Expectations, Raised and Lowered

Today I had to tell a client "it's going to take me slightly longer to find you a program, because you don't have Medicaid." The problem wasn't that he had no insurance. The problem was that he had private insurance, otherwise known as the thing most of my clients would love to have but may or may not ever. It occurred to me that in the isolated instances where I had to refer someone with private insurance for treatment, the Medicaid clinics kind of shrugged at me. Picture a clinic shrugging. Or don't.

This was part of a larger interaction that gave me pause. I got this case as an "ER"--this is to say, the attorney wanted something to happen without the delay of referring the case. They're allowed to do this, obvs. It's a pain in the ass but only the way paying taxes is--it's a drag but you have to do it. It was an especial pain in the ass today because I have some slightly-more-vicious-than-usual twenty-four-to-please-baby-jesus-forty-eight-hour malaise. I feel, as they say in certain parts of the south, as if I'd been shot at and missed, shit at and hit.

So, nothing special except he needs to start treatment post haste so the judge will say "what a sweet angel--he's suffered enough already" instead of "why should I give a middle class white guy a break?" I don't know if judges start from there, but it wouldn't be unreasonable to. Look at prison demographics and get back to me when you're done repeatedly shooting yourself. Now of course they should get the same baseline of consideration anyone else gets, but it's hard not to notice they've had a head start already. If you buy a bunch of cocaine and have a lot of advantages including your skin color, you are counting on these advantages. It's understandable, but it might factor in to the sympathy you get.

The thing that went on that I wanted to sit with for a minute is this: I talked to this guy very differently than my other clients. I made assumptions about what he knows and what he is able to do without my prodding or assistance. I took a different tone, some of which is just because the stance I take with someone clearly from a very different background from mine is to remove a certain assumption of rapport. I do this with kids, too, which makes me feel a little less like it is my class bullshit. But it can be a number of things at once.

It's one of the real fears you have in school, or I did anyway. How is anyone going to take me seriously when, by my clothes and my job and probably my snooty way of pronouncing things*, it is probably clear I have not had things too bad. I will never truly get the stories that are told to me, and I know it, and the people telling them know it. What you figure out is that most people get past this because there's not much to be gained by dwelling on it. Anyway.

What I can't shake is that it felt like I was flipping a switch between "talk down to" and "don't talk down to." My explanation of what I do was different, something of a mess both because I feel like doom and because I was recalibrating as I talked. I think this is the crux of it, actually. There is a fairly standard spiel I give, and it is very possibly a bit condescending in a way that I don't notice when I'm talking to a 15-year-old or someone who made it to 9th grade. There is native-language stuff in there too, and from there, race stuff, which is the thing that makes for least comfortable introspection. I should notice. This is a little bit of a resolution.

Maybe I'll talk more about my spiel and its assumptions later on, if it seems like there's much to say.

*Truish story: when I was growing up in Southlandia, my friend M and I went stomping around someone's farm in the delightfully dewy very tall grass. Some cops were not into this (charge: trespassing? unauthorized grass stomping?) and questioned us a little and after I had said just a few words one of them said to me "where are you from, anyway? Liverpool?"