What are we doing about our 17 million hungry kids?
By ROBERT HORENSTEIN
article created on: 2010-02-24T00:00:00
Viewers of this year’s Super Bowl may have been surprised to see an ad sponsored by the conservative Christian group Focus on the Family.
The pro-life ad recounted the story of Pam Tebow, who, upon getting sick in the Philippines while pregnant in 1987, ignored a doctor’s recommendation to abort her fifth child. She later gave birth to Tim, the 2007 Heisman Trophy quarterback from the University of Florida.
Focus on the Family considers “protecting preborn children” to be a moral issue of such magnitude that they were willing to pay $2.6 million for a 30-second TV spot.
I don’t begrudge them their right to do so, but I wonder whether they—or any other moral values group—would spend even half that amount on a 30-second ad to advocate for the nearly 17 million children in this country who have been born—and don’t have enough to eat.
The point here isn’t to single out Focus on the Family or conservative Christians. But let’s face it—hunger (i.e., poverty) simply hasn’t gained prominence as a moral issue on the level of other social issues championed by the Christian right, such as abortion and homosexuality.
For example, more than 40 states have eliminated the possibility of same-sex marriage. How many of these same states—whose legislatures or voters regarded the “defense” of heterosexual marriage as a moral imperative—have acted with the same determination to eliminate childhood hunger?
When we think of great moral failures, what comes to mind? The scandalous behavior of Tiger Woods or John Edwards? After all, these are the kind of stories that typically make the front page of major newspapers and the covers of popular magazines.
The shameful fact that one in five children in this wealthy industrial nation of ours live in poverty probably isn’t on most Americans’ moral radar, yet isn’t this one of our greatest collective moral failures?
Yes, you read that right: one in five. Astonishingly, the existence of so many poor and undernourished children somehow hasn’t risen to the level of national exigency. (In Oregon, 26.7 percent of households with children experienced food hardship in 2008-09, according to the Food Research and Action Center.)
Even President Obama, who pledged to end childhood hunger in America by 2015, has hardly spoken about this goal since taking office. His State of the Union Address on Jan. 27 consisted of more than 7,100 words, yet the word “hunger” wasn’t uttered even once.
The extent to which poverty and hunger have yet to become a significant part of the public discourse on moral issues can be seen in the lack of response to the outrageous comments made by a leading candidate for governor in South Carolina comparing poor people to stray animals. Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer, running on the Republican ticket, recently told an audience that when he was a child his grandmother advised him to quit feeding stray animals “because they breed. You’re facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They’ll reproduce, especially ones that don’t think much further than that.”
Other than denunciations from Bauer’s opponents, these remarks drew little reaction. Where was the public outcry? As Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts, Jr. put it, “The relative silence stands as eloquent testimony to the invisibility of the American poor.”
But if hungry children are invisible, it’s because going hungry makes kids sick so they miss more school days. It’s because hunger leads to poor mental health so many of them are socially withdrawn. It’s because lack of good nutrition impedes their cognitive development so they don’t stand out in the classroom.
The real issue isn’t whether America can end childhood hunger. We already have the programs in our arsenal to do so, among them: improving key supports to assist low-income families with children in meeting their basic needs; increasing access to and participation in the federal nutrition programs and expanding the eligibility of those programs to reach all food-insecure children; ensuring access to affordable, quality healthcare; raising the minimum wage.
No, the real issue is whether we can generate enough of a sense of urgency that will, in turn, engender the political will to finally solve this problem. In the words of Dr. J. Larry Brown, director of Brandeis University’s National Center on Hunger and Poverty, “Let it be [ultimately] said that we responded not with concerned complacency, but that we mobilized the moral authority to end child hunger.”
Robert Horenstein is the staff director of the Community Relations Committee within the Jewish Federation of Greater Portland.
