WHENEVER I write about people who are struggling, I hear from readers who say something like: Folks need to stop whining and get a job. It’s all about personal responsibility.
In a 2014 poll, Republicans were twice as likely to say that people are poor because of individual failings as to say the reason is lack of opportunity (Democrats thought the opposite). I decided to ask some of the poor what they think. Here in Baltimore, I consulted Andrew Jackson Phillips Jr., 28, who’s been homeless for the last eight years or so, and he thinks that there is something to the personal responsibility narrative.
“I had multiple chances,” he acknowledged. “I made some bad choices” — although he added that he thought “the system” had failed him as well.
I asked about his childhood. Phillips said that his mother had been a drug addict and that he may have been born with drugs in his system. His siblings had had acute lead poisoning, and he may have had toxic lead levels as well, with lifelong cognitive and behavioral consequences. At age 3, Phillips said he saw his brother shot dead. At age 5, he himself was shot in the head by a drug dealer (he showed me the scar). In the eighth grade, he dropped out of school.
Sure, he made bad choices. Who among us, after going through his traumatic childhood, could be sure of making optimal choices?
To read the rest of this column by Nicholas Kristoff, go to NYTimes.com.
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