The Middle Class Hoax

Growing up in a middle-sized Texas town, as the son of an architect and a stay at home mom, I always considered myself middle class. We didn't eat out much, didn’t own a Mercedes or a Lexus, went camping for our vacations, and cut our own grass. Why would I have ever considered myself rich? In my mind, the rich were those with guitar shaped swimming pools, a chauffer to take them to and from their tennis lessons, and Maui Jim sunglasses. I was certainly not that, and I wasn’t begging on the streets, so I must have been middle class. That's what society told me, and it seemed reasonable to me. And had I never left the United States, I probably would never have changed my mind. But after living the last several years in rural Central America, my concept of the middle class has changed. My idea of what is normal has shifted.

Here in Nicarauga, I wake up every morning at 4:30, brush my teeth, and light up the firewood in order to cook my breakfast of rice and beans. After dressing and downing a cup of coffee, I wedge my machete between the bars on the frame of my bicycle, and pedal to a nearby farm where I work. Later in the afternoons, after the workday is over, I sit around and talk with my neighbors, go out to look for firewood, or wash my clothes on a concrete washboard and hope that the sun is out so that they will dry. I work six days a week, as does pretty much everyone here, and relax on Sundays. If my next door neighbor had a good week selling firewood in the market, we might splurge and go in together for a three liter coke to share between the five or six of us that live nearby. If it's payday and I'm feeling generous, I might blow 100 Cordobas (a little less than $4) on several tamales to share. But only if I'm feeling generous, because that's more than I make for a days worth of work. On Sundays, if I'm feeling restless, I might go to town with a friend to make my normal purchases of rice, beans, oil, tomatoes, onions, coffee, and sugar. It's nice to get out of the pueblo every once in a while. But if funds are tight, and he can't afford the 8 cordobas (30 cent) bus fare into town, I go by myself.  

Bicylces are a thing here in the countryside. In the village I live in, there are only a couple cars, and they are 80s or 90s model beat-to-hell pickups that are normally, more or less, mostly running. A few more people have motorcyles. They are the people with a little steadier or higher paying jobs. Normally school teachers, construction guys, or security guards. That leaves the rest of us to get around on bicycles and public transportation. And since no one sits around talking about the gnarly public bus they rode into town today, that leaves the focus on the bicycles. Instead of sitting around and talking about the new aluminum rims they put on their Honda, or the bumpin'  sound system they put in their Jeep Wrangler, a lot of my friends sit around and talk about the new additions to their bike. "Hey man, I just got this sweet aluminum handle bar post. It cost me 120 cordobas (4 dollars) but it looks great." "Dude, have you seen the new rims Luis just put on his bike? He must have been working a lot lately and have some extra cash." Personally, I'm pretty proud of my own bike. I took everything off, sanded down the frame, and painted it white (to match my skintone, obviously). I have blue aluminum handle bars and a blue aluminum seat post, and some awesome Shimano decals stuck on the frame. I obviously don't have any Shimano parts, cause those cost five times as much, but the decals looks great. Because of the white paint, we named it La Parmalat, after a Nicaraguan brand of milk. It's not the nicest bike in town, but it definitely gets me to work and back everyday. But man, I would love to put some aluminum rims on that baby.

Describing the ins and outs of daily life in that way almost makes it seem funny. Because I grew up in the "middle class," cooking my breakfast over a wood burning fire now seems like I'm back on a Boy Scouts campout. However, my bicycle and my rice and beans are not just part of a cute social experiment. They're not just part of a funny story about a gringo in rural Central America. This is how the majority of the world lives. Turns outs there's nothing in-the-middle about middle class America. On a global scale, the middle class American is one of the privileged few. Part of the high society. One of the wealthy.

A quick google of “world poverty” leads to a lot of graphs, figures, and articles. And none of them consider $50,000 a year as somewhere in the middle. A majority of the people around me here in Nicaragua make between $1,000 to $2,000 a year. Some less, some more. 3 billion people worldwide live on $2.50 a day or less. 80% of the world population lives on $10 a day or less, and in the vast majority of the world, the income differential between the rich and poor is widening. One fourth of the world lives without electricity. On gameday, Cowboys stadium consumes more electricity than the entire country of Liberia has the capacity to produce. In the U.S., 81% of the population owns a car. In Nicaragua only 6%, and in Nepal, ½%. 7% of the world has a college degree, and 22% of the world owns or shares a computer.

Now let’s talk about consumption. 1.8 billion people worldwide consume 20L of water per day. In the United Kingdom, the daily average water consumption is 150L, and in the United States the average consumption is 600L. In 2005, the wealthiest 20% of the world accounted for 77% of the total private consumption of goods. All of Africa uses 3% of the world’s energy, and the U.S. consumes 19%. Americans spend more on Halloween than the entire world spends on malaria in a given year. In 2006, the world spent around $1.1 trillion on military expenditures, of which the U.S. accounted for $598 billion. That same year in the U.S., $58 billion was spent on education, and $52 billion on healthcare. Certainly says something about our priorities… The average American consumes as much energy as 6 Mexicans, 31 Indians, and 370 Ethiopians. In 2009, the average American consumed 260 lbs of meat. The average Nicaraguan consumed 55 lbs, and the average Bangladeshi consumed 9 lbs. In the entire year.  If we divided up the GDP of the entire world equally among all of its citizens, each person would receive $10,000 a year to live off of. Could you live off of $10,000 a year? Could your family of four live off of $40,000? If I made $10,000 a year here in Tepeyac, Nicaragua, I’d be the richest guy in town.

In order to change our world, we must first change our mindset. We must consider what life is like for people outside of our immediate family, our circle of friends, or our country. We are all humans, supposedly created equally, by the same God. Regardless of race, ethnicity, or the social class we are born into. We must see ourselves as a member of the global population, and not just as an American.

Maybe the average “middle class” American cannot easily dictate the spending habits of the U.S. government, but he can certainly change his own spending habits. If each American continues to consume 260 pounds of meat a year, 600L of water a day, and a vastly unproportional amount of the world’s energy, how can the Nicaraguan, the Indian, or the Ethiopian have access his fair share. We must start to live sustainably and reasonably. We must stop considering our incredibly over consumptive lifestyles as normal. It doesn’t take a Harvard economics graduate to know that if a small percentage of the world’s population consumes a vast majority of its resources, only a little bit is left over for the majority to live off of. If those with the lions share of the global power and privilege, aka the “middle class” of the first world, continue to take and consume everything it can get its hands on, the poverty and the wars caused by it will never be reduced. Unless we shift our understanding of what is normal, and readjust our actions accordingly, how can global poverty ever be reduced?

Several years ago, a movie entitled 12 Years a Slave was released, depicting the life of a free black man in the United States who was tricked and sold into slavery, living the next twelve years of his life as a slave. During his years as a slave, the man had several slaveowners, some worse than others. However one of the slaveowners he had was portrayed in the movie as "the good" slaveowner. He didn't beat or kill his slaves like others did, and he talked to them gently.  He even took them to church on Sundays, since he was a respectable, God-fearing man.

With several hundred years of hindsight, the contradiction is glaring. How can a slaveowner be good? It doesn't make much sense. Today, the logic of considering a slaveowner a holy and righteous person seems preposterous. Ignorant even. But at that time, during the first half of the 1800s, it seemed normal. Only with the benefit of hindsight are we able to see the ridiculousness of it. And let's not forget that it wasn't very long ago that public places were segregated by law, women were not considered intelligent enough to vote, and doctors prescribed cigarettes to help calm a patient’s nerves.

After watching this movie, the image of the good slaveowner kept me thinking. What will our generation be judged for one or two hundred years down the road? What is it that today we consider normal, will then be considered an appauling infrigment on human rights. It very well may be the ridiculous economic inequality of our world. The fact that we consider it normal that a small percentage of the world has 2500 square foot houses, two cars in the garage, and a pool, while a large percentage of the world lives in houses made of rusty sheet metal, thick black plastic, rotting planks of lumber, or mud. That we consider it normal that a small percentage of the world has great access to health care facilities employing well educated doctors, dentists, and surgeons, while the vast majority of the world waits for hours and hours in line at an extremely understaffed hospital with undertrained employees with very little medicine and few if any surgeons. That we consider it normal that the minimum wage in the United States needs to be $15 an hour to provide a decent living for each person, but the farmworker in Nicaragua can be paid $150 a month (the legal minimum wage), and be expected to provide a decent living for his family. That we consider it normal that a Nicaraguan doctor can expect to make $400 or $500 a month, but a U.S. doctor isn’t considered successful until he’s pushing seven figures.

We may not be able to change the world, but we have to change ourselves. We have to view ourselves in light of the global population, and not just in light of the U.S. population. We must care for our brother in Africa as much as we care for our brother in the U.S. We must consume less. We must see that our overconsumption comes at a price, and that is price is global poverty. We must learn to share our global resources. Because we are not the middle class. Our lifestyle is not normal. It was a hoax.  

"The rich man cannot enter the kingdom of joy not because he wants to be bad, but because he chooses to be blind." - Jesuit priest Anthony Demello

*Sources: www.globalissues.org, www.one.org, www.worldcentric.org, 100people.org, public.wsu.edu.

My Life as an Immigrant

Whenever I meet someone new here in Nicaragua, they normally ask me if I'm a volunteer or a missionary. I say no to both. I certainly have never offered to volunteer for free as a farmhand on a local farm, and the term missionary brings to mind images of brown robed friars treating Indians as slave labor or overzealous Christians forcing their views on uninterested locals. However, nor would I consider myself a tourist, as I live here permanently, and don't lug around a big REI backpack everywhere I go. Some might consider me an ex-pat, which probably is at least a little more accurate, however, I think I'm more likely to be considered a young idealist with too much of an imagination. Regardless of whatever label seems to fit best, some days I just feel like an immigrant. An outsider. A white man in a Latino world. I receive some strange looks from people I don't know when they see me walking in the typical black rubber boots of a campesino, with a machete in one hand and a bunch of plantains slung over my opposite shoulder. Or when riding my bike through the nearby pueblos, there's no shortage of stares, or the occasional shout of, "Hey gringo!" I mean, fair enough. I'm an odd sight in rural Central America. Certainly not one they see too often, if ever. I speak Spanish, but I definitely don't sound like a Nicaraguan. And if my accent doesn't give it away, my third grade level grammar probably does. Sometimes, walking by a group of teenagers standing on the side of the road, I'll hear one of them shout out, "Gringooooooo," as if calling me that makes their other friends think they're a badass. I'm a white American, raised in the middle class, college educated, and globally speaking, someone with privilege and power. Feeling like an immigrant is not something I've dealt with much in my life.

The problem of slapping the label of gringo or immigrant on someone, is that along with the label goes a string of unfounded ideas about that person. When someone sees me only as a gringo, they see me only as loud, rich, and pretentious. When the label of immigrant is put on a Latino in the U.S., they are seen as lazy, drunk, and uneducated, while simultaneously stealing the jobs of hardworking, honest Americans. In this case, even the stereotype itself is contradicting.

Every person has the desire to be known. The desire to genuinely connect with other human beings. Not just superficially, but at the depths one's self. That's the problem with labels. There is no connection. When I get those stares on the street, I want to say to those people, "Hey! I'm more than just a gringo! I'm not what you imagine me to be. I'm a real person with ideas and dreams too. Before you judge me, get to know me." When the Latino walking down the street in the U.S., or working their daily job, receives that all-too-recognizable stare, I'm sure they feel the same way. The gringo and the immigrant aren’t given the chance to express who they really are, because the person who labels them believes they already know all there is to know. Loud, rich, and pretentious. Lazy, uneducated, and drunk. And the person dolling out the labels also loses the opportunity to genuinely know and connect with the other person. It's a loss on all sides. It's the root of racism and discrimination. It's that subtle train of thought that at first seems insignificant, but when allowed to grow, leads to hate crimes, state-sanctioned racism, and war.

Sometimes I wonder what I would do if I were born and raised in an environment like Tepeyac, Nicaragua. If my mom spent her days slaving over a wood burning stove. If my dad (if I was lucky enough to have one) spent his days swinging a machete for $120 bucks a month. If both of my parents were barely literate, if that. If I was lucky enough to make it through middle school or high school, and then had three options of jobs for the rest of my life: farmhand, construction worker, or security guard. All with a salary just good enough to put rice and beans on the table and hope that no one in the family gets sick. Because after spending all your money putting food on the table, there’s not much leftover to spend on a medical emergency. I think I would probably immigrate to the United States too.

I know a guy who's an undocumented immigrant in the U.S. He works landscaping, and gets a meager wage, by U.S. standards. He normally feels like an outsider as well. Often criticized by white Americans or documented Latino Americans, he's viewed as a lesser. He's a brown man in a white, English speaking world. He's not given the chance to be known. But what does it matter? He's probably just a lazy, uneducated drunk anyways, right? As it turns out, this time the label's not accurate. Imagine that… With the money he makes, he helps support his elderly mother and helps put his sister through college in Central America. He's putting the food on his mother's table, and giving his sister an education she wouldn't otherwise have had access to.  He's a hard-working, self-sacrificing individual. He just happened be born south of the Rio Grande, so by law he's not allowed access to the decent paying jobs of the United States. God may have chosen where he was born, but his fellow man has doomed him to a life of economic disadvantage.

Several times during the last few years I've lived in Central America, Latinos have asked me why I'm allowed to be in there country, traveling wherever the hell I want, while they're not allowed to be in my country. It's a good question. The only answer is because I was born in the United States and they weren't. Because I have power and privilege and they don't. In the current system, decent work has become a privilege dependent upon place of birth. If you were born between the right two borders, you deserve to be the beneficiary of an incredibly unequal world economy. If you were born between the wrong two borders, sorry bud, you’re out of luck. You’ll be poor your whole life. Just accept it.

For the first time that I can remember I've felt a connection to the immigrant. Struggling with the language, in a foreign culture, labeled and judged, viewed as an outsider, all the while wanting to be known. Don't get me wrong, the majority of the people I've met here in Central America have been extremely warm and accepting of me. I’m sure I’ve been much more cared for and accepted far more than the average U.S. immigrant. As a whole, Central Americans have been extremely accepting and understanding of me. But still, there are definitely times I feel like an outsider. And, in certain ways, I think we all can relate. Everyone knows the feeling of being an outsider, an outcast, and just of wanting to be known. The first day at a new school. First day in a new job. Moving to a new town. Alone and out of place. We can all relate to the immigrant if we look at our lives and think about our past with humility. We've all had the desire to be known for who we are, and not for what other people think we are. We may not have had to live with the daily fear of being deported back to an extremely dangerous home-country, or even a country in war. We may not have had to struggle to learn a foreign language, and felt like a lesser every time we open our mouths to try to communicate. But in certain ways, we’ve all been an outsider. We’ve all longed to be understood and accepted. Hate and the elitism form when we put up new walls, disconnect ourselves from other human beings. Forget that we are all brothers, trying to live a meaningful and happy life. Mother Theresa once said, “If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.” Truer words have seldom been spoken. If there’s no compassion for the immigrant, it is because we haven’t opened our eyes enough to see that we too have felt a part of what the immigrant feels. We’ve all felt unloved. But instead of seeing that, we’ve put up a wall between them and us. We’ve disconnected ourselves from our brother.

So when you see someone struggling with directions, seemingly lost, remember that time you too were lost in a new city. When you talk with someone who struggles to speak English, imagine what it must be like to be in a foreign country where even communicating is a huge struggle. When you see the foreign homeless man who can't find a job, remember that Jesus too lived homeless, and often relied on the generosity of others to eat every day. When this year’s presidential race is filled with hate speech and racism, remember a time when you felt hated, unwanted, and unloved. When you go to the polls to vote for the future president, question why only those born north of the Rio Grande are allowed to work in the United States. Why you are allowed to travel and work wherever you please, but the Central American is forced to stay within his small borders and try to eke out a living with some of the lowest wages on the planet. We've all felt unloved. We've all felt like an outsider. Now let's learn from that experience, and treat those around us with unbiased love. Regardless of race, color, or birthplace. Let’s take down the walls we build around ourselves; let’s work together, let’s work as brothers.  

If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other...