Words Matter
I am from Baltimore, birthplace of the U.S. National Anthem.
‘The Wire’ Baltimore? Yes, that Baltimore.
Freddie Gray Uprising Baltimore? Yes, that Baltimore.
Frederick Douglass’ Baltimore? Michael Phelps Baltimore? Jada Pinkett-Smith Baltimore?
Yep. Yep. Yep.
Baltimore is one of the most segregated cities in this country and it was designed to be this way.
Baltimore can serve as a case study on displacement, disinvestment, resistance and resilience.
Neither of my parents have college degrees, but they’ve always been hard workers. We didn’t have a lot, but we always had enough.
As the oldest of four children, with parents always working, I was grocery shopping for myself and my younger siblings at the age of 8. Armed with $10 that my mom had given me, I would make the four block trek to the store and would carefully select the foods needed to feed myself and my siblings.
I learned how to stretch $10. I’d often get a loaf of bread, a gallon of milk, a box of cereal, lunch meat, eggs, and some snacks. (Note: This was during the 80s.)
I knew how to check for chipped eggs, spoiled meat, and over-priced items.
I was able to figure out the total cost of the food in my basket, calculate the tax, and knew how much change the cashier was supposed to give me before I reached the register.
I would bring the food home and prepare our meals. Rinse and repeat.
I didn’t know that we were considered “low-income” until I went to college. As a freshman, I discovered that the majority of my classmates never went grocery shopping on their own as kids. They couldn’t cook. They didn’t know how much change to expect without using a calculator. They, however, spent summers abroad, participated in surf camps, and had an abundance of tutors. They came from wealth.
Yet, it was I who was told by a professor that in order to do well in life, I needed to be “financially literate.” Huh? As if being financially literate would have prevented me from having to take out student loans and work three jobs just to be there. He felt the need to place the onus of my “poor” predicament on me, and not the centuries of racist policies, practices, and systems put in place to keep Black people in place.
He didn’t mention that regardless of how much money my parents made, how many college degrees that I have, or whether or not I knew the difference between a Roth IRA and a traditional IRA, it would not help to close the racial wealth gap. Income cannot do that. Education cannot do that. It will require a redistribution of wealth to do that.
I told him that I was quite literate in finances. And, like him, I came from wealth too. It’s just that ours was stolen. This reality doesn’t make me less worthy of being spoken to or about in a dignified manner. So, can we leave “low-income,” “financial literacy,” and other non-empowering terms in the summer of 2020? They’re disparaging. Trust me.
COVID 19, Structural Racism and Community Investment
The Sneaky Language Today’s Politicians Use to Get Away with Racism and Sexism
