“I was lookin’ at your Instagram,” he says, raising his eyebrow at me. “You don’t got a lot of followers. Why not?”
I look at him and back around the bar, certain I misunderstood the question. Or perhaps, misheard it completely. It’s a weekend in January and I’ve been straddling the border between South Carolina and Georgia for a few weeks now — a decision that had its faults and its perks.
One of the perks is undeniable: the more time I spent stationary, the more I learned about the towns around me. But with it came an undeniable fault: I became less of a novelty, which in this day, came with a healthy dose of skepticism.
I shrugged, looking at the man to my left: how far should I go into explaining the intricacies of social media algorithms and growth trajectories? I decided to skip it altogether, brushing the conversation along.
“I guess I’m not too worried about that, ” I say slowly. “It’ll happen when it happens.”
“So you’re not worried about selling books?” he asks.
“I mean, uh, yeah, someday sure.”
My fingertips ran around the edge of the aluminum can in my palm. I took another sip.
“Selling books will be cool, yes, of course, obviously,” I continue. “But that’s only a small part of why I’m doing this. It’s less about…proving it to other people and more about doing it for myself, I guess. I’ve dreamed about this for so long. I need to see it through.”
The air thickened, a lingering pause between us. I felt a gentle hum of anxiety building, like one wrong move would turn me into prey.
“So what,” he says, “you’re like rich or something?”
And there it is. My chest seized as I looked at him, trying to diffuse the situation.
“Uh no,” I say, laughing nervously. “Not at all.”
Funding and finances come up often in my travel: sometimes curious, often skeptical. I dispel assumptions about donors, affiliation, and independent wealth regularly. People, for whatever their own reason, want to know exactly how my project works.
I am the first person to tell you what an immense privilege it is that I am able to travel around the country, asking questions and writing about it. Every morning I’m able to trace the heartbeat of the United States a little further, I am struck with a sense of overwhelming gratitude. (But no, I’m not rich.)
Often when I give my standard responses about funding (independent donors whom I’m extremely grateful for and a lot of saving beforehand), people accept my explanations and move on. We fall back into conversation about other things.
Every once in a while, a person presses forward, skeptical about my funding and my motives. I turned over this interaction in South Carolina for weeks and months afterward, trying to understand how he made the leap from a small Instagram following to comfortable personal finances. Why was it so hard to see that I’d do something for passion, for the hell of it, instead of worrying about a paycheck? I brought it up over and over again.
“It’s less about not wanting to work for passion and more about survival,” another man from the town says. “It’s like this: I would say the average pay for people who don’t work in a plant is around $12 an hour… and that’s being generous.”
A lot of these people work to pay the bills, he tells me, and that’s just it.
“So take rent, plus power, possibly water, groceries, most people can barely pay their bills around here,” he says. “They live paycheck to paycheck. So anytime someone sees someone like you, they’re automatically going to assume you’re rich because the idea of them being able to do that seems incredibly out of reach.”
I leaned back, considering this perspective. Once again, the immense privileges I hold in background and education feel exceptionally clear. I feel appallingly shortsighted to not have seen it myself.
But that is, perhaps, the beauty of all this travel. Every time I feel like I’ve learned everything there is to know about myself or this country, a new thought or interaction knocks everything into a new light. My heart aches when I think of people who want to travel, but can’t because of their circumstances — it’s a privilege I’ve taken for granted so many times on this trip.
The challenges people in the rural South face are, logically, not uncommon: I’ve read stories about wage stagnation for years now as it’s been a hot topic in national policy conversations. But seeing it with my own eyes, much like coming face to face with the opioid epidemic, put it into a new perspective.
According to the Economic Policy Institute, worker productivity was up 74 percent from 1973 to 2013 — but their hourly compensation only rose 9 percent. In that same 34-year period, the wages for “low-wage workers” fell 5 percent. A 2017 CareerBuilder survey found that more than half of minimum wage workers work two jobs (or more) to make ends meet.
Trying to solve these questions often brings up bigger questions about the American Dream: is it truly attainable for the “average” American today? What does it take for a person to get ahead and succeed — and what does that look like in 2020?
My initial gut reaction starts with education. I am no political scientist, but after hearing so many stories over the past nine months, you start to wonder how things can change.
As part of this wondering, I test a half-baked theory that if we can find a way to provide a high-quality education for all kids, regardless of socioeconomics or physical location, you can start to create ripples of change through our entire country. Supporting the next generation seems like something people can agree upon across party lines — everyone wants the best for their kids and grandkids.
“Do you think that mindset is more attached to education though, and the challenges that rural schools face?” I ask.
“Absolutely,” he says. “I think education and environment are big factors in it. The reality is… a lot of people can do the things they want to do, but they’ve been told it’s impossible and you have to be wealthy to do it.”
He sighs: and they believed it.
Frustration boils under my skin. My heart aches. My mind wonders: maybe education could be part of the solution.
Where do we go from here?
