Poverty and Helplessness

A recent article by hulk asserts that “The biggest problem in the black community today is that they are waiting for help. They expect it to come from outside.” I have a slightly different take on the issue — that poverty, which tends to afflict more racial and ethnic minorities, creates a cycle of learned helplessness.

Learned helplessness is a theory in psychology that states when an organism is exposed to repeated aversive conditions from which it cannot escape, the organism eventually stops trying to escape. To apply it to this problem, if a person learns though repeated experience that he cannot escape poverty, that whatever job he can get will pay minimum wage, and that he can’t survive on that, he may stop trying to escape poverty and begin living hand to hand, without saving money, because he has come to believe that his actions have no effect on his world and that everything around him is out of his control.

A friend of mine worked in a free reproductive health clinic that served mostly patients without insurance or other access to healthcare. One of her patients was a 13-year-old girl, already sexually active. My friend explained the need for the patient to protect herself against disease and unwanted pregnancy, explained the birth control options, and then asked which of the options the girl would like to choose. The girl said, whatever happens to me is going to happen — I have no control over it. At 13, she had already decided that she had no control over her life, even over what happened directly to her body.

So if learned helplessness is happening in poverty-stricken areas of the US, what can be done? Welfare won’t help, because it’s a benefit that happens to someone, not a benefit that someone causes to happen. Handouts, however well-intentioned, won’t help either. What needs to happen is a sense of ownership and a sense of control being given back to people, starting at an early age — people need to learn that what they do has an effect on their world and that they can make changes, for better or for worse, in their lives.

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