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Following the death of Freddie Gray, the need for more and more meaningful work as an antidote to injustice in Baltimore has become a rallying cry. Caroline Center reflects on one aspect of the issue in The Breakroom.
The Julie Gold song “From a Distance” has long been a favorite of mine. And, as two strikingly different events converge this year – the 50th anniversary of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s “War on Poverty” and a rare meet-up in our own Milky Way galaxy of two unique, yet equally impressive entities, a spectacular gas cloud and an immense black hole with the mass of four million suns, Gold’s lyrics give us pause for thought...
On more than one occasion I have been told that if you really want to witness generosity, you only have to observe the poor. Conveyed to me by those who live and work among the poor, I have always accepted this idea at face value and as a lesson in humility. Then I started to think about all the incredibly generous people I know and all the beautiful acts of kindness I have witnessed in my own middle class life.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one. A young, twenty-something office worker with a prep school background and a college degree – who got her job through a friend of her father’s – went home crying to her mother after her boss gave her a bad review. His criticisms? The young woman was always late for work, didn’t get her assignments done on time, and generally had a lousy attitude. The mother called the boss to complain, explaining that he wasn’t being fair, underestimated her daughter, and could hurt her budding career with his bad review. This, of course, is wrong on so many levels as to be laughable. What’s even more horrifying is…it’s a true story.
29-year-old Shawntae is unassuming. She sits off to the side in the crowded Caroline Center classroom. Quietly. By herself. The rest of the women are chatty and jokey, a thinly veiled attempt to hide their nervous excitement and hopeful expectation. Today is the day they find out if they passed the Pharmacy Technician final exam. Passing will mean the difference between continuing on to a working internship at a local pharmacy before graduation or flunking out of the program. So yes, most of them are slightly nervous. Except for Shawntae who sits there quietly. By herself...
Most of the women who pass through Caroline Center share commonalities of experience: a legacy of poverty, indifferent or absent parents, stolen childhoods, teen pregnancy, single motherhood, paltry or aborted educations, limited options. This pile up of delinquencies litters their personal landscape, all but obliterating their view of a bright and promising future. It’s out there, just over the horizon, but to reach it, they first have to navigate a rocky and rutty road, pockmarked by unforeseen consequences and foregone conclusions. Bystanders (like you and me) look at the road ahead of these women and grow weary at the very thought.
Many of the women who enroll at Caroline Center come from similar backgrounds. Often, they are the product of either absent and indifferent parents or absent yet caring parents. The problem is absence of any kind, negligent or unavoidable, has its consequences. 23-year-old Caroline Center graduate, Tanora, is a product of the latter. The oldest of 4, Tanora was born to a single mother with limited education. This in turn limited her mother’s employment opportunities. In an effort to make ends meet, Tanora’s mother worked 2 full time jobs, leaving Tanora the adult task of raising her younger brothers and sisters and robbing her of her own childhood. In many ways, her path was set. It began with trouble at school. Middle school.