Ruby Payne challenges community to build infrastructure to fight poverty
By Marshall V. King
A community won’t get rid of poverty overnight, according to Ruby Payne.
But if it works at the issue well for 15 or 20 years, it can make a difference.
Payne, a Goshen College graduate and expert on fighting poverty, spoke to around 800 people at the Lerner Theatre on Tuesday night, May 16, and about 50 board and committee members from the Community Foundation of Elkhart County and United Way of Elkhart County on Wednesday morning, May 17.
Payne, who created the “Bridges Out of Poverty” book and program with Phil Duvall, explained the hidden rules that people in poverty, middle class and wealth use to operate. Explaining what people in each group know as reality and what drives behavior is a key to Payne’s work.
“One of the biggest issues we have in America is we think people in poverty are problems. They’re problem solvers,” said Payne.
People in poverty are expected to share with each other readily and do so in ways that don’t make sense to members of other groups.
How someone spends time is one of the biggest determining factors in where they fall on the spectrum. Those with wealth make a majority of the laws. Most people working for agencies helping the poor are in the middle class. Poor people seeking stability struggle because of the flood of either/or decisions on how to use what resources they have.
“They don’t talk to each other very much,” said Payne.
Communities have all three groups. You’ll never eradicate poverty, but when it rises to 40 percent of the population, a community starts to change. People with stability and resources start to leave.
The new knowledge based economy, which is replacing the agrarian and industrial economies, presents new challenges on jobs, stability and poverty. “Nobody, and I mean nobody, knows how you measure (intellectual capital) on paper,” she said.
As jobs and communities change, the ones serious about addressing poverty won’t just spend money to fix the problem. They’ll grapple with how much poverty they can afford and how to make long-term changes.
“You have to build community infrastructure,” said Payne. President Dwight Eisenhower understood Allied forces in World War II won because of superior infrastructure and started America building roadways and more.
In this economy, using technical and relational means will be needed. “Community is just mostly about relationships,” she said.
“One of the reasons we have never solved the class issue in the world is we’ve never agreed what causes it,” she said. Political conservatives say individual behavior and the amount or type of jobs cause poverty. Liberals say exploitation, including racism and predatory lending, or political and economic structures cause it.
“All four of them work together to create class,” she said. Communities then need to respond by dealing with all four causes across multiple generations.
Elkhart County has a strong network of agencies that work together well to help those in need. Data can help a community establish a foundation on which to help those in poverty even more. The ALICE program the United Way of Elkhart County is part of helps track some of that data. How decision makers agree to work together over the long term can help change the story of a community, can give its residents hope.
“The next frontiers for communities is this: How do you build an infrastructure in your community that will help human beings navigate the knowledge-based society,” she said.
Payne’s talk Tuesday, May 16 and work with community leaders the following day is the start of a new conversation about how to understand and address poverty here. “Through our partnership, we will grow and change our community,” said Bill Rieth, United Way president/CEO.
[ABOVE] Pete McCown, Community Foundation of Elkhart County president, thanks Ruby Payne for sharing her expertise to over 800 people on Tuesday, May 16th at the Lerner Theatre. Ruby K. Payne, Ph.D., Goshen College graduate, is an American educator and author best known for her books Bridges Out of Poverty and A Framework for Understanding Poverty, and her work on the culture of poverty and its relation to education.
Marshall V. King is a local freelance journalist who wrote this on behalf of the Community Foundation of Elkhart County.