The cycle of poverty

I read these two stories back-to-back in the New York Times on Sunday. Together, they highlight how strongly the game is rigged against the "little people": the less you have to start with, the more every move costs you.

1) Held Captive by Flawed Credit Reports

[I]naccuracies often show up in consumers’ credit reports, and these errors have real consequences, like increasing borrowing costs or barring people from financing a home or renting an apartment. And once an error is found, getting it fixed can take months of exasperating work.

Last year, the Federal Trade Commission found that 5 percent of consumers — or an estimated 10 million people — had an error on one of their credit reports that could have resulted in higher borrowing costs.

The F.T.C., which oversees the industry along with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, has been busy bringing cases in this arena. Since 2000, it has filed 18 enforcement actions against reporting bureaus; 13 were district court actions that generated $25.7 million in penalties.

Consumers have also won in the courts, on occasion. Last year, an Oregon consumer was awarded $18.4 million in punitive damages by a jury after she sued Equifax for inserting errors into her credit report. But the fines, settlements and judgments paid by the larger companies are not even close to a rounding error. Experian generated $4.8 billion in revenue for the year ended March 2014, and its after-tax profit of $747 million in the period was more than twice its 2013 figure.

Not discussed in this article is the fact that when you're poor, you consequently have fewer resources to devote to getting a mistake on your credit report fixed, if and when you even become aware of it. Also not discussed: the widespread practice of requiring a credit check as part of the hiring process, which further disadvantages already-marginalized groups.

And the cycle continues.

2) A Job Seeker's Desperate Choice

On the morning of March 20, Shanesha Taylor had a job interview. It was for a good job, one that could support her three children, unlike the many positions she’d applied for that paid only $10 an hour. The interview, at an insurance agency in Scottsdale, Ariz., went well. “Walking out of the office, you know that little skip thing people do?” she said, clicking her heels together in a corny expression of glee. “I wanted to do that.”

But as she left the building and walked through the parking lot, she saw police officers surrounding her car, its doors flung open and a crime-scene van parked nearby.

Taylor, who had no permanent housing at the time of the interview, was arrested and charged with two counts of felony child abuse for leaving her young sons in her car while she went to the job interview. She spent ten days in jail, and her three children were removed from her custody. Why were the boys in the car? Because she had nowhere else to leave them.

The night before the interview, she put the children to bed at her parents’ house and went to a Walmart parking lot, where she spent hours scrounging up recyclable cans and asking passers-by for gas money, to make sure she had enough for the 35-mile drive to the interview. Her parents would be at work the next day, so she had arranged to leave the boys at a babysitter’s house, she said. But when she arrived, she said, no one answered the door.

“I felt like this was my opportunity to basically improve life for all of us, and the one key part of it is now not available, so what do I do now?” Ms. Taylor said. “That was my only thought: ‘What do I do now? What do I do now?’ That was kind of what started the whole chain of events that day.”

I strongly encourage you to read the whole article and hear Shanesha Taylor's story in her own words.

On loneliness

Girls get lonely, too.

That may seem like an obvious statement, but in the wake of yet another angry, socially frustrated young man going on a violent rampage, it seems in danger of being forgotten. There's been a lot of discussion of men, and how men view women, and how women's lives are affected by how men view them. And a lot of that discussion has been good, and needed. But one thing that's left out in all this discussion of men feeling socially isolated and what are appropriate and inappropriate ways of dealing with that is that simple statement: girls get lonely, too.

None of these feelings we're talking about are the exclusive preserve of men. Loneliness, social isolation, awkwardness, sexual and romantic frustration, pain and anger about any of the above. I know this because I'm a woman and I've felt and do feel all of them. And ironically, the more we talk about lonely young men without any mention of lonely young women, the more it makes me feel invisible, exacerbating the feelings of loneliness, isolation, and frustration. Which I guess is why I'm writing this, because otherwise I might just scream.


What happens when women do talk about their loneliness? From what I've seen, there are two basic scenarios:

1) If you're an "unattractive" woman (defined by an arbitrary, shifting standard), you shouldn't expect to receive attention or affection, and any expression of want to that effect will be scoffed at. You should feel grateful for any attention you receive, be it wanted or unwanted. Your feelings will be dismissed.

2) If you're an "attractive" woman (see above), it's inconceivable that you could feel socially isolated, awkward, lonely, lacking attention and affection. Any expression of want to that effect will be met with disbelief. You should be resigned to any unwanted attention you receive, because what did you expect, being an attractive woman in the world? Your feelings will be dismissed.

Exhibit A: I have learned to hate the response I get when I tell someone that  no, I'm not seeing anyone--or, until well into my twenties, that I'd never had a boyfriend (or girlfriend, for that matter, but no one ever asks that). People almost universally react with surprise, even denial. "Why not?" they say. Or sometimes: "But you're so pretty!"

These are real things people have said to me. I know they mean well; they mean it as a compliment. But the effect of all that disbelief is to make me feel like I can't talk about my own life, not without some explanation that I don't have. Oh, I took a voluntary vow of celibacy. I slept in late on the day they were handing out boyfriends. I'm actually an alien.


The truth is, no one has asked "Why not?" more than me, so believe me, I'd love to have an answer.

I did not date in high school. No one ever asked me out. No one asked me to the dance. I did not kiss anyone. I had crushes, strong and plentiful. I had fantasies about the cutest, most popular boy(s) in the whole school passing by everyone else, walking up to me and asking me out. Suddenly everyone would realize how special and wonderful and desirable I was.

I would've died rather than admit those fantasies, because on the outside, I rejected everything "popular". I went through various phases, ranging from androgynous, baggy clothing to goth and punk aspirations. I was friends with skater boys, and I resented when they dated or pursued preppy girls. They rejected preppy aesthetics and values for themselves, but they still wanted to date the cheerleaders? I raged inwardly at the unfairness of it.

(No, things did not magically transform once I got to college. Just FYI.)

As a young woman, of course, you learn that your role is to be passive, that men are supposed to approach you. No, gender roles aren't as strict today as they were fifty years ago. But women who ask men out, or to dance, or to marry them, are still an oddity. Even if you overcome this conditioning (which takes a lot of courage), why would asking someone out be any easier for women then for men? It isn't. The fear of rejection looms just as large, compounded by the fear of having put yourself out there as a woman--overstepping your gender role, revealing that you have wants--and still being rejected.

Women, too, want things--and people--that they feel they cannot get. Women, too, can look around and see seemingly everyone else enjoying something that eludes them, and think, Why me? For myself, I did not conclude that something was wrong with men, as a whole, because they didn't pay attention to me; I concluded there must be something wrong with me. I directed my pain and criticism inward. I suspect the same is true for many women.

The point is, most people, if not all, want to form meaningful relationships with others. They want love, sex, affection. And I'll wager it's not easy for anyone. It may be harder for some than for others. But you can't tell just by looking at someone. Someone may appear attractive, socially well adjusted--but you don't know their inner life. And to deny someone's inner life, to ignore its existence, is to deny their very humanity.

So to every lonely girl and woman out there, I just want to say: I see you.