I am so tired of TV shows telling us that giving your friends in need money is one of the worst things you can do to a friendship.
You know what I’m talking about; you’ve seen the trope. I was watching Grand Army and a character named Dominique and her family were really struggling. After drunkenly confiding that in her boyfriend, he comes to her the next day with the biggest grin on his face. He has $300 to give her. I smiled for a second, because wow, how amazing of him to see her need and want to meet that! But, because I know the trope, I knew that would not be the show’s position. Sure enough, she’s so offended, tells him she isn’t a “charity case” and storms off.
I almost wrote this post then. Then it happened again when I was re-watching Jane the Virgin and I almost wrote it. And finally, I literally just paused an episode of New Girl where it happened again in order to write this post cause I can't take it anymore.
Hot take: giving your friends money is good, actually!
We’ve been brainwashed, y’all. We’ve been sold a lie about the American Dream that says that all you have to do is work hard and you will live a prosperous, successful life with all of your needs met and more. By now, over a year into a pandemic that put all of the inequities of our nation under a magnifying glass, I hope we all know that’s not true. People are not poor because they haven’t worked hard enough.
But still, I watch TV and there are characters who literally need money… but are still protesting. Not just protesting, but they are usually mad at their friends for even suggesting it. “Why do you think this is okay? You think I’m a charity case? You think I need your help?”
Uh, yeah! Friends help friends! That’s what friendship is about!
I think about Buffy the Vampire Slayer (cause of course I do, have you met me?) when Buffy is really struggling after the death of her mom. Giles writes her a check. She says “I can’t accept this” but when he goes to take it back she says, “Oh no, I was just being nice.” We’ve been told that refusing help is the nice thing. We’ve been told that refusing money in particular is the nice thing to do. We’ve been told that accepting money from friends says something bad about us. We’ve been told that offering money to our friends in need is wrong. And none of that is true.
By now, I’m sure you’ve heard about mutual aid. It is definitely not a new concept, but the term entered the mainstream in the last year because the government literally left us to die (more on that in another blog post) and the only way many folks survived was because of communities taking care of each other.
To be clear, mutual aid not charity. Mutual aid is political, and that should not be removed from any of the discussion. It is “a form of political participation in which people take responsibility for caring for one another and changing political conditions.” So, I’m not saying that every time you give your friends money you are participating politically, or with that goal in mind.
But for me… giving my friends money is political. I know that when they need money, it is because of a variety of factors that have nothing to do with their “work ethic” and everything to do with capitalism. And I know that the state will not provide for them. So if I can, I will.
I’ve given my friends money. They’ve given me money. And we’re all still here in strong relationships. Stronger, actually! Because we know that if something were to happen, we can consider each other part of our support networks.
At a time when critiques of capitalism in mainstream discourse abound, and when most people have heard of mutual aid (even if they’re not defining it correctly), I hope that the media can move past this. I hope that we can move past this! If your friend is in need, and you have money that you don’t need… give it to them! It is actually that simple.
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P.S. Please note I said give your friends money and not lend your friends money. If you are gonna need the money back, it can get sticky. (But also… I have lent friends money that I needed back eventually and it worked out for me. *Black girl shrug emoji*)
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