OPRAH started it, she may even have perfected it, this getting off on doing good. And it’s-not pretty.
Nor, it must be said, is poverty But the concept of “the pornography of poverty”, as I’ve heard it described, may be a difficult one to grasp until you’ve seen it first-hand.
When I stand in a ownship schoolyard, ripe with the stench of urine from the cracked and overflowing toilets, watching a kid play the trumpet as if his life depends on it, for it may; or hear a group of teachers — educated, adult women — shriek with joy at receiving a carton of pens and pencils, not an indoor swimming pool; or hear of children, The Bucketboys, who put their school clothes and books into a dry bucket as they’re obliged to wade through a river, summer and winter alike, to get there, I don’t feel good. I feel nothing but anger and embarrassment.
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