The Pain of Reading Payne

Blog About "A Framework for Understanding Poverty" by Dr. Ruby K. Payne

Honestly, reading some parts of Dr. Ruby K. Payne's pseudo-anthropological expose "A Framework for Understanding Poverty" makes me want to throw up. Despite her key point #5 on page 3 that cautions readers, "This work is based on patterns. All patterns have exceptions," Payne goes on to lay out a litany of practices, ideologies, and circumstances that purportedly outright distinguish people along class lines in the U.S. Regrettably, her book ends up amounting to little more than gross oversimplifications, myriad non-poverty specific conventions, and blanket statements reminiscent of Fox News. Fox News has a habit of saying off the wall statements but the network's anchors often slyly pose these far-right statements as questions by adding a questions mark (i.e. "Barack Obama controlled by Islamic fundamentalist views due to this early education at a Madrasah?" Payne's book reminded me of this time and time again as she used a cover of personal experience, ivory tower legitimacy (she has a Ph.D), and philanthropic goodwill to spew 183 pages of garbage.

My problems with this book start at the very beginning--on the cover actually. "A Framework for Understanding Poverty" is billed as a "must-read for educators, employers, policymakers, and service providers." That's millions of people. All of these people are supposed to read this book to come to an understanding about poverty? The very thought of being able to get an understanding of poverty and its related conditions, "rules," and the like from reading a book is misguided. It speaks to the system of education we operate under that places reading above experience in educating human beings. I don't respect it. The scenarios throughout Chapter 1 are definitely situations that may arise from poverty but they're also situations that could just arise out of the blue or from people with a different class background. For instance, in the case with Juan and Ramon those individuals could very well be named Chet and Biff, be upper-class, and Biff could be on the run from police for cocaine distribution related to a high-society party with young adults at his parents' summer house. The politics of who and what are criminalized and for whose benefit are too deep to get into now but can we really say the Juan and Ramon situation is more common than the Chet and Biff one simply because Ramon ends up on the 10 o'clock news and Biff gets a two-year probation/1000 hours of community service/a suspended sentence by his family lawyer working out a deal with the district attorney? I think not.

Another part of the book that angered me was on page 57 where Payne generalizes about "the key roles in these families." Firstly, I don't know of any family where a fighter/lover, caretaker/rescuer, worker, storyteller, and "keeper of the soul" all exist (not to mention the fact that "keeper of the soul" is a laughable, Magic the Gathering-esque term). Payne's scenario of "ever-changing allegiances" through her example on that page again makes think of the various ways in which similar allegiances sway in middle-class or upper-class families at times. I know people whose allegiance would sway between one parent and another dependent on who allowed them to have a nicer car for their 18th birthday. Upper-class. Other grandparents I know might end up favoring one offspring over another depending on which supported grandson's decision to attend the college of his father and grandfather rather than joint the military. Middle-class. This entire section is further indication of Payne's falsified image as "the leading U.S. expert on the mindsets of poverty, middle class, and wealth," as she fails to see the possible congruencies between classes. Later, on page 87, Payne gives a highly stereotypical and borderline offensive IQ test that is supposed to judge people's understanding of things they should know if they live in poverty (I guess). Questions include, "What does dissed mean?," "How are a pawnshop and a convenience store alike? How are they different?," and my personal favorite, "What is a roach?" Upon reading this I almost wanted to scream "DOES THIS LADY REALLY THINK THAT ONLY PEOPLE IN POVERTY KNOW THIS STUFF?!?!?" Though instead I just sighed and flipped the pages onto the next bout of ridiculousness.

In sum, "A Framework for Understanding Poverty" will only knock your socks off as eye-opening if you have had no first-hand experience with poverty as an individual, no experience living in a neighborhood with significant poverty, or no brain to evaluate the circumstances of individuals in poverty from a people's, non-elitist perspective. It's like people who watch The Wire and think that's normal inner-city America. Noooo! That's BALTIMORE. Heroin capital of the United States. The biggest city between two other infamously large drug markets--Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. The home of one of the busiest shipping yards in the nation. Various reasons contribute to why Baltimore is the way it is and so the The Wire shows not just any inner-city America but one of the rawest. Still, people from outside the inner-city who would piss on themselves on a West Baltimore street after 7 p.m. absorb it as the realest thing ever. A peek into a world they've heard about and maybe have even come near to, but from which they cower home every night on the other side of the tracks, city, or county.  That's what Dr. Ruby K. Payne's book is and that's one of the biggest problems with middle or upper-middle class social awareness--people feel that they can get it from just reading a book.