only makes me more determined to tell my story because
I know for a fact that no matter how hard
I worked or what natural talents I was given, I
relied on the social and welfare structures around me to
be a springboard. I had access to free health care
as a child. I had free education, free education university.
(51:07):
The government paid me to go to university, So yeah,
I had to take advantage of it. I had to
do the work. But don't tell me and people like
me that, because we have been seen to succeed by
society's norms, that the other people who don't fit that
particular picture must be lazy. And I think unless we
(51:27):
talk about that, unless we confront those misunderstandings, those perceptions
in our everyday lives, then people will only believe the
stories that they're told. And let's face facts of them.
Because if you're from a poor background, the chances are
almost everyone you know is from the same background. If
you're from a wealthy background, when do you ever encounter
(51:48):
people from poor backgrounds, unless it's say, you're cleaner or
you're cook or something, and you probably don't talk to
them anyway. So those of us that can shoot talk
about it and do it publicly, and elephant voices that
are marginalized. You know, I think about privilege, right, I
think about that every black trans person doesn't have the
(52:08):
same privileges that I had in the privilege even though
we were poor. My mother was a teacher and corrected
my grammar all the time, and the kids may offended
means that I talked proper. But then I also begged
my mother to let me audition for the Alabama School
to Find Arts, which was in Birmingham, Alabama, four hours
north of Mobile, and so I was in the dorms there,
and not only was that a wonderful arts education, I
(52:29):
was surrounded by kids from very privileged backgrounds and I
got to see it's different level of possibility that I
wouldn't have seen if I weren't in that school. And
then I also learned how to make white people comfortable.
And that one of the crucial things about surviving, I
think as a black person in America is learning how
(52:49):
to make white people comfortable. And I don't it sounds funny,
but but but I don't think. But I don't think
we should have to do that. I don't think re
black person gets the skills to know how to do
that or even wants to do that. And I'm not
suggesting they should, but like in my space of survival,
I just sort of learned how to do that and
(53:11):
I look a certain way. And then even with all
of that privilege, I you know, I had to loan
debt and credit card debt and I didn't become famous
till I was forty one years old. So so even
with all of the you know, I was poor. So
I mean, poverty is really not an advantage and we
you know, but I think, I mean, I lived most
of my adult life like working in restaurants for tips
(53:34):
and barely surviving. And and I'm actually really grateful for
that because I think if I had become famous in
my twenties, I wouldn't have an understanding of like how
poor people are continually demonized, how hard it is to
just survive in the world, and I wouldn't have a
critical awareness of that. And I know that this system
(53:55):
has always been set up to to elevate one or
two people, like we look throughout history, particularly as a
black person. I'm aware of this that, like, you know,
there's been a few elevated here and there throughout the
history of America, and that's sort of how the system
functions as well. Let's like elevate a few and say
oh they can do it, then anybody can do it. Yeah,
And that's how these narratives functioned because you know, they say, oh,
(54:18):
there's that person, you know, as if that person is
representative of an entire community or should carry the identity
of an entire community on their shoulders. But it allows
people to go, well, you know, people get by some people.
You know Obama as president, you know, you get that
kind of nonsense. But you know, each and every one
of us has the circumstances around us that we have
(54:40):
various degrees of privilege, various degrees of alienation and isolation
and all of that. But fundamentally, if we have systems
in place they don't deliberately and actively keep people done,
then they're just as more opportunity. And that matters. It
matters on so many offals, and not least so that
(55:01):
you don't walk around your whole life feeling ashamed of
where you came from. Yeah, before I asked my last
question that I asked all my guests, is there something
you want to leave the people with as we go
go forward into this continued to struggle for our own
sort of lifting our own shame and then lifting the
cultural shame around poverty. Yeah, don't be part of the problem.
(55:25):
You know, just don't be part of the problem. Um.
It's understandable that as a culture we've absorbed all these
messages and it's convenient to just go along with whatever
the status cool with, but be question and be critical
if you're not. If you're the sort of person that's
lived a life where you haven't had to struggle or
you haven't had to fight, just keep a roof over
(55:46):
your head. Just ask yourself once in a while if
you really did it all yourself? Or was it that
or was it that grid school and all the other
privileges that you had, And just don't accept the messages
that you're told at face failure. Yeah, I love that
we always have to be critical. So I end um
(56:08):
every podcast with the question, um, what else is true?
And this question comes from my somatic therapy based in
the community resiliency model, and the idea is both and
if there's something challenging us in our lives or even
in our body, and we sort of become what we
focus on. We can focus on the difficulty, or we
can focus on the thing that is neutral and positive
(56:29):
and that thing that helps us get through. So for
you today, Mary O'Hara, for you, what else it's true?
Oh wow? Um? I think it's true that human rights
and human dignity are necessary for all of us to
live the best life that we can live. And it's
(56:50):
true that as individuals we can make a difference, but
together we can make a hell of a bigger difference
than on our own. Mm hmmm. Amen. Amen. And it's like,
you know, it keeps coming up on the podcast. A
lot of these episodes have been about like mental health
and well being and connection. Connect Him is coming back
(57:14):
to love and connection for me over and over and
over again. And so what we can do together makes
me think about like how do we then connect to
each other? And we connect through telling the truth of
our stories, um, with the things that we have in
common and our shared humanity. And as we can begin
to do that, then maybe maybe there's hope that we're
(57:37):
not alone. No, we're not, Thank you so much. Mary
O'Hara is the author of the shame Game, Overcoming the
Toxic Poverty Narrative, and also your previous book, Austerity Bites.
Are you on social media? Can folks on follow you
on on anyway? Yeah? Sure, I'm I'm on Twitter, easy
to find Mary O'Hara one and on Instagram. Mary Uhara writer,
(58:01):
so fairly simple, love it, Thank you so much. I'm
so grateful for you and your work. Project Twisted is awesome.
There's actually a YouTube channel for a project Twisted, and
there's just some great um content there from young people
that I love and I love hearing people's lived experiences
in their story, so I encourage people to go and
check that out as well. Thank you and thank you
(58:23):
for having me. It was an absolute delight, Mary O'Hara.
The biggest takeaway from me after that conversation is an invitation,
I think to myself, an invitation to everyone out there
(58:44):
who's listening to critically interrogate the assumptions that we've made
about poverty in general, about people who are poor, and
how we've internalized those messages in relationship to ourselves. If
we are not struggling with poverty or never have. What
(59:06):
is our relationship to our own wealth and privilege and
how does that relate to narratives that we've heard and
or internalized around people who might be struggling. And I
think we have to change the story first. When we're
talking about shame, we internalize shame, We shame ourselves, and
(59:29):
then we can shame other people. And we live in
a culture that shames other people and blames people for
situations that it might not be their fault. So I
invite you um think about changing the narratives that you
have in your head, in your social circles, and maybe
you know more globally around poverty, think about your own
(59:53):
personal staken in your own personal part in it, and
then what are the systems in place? Thank you so
much for listening to the Laverne Cox Show. Join me
next week for my second conversation with my incredible therapist
Jennifer Byrne Flyer to go even deeper into the tools
(01:00:17):
of the community resiliency model. So much of this step
is connected, It's all connected. Please rate, review, subscribe and
share with everyone you know. You can find me on
Instagram and Twitter at Laverne Cox and on Facebook at
Laverne Cox for Real. Until next time, Stay in the loud.
(01:00:42):
The Laverne Cox Show is a production of Shonda land
Audio in partnership with I Heart Radio. For more podcasts
from Shonda land Audio, visit the I Heart Radio app,
Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Host
Laverne Cox
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