The $100 Bill

An activist friend who is a person of color contacted me recently to let me know she was upset and disappointed by our last homework assignment which involved carrying a $100 bill in your pocket for a week. This thoughtful friend wrote: "’carry a $100 bill in your pocket’ assumes people have that money to carry (and not spend on bills, etc.). are you carving out an audience that wants to hear this message b/c they already have wealth and want to affirm their right to have it? or are you reaching out to people who might have needs that we, as a community, can actually fill w/out money?”

She asks some good questions. To clarify: our last EmergentSee session about race and money was not about accruing personal wealth. It was about power, resources, and responsibility; how people of color in America have historically been and are still currently excluded from wealth and the possibilities wealth provides; and how everyone can participate in shaping the society we want through philanthropy.

The exercise of carrying the $100 bill was rather intimidating and very revealing. Actually no one in attendance at the discussion did the exercise. No one got around to going to the bank and actually asking for a $100 bill for a variety of reasons. I mentioned at the discussion that I did have some cash in my wallet this week ($40-50)—normally I carry none to very little—and that I did notice it having an impact on me. For example, I went into Broadway Paper and found myself so repulsed by the fancy expensive paper filling the store (the trees, the energy expended, the vapid uses of paper…) that I didn’t purchase what I came for and left. Then I went to Good Earth, the natural grocery store in the Third Ward, and had the same reaction: so much packaging and commercialization. I sensed that the money in my pocket made me feel less “hungry” and more discerning and selective. I felt, “I’ve got what I need,” and didn’t want to put my energy into places I didn’t agree with. The money in my pocket made me feel empowered to make that choice. On the other hand, if I only had $5, I hadn’t eaten all day, and there was only one restaurant, you know where I would spend it.

Definitely there are many types of wealth, which are really many types of energy. Time, community, art, intelligence of all sorts, experience, etc are all types of wealth. Money constitutes one type of wealth, and is the lingua franca; that is, it can be channelled to any purpose. I totally agree with my friend that the “health and wealth” gospel is wrongheaded and destructive, while recognizing that I can only come to this conclusion when I have at least at little money in my pocket.

That is, I can say money is not that important because I am middle class. Because of my economic privilege, I can walk out of the grocery store because I don’t want to support multinational food corporations, and I know I can get my food elsewhere, like through my food co-op, my garden, and foraging (because I have access to books, friends, and the internet to learn how to forage). I also have time to cook because I’m not working 2 full-time jobs.

Just as a person who benefits from white privilege cannot say to a person of color that white privilege is unimportant, a person of economic privilege cannot say to a person in poverty that money is unimportant.

Of course, some activists/artists who come from the middle class and enjoy educational privilege (they have college or advanced degrees) choose to live a low-income life to align themselves with their ideals. I admire these friends and strive to live in voluntary simplicity myself. However, they cannot tell a person who is living in involuntary poverty, perhaps generational, and is a member of an oppressed group that pursuit of money is unworthy.

The EmergentSee Collective is about repairing racial harm. Let’s face it: money is a great way to repair racial harm. Much harm can be repaired without money, but money will help! Sincere, heartfelt apologies and new attitudes are a start, but need to be followed by good schools, safe neighborhoods, higher education, career opportunities, support for parents, health care, nutrition, and more. All these reparations need money.

My friend writes: “i'm so philosophically opposed to using money as a marker for wealth. isn't this kind of thinking what divides people? doesn't it uphold class divisions (and therefore--in this country--racial and gender divisions) and contribute to the consumer mentality that is driving our mother earth to the brink?”

We need to move money around. We need to get it out of the hands of those who are driving class divisions and consumerism and get it into the hands of those who will create equality and save the planet. Money itself is not the problem. Hoarding is the problem and the destructive use of money. We need to wrest it from the “haves” and give it to the “have-nots” to improve schools and neighborhoods and build year-round community gardens and more. We need to pressure our legislators while we take these matters into our own hands, changing our own lives, creating giving circles, volunteering, and exercising philanthropy in our own communities. That is what EmergentSee is about.

Please let me know what you think.
namaste,
peggy