The Upper-Class Bias of the 2016 Election Issues | C. Nicole Mason | Big Think

The issue I see in the election right now is that we’re not having the conversations that matter to people and families across the country. We have moved so far away from the bread and butter issues that families want to talk about. So we haven’t heard a lot about poverty.

We haven’t heard a lot in this election about bringing and making sure that we have a strong social safety net not only for low income families but for middle class families who are still fragile or straddling between being financially secure and close to the edge in terms of falling into poverty. And we’re just not having those conversations.

We’re talking about things that matter, but when we talk about building a society where all people have a fair shot, we’re not talking about the issues that will make the difference for them. We don’t talk a lot about white poverty and I think we should because I think if we talked a lot more about the way poverty impacts different groups, I think we would not see it as an issue that’s out there and doesn’t impact me or it’s a black issue or a Latino issue.

We would see it as an issue of lack and people not having the resources that they need to be able to live a quality and a productive life. What we know though is that black and Latino people are more likely to live in poverty, and white people are also poor. But we’re not, again, we’re not talking about those conversations.

And we’re not even writing about those conversations, so when we’re not talking about rural communities and rural whites. Those people are invisible in media and culture when we talk about poverty. And so until we can really wrap our minds around the magnitude of who’s living in poverty and what poverty – the face of poverty and what it really looks like, we’re not really going to be able to make policies that will reach the people who are really impacted or affected by it.

One of the things I think is unique about American poverty is the gap between the wealthiest and the poorest in our society, and that gap continues to widen. And there are no efforts to close the gap, to make sure that the people at the bottom of the economic ladder have the resources and they need to just have a basic standard of living. There are no efforts.

So, for example, you can work 40 hours a week, get up every day, go to work and still need other resources and supports to be able to make ends meet. Whether that’s housing, whether that’s food stamps, whether that’s medical insurance. And that shouldn’t be the case here.

I think that we really need to pay attention to what’s happening to the most vulnerable and the fragile middle class who are sometimes a paycheck away from living in poverty or being in poverty themselves. What frightens me is that there’s not enough moral responsibility for others in our society.

And so we can just turn our back. We can say hey, that’s not me. That doesn’t impact me or that’s happening to them and not to me and not seeing the connection between us all. If I support programs that make sure that the most vulnerable in our society have what they need to have a basic standard of living, that somehow takes away from me.

If we can get away from that idea and that sort of thinking, then I think we’ll be able to get to a place where we can say this is not an us/them problem. It’s a problem that we all need to be working together to solve.