Selective Compassion and the Pathologies of Inequality

[marmar]

Published on Friday, January 7, 2011 by CommonDreams.org
Selective Compassion and the Pathologies of Inequality

by Francis Shor


“We believe in second chances and second opportunities,” declared the senior vice president for marketing from the Cleveland Cavaliers. This pronouncement accompanied the offer of an announcing job to Ted Williams, the homeless man whose “golden” voice and impoverished visage went viral on a YouTube video. Beyond his elevation by the media to visible and viable economic status, Williams became a clear example of the selective compassion of both corporate America and its consuming public.

More than 50 years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. reminded us that “true compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.” What is this edifice that generates the millions of homeless that populate our cities? Why has poverty now grown to an unprecedented modern level of almost 50 million, exceeding even the statistics and reality of what Dr. King observed in the 1960’s?

Clearly, the inequality deeply embedded into the variety of contemporary capitalism practiced in the United States is the source for this continuing and growing rate of poverty. As noted by the recently passed social critic, Tony Judt, in his essential text, Ill Fares the Land: “Inequality, then, is not just unattractive in itself; it clearly corresponds to pathological social problems that we cannot hope to address unless we attend to their underlying cause.” Yet, we remain, to a great extent, paralyzed by our own individualistic and privatized response to those social problems. ..............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/01/07-1

[Demeter]

1. The ultimate Christmas message

better late than never...

[villager]

2. "It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring."

That's why MLK was gunned down in Memphis.

He saw that edifice, and was about to lead a "Poor People's March" on Washington...

That was going just "too far..."

[marmar]

3. Indeed.

nt