White Liberal Bleeding Heart Do-Gooders (WLBHDG's)

Last weekend, Overlook Farm hosted a Heifer University, which is a weekend retreat for Heifer community volunteers. I of course am I Heifer volunteer, but I get paid and live on a learning center, and there are only twenty of me in New England. There are a good deal more community volunteers who contribute their spare time, without monetary compensation, to Heifer's mission. So, Heifer University was a chance for all the Northeastern volunteers to get together and talk shop, share stories, plan for next year. I had the weekend off, so I sat in. Everything was great and very informative. This blog entry, however, is not about Heifer U. It's about white liberal bleeding heart do-gooders.

So, there was this one particular woman at Heifer U that drove me insane. She was the quintessential WLBHDG (see title). With this label, I mean that her contributions to Heifer were motivated solely by guilt and a savior mentality. She talked constantly about how guilty she felt that there were hungry African babies, and she lived so comfortably. Whenever someone mentioned a man who couldn't afford to send his kids to school, she sighed deeply, her sweet heart brimming with pity. How many people have you met like this, honestly? They feel so guilty for living their rich American lives, while there are poor children in Honduras. They pity the poor, who have to do such unspeakable things as live on dirt floors and own only a few articles of clothing. Pity and guilt. What great emotions to operate by.

All I have to say is, living on a dirt floor is not the end of the world, and owning only two sets of pants is not the ultimate form of suffering. It's just a different standard of living. Just because you grew up with four SUV's, and two televisions, and bathrooms and shopping malls, it does not mean that everyone in the world who lives on less is miserable and poor. Guess what? Rural people living in mud brick huts in Thailand can be happy. If they have food, and clean water, access to medicine and education, they can be happy. Are rich people always happy? What makes you happy? Two t-v's and shopping malls? Or is it family and relationships?

I suppose what really gets to me about WLBHDG's is how they label and use "poor people". In their eyes, poor people appear to be this class of person that is perpetually suffering, miserable, weak, and desperately in need of help and sympathy from the rich. So, they can get this high from saving "the poor", meanwhile stripping all impoverished people of their dignity and self-respect. People like this tend to do more harm than good. What classifies a "poor person"? Who are "the poor"? What makes them inherently different from every other human being on earth? Look at "the poor" as people, with a variety of needs and interests and personalities just like everyone else. I don't want pity. I don't want someone whose sacred mission is to save me, because I'm so helpless and downtrodden. Why should the poor be different? I do want someone who cares about me as an individual, who is receptive to my needs, to what I have to say. It seems to me that WLBHDG's only hear what they want to hear, and see what they want to see, when they consider poverty, and "the poor" become some sort of midlife crisis that can give meaning to their lives. "Visualizing hungry people as so oppressed as to be ignorant and immobilized makes us think our responsibility is to go in and set things straight," (12 Myths of World Hunger). My advice is, don't visualize the hungry, poor people at all. Help where help is needed. Do your part. You can help a community in Honduras get on their feet, and provide for themselves, without labeling them "the poor". Who died and made you ruler of the poor? Ok. Rant over.