Terminology

Anitra Again (anitra@speakeasy.org)
Sun, 18 Jan 1998 19:31:45 -0800 (PST) 

Homeless people don't all come out of one bag.

When I was in shelter, I shared floor space with a microbiologist, a
carpenter who had read far more philosophy books than I had, a couple
of black hip-hop kids, two Native Americans, a Hispanic, and several
people who had never had any job past minimum wage or any education
past high school, and considered *all* reading a waste of time.  They
looked rather suspiciously at those of us who watched Star Trek and the
X-Files, too.

We all came from different cultures -- I grew up in a home where it
was taken for granted that everyone, from age four on up, would read a
bit and write a bit, every night.  Where we recited our newest poems
to each other over the dinner table.  And we weren't prosperous by any
means -- the only time I have lived and slept in the family car was
with my family, at the begining of my senior year of high school.  I
didn't grow up making any mental connection between "educated" and
"prosperous".  Education was something you sought for the love of it.

I was lucky, though.  In fifth grade, I had a teacher who challenged
me to find the best words for whatever I wanted to say *that would
communicate to the people I was talking to.*  As different from the
best word in the unabridged dictionary.  He taught me the exciting
game of taking a concept like "symbiosis" and making it real to other
fifth-graders who did *not* read botany books like comics, and who
would tune out any word over one syllable and even the more obscure
short words.

I was never allowed to think of people who did not know the number of
words that I did as less in any way than myself -- all too often, the
same kids who had to ask me the definitions of words in their homework
were the same kids I depended on to keep me erect in the
roller-skating rink, or fix what was wrong with my bike chain.  We
just had different talents, was all.

Under the pressures of homelessness and poverty we all become a lot
more thin-skinned.  I have noticed a lot more tension between
"readers" and "non-readers", or those who use big words and those who
don't, in the shelters and other programs of the low-income than I
have in offices, for instance.  I have seen some homeless people who
have no college education get very defensive around others who have
-- or very antagonistic.

The last time I saw someone publicly attacked for using "big words",
the attacker had a personal problem he was venting with that excuse,
and just told him to either ask what the word meant, use a dictionary,
or shut up.  I was abrupt, because the circumstances were appropriate
for being abrupt.

But that isn't always the case.  What are other ways that we can learn
to communicate better with each other, when we don't always know each
others words?  So far we have had few people on this list for whom
English is a second language, but I certainly hope we get more --
there is a sizeable part of the homeless population being left out of
our conversation.  And that will be a big challenge for us all in
learning to communicate across cultural barriers.

Learning to communicate between members who have different educational
backgrounds is just a start.
___________________
WRITE ON! -- Anitra
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