Charity: Turning Scandal into Virtue

After reading Jesus Freak by Sarah Miles I am even more convinced that charity takes a public scandal and converts it to private virtue.  The public scandal is our refusal as a nation to justly provide for folks who draw the short stick in an economy premised on a perpetual supply of short sticks.  No reputable economist believes in full employment and most peg the lowest possible unemployment rate in an advanced capitalist economy at 4%.  Of course, that number does not include the unemployable and the underemployed.  The reigning pseudo-scientific 'economic model' of morality frets constantly about the 'moral hazard' of providing a humane level of benefit for the unemployed, underemployed and unemployable even while admitting that our economy has no other means of meeting their needs.  Fear, it seems, is an essential motivator.  "We must be afraid of unemployment or we won't want to work," is the argument in a nutshell.   Conveniently the 'moral hazard' of excessive wealth is hardly mentioned.

And that is where charity comes in.  Charity - the voluntary redistribution of excess food, clothing, human capital and money  by a small minority of citizens - provides for those without the means of self-sufficiency while providing an opportunity for the charitable to grow virtuous.   Charitable organizations are often blatantly instrumental in their notion that charitable work is an opportunity for the giver to grow spiritually or ethically by attending to the poor.  Over time,  this reasoning serves to form a justification for the suffering of the poor who exist as a means for the generous to grow in compassion.  (See your average Community Service program) Suffering is a crucial unacknowledged article of faith in our secular creed which holds that suffering is essential for learning the virtues of hard work etc.  Ironically, the poor get no credit for the essential sacrifice and suffering they take on for the sake of an economy that will always leave some behind.  It is important to note the subtle ways that Christian theology has buttressed this meme.

My beef with Sara Miles is her rush to glorify her charitable work -and by extension herself as the hero of the story - without risking any larger analysis of the place of charity in society.  Is this a willful naivete?  As someone who has been intimately involved in the charitable sector for thirty years I have to wonder if in part it is just the well-worn charitable habit of marketing the work through constant cries of crisis and perpetual personalization of need.  The person - like myself - who asks uncomfortable questions about the effect of the "Free Food Industry" (See Sweet Charity) on local economies are dismissed as heartless scolds.  But what is the effect of free food dumping in poor communities?  How does it discourage the creation of a sustainable local food economy?  Who is doing this research?

Honestly, during my time as Executive Director of the largest food pantry in Trenton, I had to think that the last thing that small city needs is more charity.  If we could convert in-kind food donation to food stamp dollars for low-income clients we would achieve two goals: 1. Increased autonomy and dignity for our clients who could then chose food in the socially normal way,  2.  Increased cash in the local economy where our clients would shop for their food.  One irony of the free food industry is that the economic beneficiaries are the vendors and producers who are usually not located in poor communities.  If I donate a bag of food to a charity I usually purchase it in my middle class neighborhood.  USDA foods benefit agro-business. Mass food donations by Food Industry Giants like Kraft etc. benefit those companies by dumping surplus.  (Check the board list for Feeding America!)

What is wrong with this picture?  Charitable donation cannot aggregate enough funding to provide adequate food stamp style support.  Only as a nation -through the means of government- can we bring together enough money to have the desired effect.  And this is exactly what we refuse to do.  This is the scandal.  Charity - funded by a small minority of the populace - covers the scandal in a warm, if skimpy and fragile blanket.

At the end of the day, charity is a pea shooter in a tank battle,  a piggy bank in a scorched desert of massive disinvestment.   And it gets worse.  Clothing donated  in the USA to charities like Vietnam Vets are shipped in bulk to Guatemala where they undermine the manufacture and retail of locally produced clothing.  Charitable mission groups in Haiti constantly take work away from local workers during their one week mission 'experiences.'  We cannot afford pious naivete about charity.