Soccer Practice Poverty

Over the blasting of some terrible sell-out punk band’s collage of repetitive drumbeats, distorted power chords, and nasally voiced melodies, 11 year-old me could hear my mom shouting. Her duties as a soccer mom had commenced for the day, and I was being rounded up for practice. Soccer was my favorite sport. Before now I was one of the best on my team and I loved going to practice, but not anymore. I was on a new team—a “better” team. This new team would go on to win the state championship the next two years in a row. I really did not like this team.

            My mom and I would engage in our tri-weekly verbal altercation about me going to practice. The war of words and wit would usually end with my mom pointing out that, “We paid a lot of money for you to be on this team! You’re going to practice!” But I really did not like this team.

            We would hop in my mom’s stereotypical-soccer-mom Tahoe and begin our 10-minute drive to the soccer fields. That drive was the worst. My mom would reassure me that I would make friends on the team; it just might take some time. I would hear my mom’s condolences as I hurriedly tied my cleats, but I wouldn’t believe her. The closer we got to the fields, the deeper the pit-of-anxiety in my stomach would become. Sometimes after we’d arrive at the fields, and as I be departed from the sanctuary of the SUV, my mom would say, “See if you can get a ride home with one of your teammates.” This would transform the pit in my stomach into a crater. I really did not like this team.

Prejudice:

            Why was I so pessimistic? Why didn’t I like this new team? Why didn’t I enjoy going to practice anymore? Why wasn’t I friends with my teammates? Although I was an upper middle class white kid, going to soccer practice with upper middle class white kids, I was (at least from my point of view as an 11 year-old) a victim of prejudice. I felt as if none of the kids would give me a chance. The coach would instruct the team to get in groups of four or five. Somehow I seemed to always be the odd one out. These kids didn’t like me. But they didn’t even know me. Somehow I endured this wretched affliction of playing on an elite and expensive soccer team for an entire year. I could not seem to show the other kids on the team that I was cool. After a year the prejudice ceased. Eventually some of my teammates became my best friends.

            What do race, class, gender, sexuality, and 11 year-old me have in common? They are often times the criteria to be the victims of prejudices. Similarly the prejudices that result from being a member of one or more of these categories are usually the consequence of ignorance. My teammates didn’t like me until they got to know me. I was different in that I had not been on the team as long as they had. I was the new kid, and new things make people uneasy. This can be said for most prejudices people hold. People are uncomfortable about things they don’t understand. Once my teammates understood me, we got along wonderfully. When a child is raised thinking certain races are inferior in one way or another, she/he will most likely have a prejudice against those races. When the child goes to college and gets to know someone of this race, those preconceived prejudices will often times go away. Once she/he takes a moment to get to know people she/he was taught to detest, the prejudice will dissipate.

Discrimination is easy to see presently and historically in the categories of race, gender, and sexuality. Most people I know would not dispute the fact that non-caucasian people and women have been severely discriminated against in our countries history. Most people I know, however bigoted, would not even deny the blatant discrimination against homosexual people. Obviously we must be extremely conscious of these prejudices, and do everything we can to diminish them; but I believe there is one type of prevalent prejudice that goes unnoticed. That is the prejudice against lower-class people.

Exalting the Wealthy:

            The Dark Knight Rises is a good example of this prejudice shown in the movies. Most people who saw it probably did not consciously notice the propaganda the film indoctrinated its viewers with. Bruce Wayne is a rich philanthropist. He is a victor in the game of capitalism. As is often true of the wealthy, he inherited his money. Though he acts like a careless party boy to the Gotham public, he is depicted to the viewer as the benevolent superhero Batman. In this particular film Batman encounters Catwoman who has an ideology opposing his. She despises the fact that there is such a strong divide between the rich and the poor. She is anxiously anticipating the day when the capitalistic class structure crumbles and the rich are just like everybody else.

            Catwoman’s point of view seems like it has some merit at first. She gives some advice to Batman by saying, "You and your friends better batten down the hatches cause when it hits, you're all going to wonder how you ever thought you could live so large, and leave so little for the rest of us." This is an attack at the wealthy, and Catwoman is defending the poverty stricken. Throughout the first half of the movie she makes many remarks like this. She takes stabs at the way Bruce Wayne lives and the injustices inflicted by the wealthy. The poor are defended and the rampant capitalism in Gotham is critiqued.

            The evil villain Bane even seems to make some valid points for the revolution he instigates. Homelessness and deficiency plague the city of Gotham. Bane allies himself with these people to crumble the unjust class structure repressing, what looks like, the majority of Gotham. He rallies the people together against the wealthy by saying they need to liberate themselves from their oppressors. Gotham needs to be given back to the people! He creates a rebellion suspiciously similar the Occupy Wall Street movement. Why should a small minority of the people in the city posses a vast majority of the wealth?

            At this point during the movie it looks like it is portraying sophisticated depiction of opposing ideals. Catwoman’s argument that it is very immoral when the rich leave so little for everyone makes a lot of sense. Even the one representing evil (Bane) has merit in his reasons for the rebellion. It turns out that both of their views are worthless. At least that is the conclusion made in the movie—we need the rich. When the rich are exalted to such a level the poor are severely castigated. If they were more righteous they would be wealthier. If they were not so lazy then they too could share the blessings that come from hard work.

            Bane’s goal in setting off the revolution is successful. The angry, slacker citizens start riots all over the city. They are very violent and very evil. This is a blatant attack on Occupy Wall Street. The people in the movie are trying to bring down their Wall Street. By doing so they are depicted as malevolent and erroneous. It turns out the mastermind of the operation does not even believe in the cause. He just wants to destroy the city. It does not matter if the movement he started is successful, because he never believed in it. He’s gong to blow the whole city up anyway. The impression given off by the movie is that if the one who organized the whole group doesn’t even believe in the cause, there is no worth to the cause. The anguished lower-class citizens involved in the riot were completely misled. The rich people in Gotham (Wall Street) are needed to instantiate order, peace, and happiness.

            Catwoman’s ideologies are also represented as being wrongheaded. In the first half of the movie she anticipated the time when the rich would be just like everyone else. She was eager for the time when they would pay the consequence for living in such excess. When Bane’s revolution takes hold the city becomes the wealthy-less metropolis Catwoman pleasurably prophesied of. For some reason she is not happy though. Without much explanation she admits she was wrong and jumps onto capitalistic ideology of Batman and fights for it alongside him. She implicitly admits that the class structure with the wealthy living well beyond their means is necessary for a respectable society. The viewer is left with the impression that society can only function with the foundation of the rich. Ideologies opposing capitalism will prove to be futile.

Lower class:

            These messages, conveyed by the praise of those who are wealthy, are harmful to our perceptions of those who are not. When it is righteous to be rich, it is immoral to be poor. When it is hard work, intelligence, and nobility that lead to wealth, it is laziness, ineptness, and selfishness that lead to poverty. Clearly this is not the case. Undoubtedly there are righteous, hardworking, and intelligent people who do not have money. It is also true, however, that people without money are looked down on, and even despised. They are thought of as lazy. Laziness is a sin so they are thought of as sinful. This prejudice must stop.

            Though Batman wants us to believe our capitalistic society is the way society must be, we should fight to give everyone an equal opportunity. Where Catwoman abandoned her principles, we must stay strong in ending the cycle of abuse many without money are trapped in. Poverty is not wickedness. Wealth is not righteousness.

We just see dirty clothes and another bum beggin',
Whatta bout the kid who was an addict the second that his mom was pregnant,
Or the young girl who was raped and stripped up, everything sacred.
Who now stands downtown walkin' on the block pacin' 

cause the only way she knows how to make it, is gettin' naked.
We don't want to face it,
And it being the fact that the government created the ghetto and gave it crack,
To oppress immigrants and blacks, and give 'em more of a set back.
Like the last 500 years wasn't enough to accomplish that.
Now look at the homeless rate, and tell me to my face the race,
Doesn't play an intricate part in your fate in the United States,
Now think about your home, and the place that you sleep,
And the homeless, who only have the concrete.

- Macklemore: City Don't Sleep