A Chronic Problem

“Ah, darn. Mister, you got a dowar?”

In my mind, I say no. No change. Get away. I veer far afield of the street person. Another uncomfortable confrontation averted on my way to work.

When was the last time you helped someone, besides yourself, your girlfriend, or the dog? You talk a big game with your lofty ideals, but telethons, street alms, blood drives, and bake sales go by without a penny. When was the last time you donated anything to anyone, and the Salvation Army doesn’t count – that’s just an alternative garbage dump for your out-of-style clothes.

When was the last time you sacrificed anything, your time or your precious money? Or does charity not count anymore in this effed up world?

Help yourself before you can help others, right? But at what point do you stop helping yourself to the trough? When you’re Bill Gates? When you’re old and gray, worried about the afterlife?

“Mister, you got a dowar?”

What about that advice that you’re doing more harm than good by giving the beggar a dollar, that she’ll only spend it on booze or crank? The junkie.

Isn’t it: Give a man a fish and you will feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you will feed him for a lifetime? But who actually has time to teach fishing? What’s more, would she even want the lesson?

And how do you know that she’s a junkie? Maybe she doesn’t go hard on the drugs, but is just hard on luck.

“Master, you got a dowar?”

How closely related those two words truly are—master and mister—with mister the new water-downed version. And she’s black, like many of the urban chronic poor. Ee-gads, has it come to this? An evolving version of white man’s burden. Wait, my ancestors weren’t even close to plantation owners. They came to this country far after Plymouth Rock. They escaped persecution, pestilence, and penury of their own to make a better life here in the States. Alhough it took a couple of generations, we’ve made it. Now our problems are more of overeating than under eating. If we can make it, so can she.

But how do we do it? How do we just walk by the huddled masses in our streets and think that tough love is the best approach, that pulling the plug on welfare payments after two years will force the chronic poor to find jobs that they are unqualified for or too sick to do. How do we justify throwing tens of millions of dollars toward advertisements for presidential elections, toward presidential libraries, or even, bombs to be used in far off countries when we can’t even provide the basic necessities of life for our citizens? How is this right?

Thomas Jefferson once said in regard to slavery: I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just. How often fitting I find that bit of wisdom.

Head down engrossed in a Washington Post article on the new attorney general, I flee to my 15th floor refuge. Back to work.

“Mister, do you got a dowar?”

--Yes, but is it nearly enough?