Jerome Wright

For the poor, opportunities such as participating in school activities can present hard choices.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson visited The Commercial Appeal’s editorial board Monday during a break in ceremonies commemorating the April 4, 1968 assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as he stood on a balcony at the Lorraine Motel.

As expected, Jackson talked about the Civil Rights Movement and King’s importance to it, including the iconic civil rights leader’s deep concern about America’s poor. That concern brought him to Memphis to help the city’s sanitation workers, who were striking for a living wage and better working conditions.

As Jackson talked, he recounted a discussion he had with a young AfricanAmerican woman who was his server at a South Carolina restaurant. He said the woman’s “pep” prompted him to ask her if she was attending college. She said was not, but was working to save money to help her parents buy a car so they could get back and forth to work.

Jackson used the story to make the point about how poverty and low-wage jobs limit a person’s options — in this case working to help her parents versus using the job to earn money to pay college tuition.

I know some people reading this will find a way to poke all kinds of holes in the point Jackson was making. But that is OK.

Families, no matter their ethnicity, who are struggling to survive financially will get it, along with families who once struggled financially but are doing well now.

But families and individuals who have never had to make the monthly decision of paying the light bill versus paying the rent, or paying the rent versus buying groceries, will not.

These choices/options represent the true definition of a dilemma, defined by Dictionary.com as a situation requiring a choice between equally undesirable alternatives.

Jackson’s point also fit into a concern I had after reading Daniel Connolly’s story in The Commercial Appeal last Sunday about parents who want their children to participate in the Collierville High School band having to pay the band’s booster club a $600 fee. Additional travel costs more — for instance, the upcoming spring band trip to Orlando will cost another $650.

In an effort to control the high-price process, the town’s school board is looking at regulating fees and setting rules for outside booster clubs. Depending on the activities and the school, fees and costs can run into the thousands of dollars.

Collierville High and other schools do waive some fees for students from low-income families.

With school districts operating with tight funds, I understand why booster clubs at a lot of schools are necessary and a great help in raising funds to provide supplemental financing for extracurricular activities.

These activities not only are fun, but also serve as great builders of character for the participants.

So, Collierville residents, I’m not picking on you.

Readers’ comments and emails to Connolly about the story showed that most writers saw nothing wrong with the practice — and there certainly is nothing wrong with that.

But the story and comments got me to thinking about how we view poverty. Who can blame a family that is financially comfortable for paying a $600 fee, or more, to give a child extra opportunities.

But what about the family that is living hand to mouth or from paycheck to paycheck? What kind of dilemma do these kind a fees create for them?

Connolly’s story pointed out that children from affluent families are more likely than the poor to take part in sports or other extracurricular activities.

A Pew survey last year found that 84 percent of affluent parents said their children had participated in sports in the past 12 months, compared with 59 percent among lowerincome parents. The affluent were also more likely to start their children in sports, dance, music or art lessons before age 6.

I am not trying to send anyone on a guilt trip, but Jackson’s anecdote about the waitress and Connolly’s story about the fees, I think, are emblematic about how a lot of society views families living in poverty or trying to make it on a barely livable wage. If you are not living in poverty, it is hard to relate to the limited choices and options poor people face.

A lot of us, including many of those waging the war on poverty, view poverty and low-wage earners through a window that only provides a twodimensional view filled with statistics and pictures of blighted neighborhoods and substandard houses.

But the third dimension, perhaps the most important, is a view and an awareness of what it is like to constantly have to live a life where the options and choices are not only limited, but are true dilemmas.

For many folks who are financially stable, it is understandably hard for them to empathize with that fact.