Rich kid, poor kid
Something I have held in my heart for a long time, and let me know if this resonates with you. There is an age foe girls when they are no longer allowed to be little… and its about 7. Before, people tend not to use misogynist language, nor do they use socially limiting language, after 7 people feel the need to start “familiarising children with the facts of life.”
I have 2 godchildren that I love dearly, they are in my will even though their mother hates me. What I noticed is that they were being adultified early, somewhat innocent things like liking makeup (when I was our age we’d use spit to “curl our eyelashes and the same formula to wear as “lipgloss” I now understand that the world has changed. Young children want to play at being adults, so more realistic stuff is needed. (I’m yet to meet a child who has played the game “Pay my bills” but whatever) but the “you can do anything you put your mind to” talk slows when a child gets to 7 and with my eldest goddaughter, it stops sooner than that. I believe that is a main difference between poor kids and rich kids, rich kids are told much later that they can’t do anything they want by which time they have a deeply held belief that they can. Poor children are told much earlier that they can’t do what they want. This is especially true for young black children, especially black boys, they are robbed of their tenderness and hopes and dreams much earlier. Why don’t we see young poor black kids believing that they can be whatever they want? I was an optimistic child and so I remember being as old as 12 at a church youth outing telling a friend I wanted to be “a doctor, a lawyer, an archaeologist and an Eygptologist.” And I did not believe I couldn’t reasonably be all of those things. I was protected from the “you can only have 1 career” brigade by being surrounded by people who loved and cared for me truly. I was also aware of the work it involved to get what I wanted and I was convinced that if I simply worked hard, I could do whatever I wanted. Essentially I was treated like a “Rich kid” and what happened? I became a rich adult. Surprising? No, I believe that some kids are being deliberately held back because people believe in the scarcity mindset and that “for some people to win, others must loose” and that a “quota” of society must be held back so that their middling children can thrive. I believe that is wrong. I have talked about how I believe in downward social mobility, and that I believe it is important, because that is the only way that society can be a true meritocracy, but I also believe in bringing children up with a relentless idealism, because otherwise we keep giving kids a crap view on life, with an expectation that they will suffer in this life and then we are surprised when they suffer. Why do we hate our children? More importantly, why do we hate POOR children? How come we aren’t telling poor children in Africa and India and China that they can do what ever they want? It is actually a “middle class western” idea that you can do what you want. My parents want me to be “successfully happy” i.e. Happy because I am successful. They don’t want me to be happy and poor (I don’t want to be happy and poor) and I got the good end of the stick when it comes to African parents, most parents just want you to be successful. They are thinking about survival. Happiness comes from your children. Which is a concept I can understand, but again it comes from a place of lack, it still comes from an underlying assumption that life is going to suck and the only thing that can make you happy is what you have created and built for yourself. Sad. I say if it isn’t a concept we teach to poor kids in Malawi, then we shouldn’t be teaching it to rich kids in Marlow. Because we all know that a smart poor child will tend to do less well than a rich stupid child. That’s sad. We loose so much when we rob our poor, and our young.
We need to let go of the fear that if we don’t stack the odds in favour of rich kids that they will fail. If they do, then it is because they deserve to fail and that is an uncomfortable truth that we need to live with. I don’t know why its so threartening that a poorer but smarter child will come and take that which the parents have worked for through the strength of their back alone, but it is in fact a universally held truth that scares the hell out of the west. As a result we oppress the “3rd world” and the poor in every country because ultimately, we don’t believe that the rich kids are strong enough to take them in a fair fight. We don’t want to see a rich kid become poor. We believe that the “great line” should live on. If it doesn’t deserve to. It shouldn’t. Nostagia is not a reason for us to keep propping up people who don’t deserve to be there at the expense of those who do.
But that requires a new world order to achieve. We’re all afraid of meritocracy because we’re all afraid of being deemed average and a subsequent drop in our living standards.
Oops, sorry. But I don’t care.
Grace and Courage.
Annetta Mother Smith.