Dr. Ruby Payne is recognized by some educators as an expert on schools and poverty....


...She was in Galesburg, IL, February 19 and 20 to speak to teachers and the public. Jim Jacobs of HRA, Inc, interviewed her at Galesburg Senior High School on the 20th. The interview follows without commentary.

JACOBS:One question I have is kind of a curious one. You are doing this for nothing and I understand your normal fee is $30,000. Is that correct? Why is that?

PAYNE: It is not quite that much. (Laughter)

JACOBS: How much do you charge?

PAYNE: Well, it depends. We do a sliding scale, but usually for a full day about $17,000. It depends. Sometimes I do it for nothing.

JACOBS; Yeah?

PAYNE: I believe you should give back.

JACOBS: Yeah? Now, are you still a Mennonite?

PAYNE: No. (Laughter)

JACOBS: OK. Well, let me ask this question. I noticed in your book ["A Framework for Understanding Poverty] that you only had two references to parents and I taught school for 35 years and I found that I could learn a lot from the parents of children living in poverty--they could teach me a lot and I felt that they were the experts on their children. Is there a reason why you have kind of, I don't want to say minimized, but why there is not more references to utilizing parents?

PAYNE: Um, actually there are in the next book that came out, which came out two weeks ago on the resource learners. But actually what I did when I wrote that book, I wrote it in a week. I wrote it really fast. It was just supposed to be a kind of a practical guide for educators, you know. Well, I never knew that the critics would pick it up, OK? And if you Google me, you'll find that I got a lot of critics. The critics are researchers, OK? And I never wrote it for a researcher, I wrote it for practitioners.

JACOBS: Practitioners? One of your critics is Jawanza Kunjufu and I read his book. And one of his criticisms is that you don't make a distinction between the different kinds of experiences that people in poverty have had such as the different ethnic groups. And also Michael Harrington, you reference him, and in his book, "The Other America," he says that for example, using the terminology of that day, "Negro poverty is the most unique poverty in the country." That comes in the first part of that chapter. Have you changed any of that or do you just kind of feel that poor people are poor people?

PAYNE: Well, in the last two years I have spoken in China twice, India twice, Australia, New Zealand, OK? India once--I am sorry--and Canada. The thing of it is is that the criticism has been about the fact that they think that you should look at poverty from a systemic issue. OK? Or a racial issue. The definition of social justice is very narrow in the critics' world view. They don't include economic justice in their platform. One of the reasons there is so many misconceptions that race and class are linked is because in the media right now, for every 20 video clips on TV of poverty, 18 show an African-American, OK? The NAACP is actually working on that misrepresentation. But what I go at--people-- I don't talk much about race and class. Not because I don't think it is there, but because I don't have the time. Somebody said to me the other day, well if you going to talk about race and class then you should talk about gender and class cause there are a high number of single women in poverty. And then somebody said well if you are going to talk about that, you better talk about disability and class because there is a huge correlation between disability and poverty. And then somebody else said to me if you are going to talk about that, you better talk about deafness and poverty because there is a really high correlation there. So I just say to people, I am just going to talk about class, OK?

JACOBS: OK. That answers that question. Um, I had one last question. I was wondering if you think, for example on page 53 of your book, you used the example of Walter's mother, and you said that her response was the self-righteous Christian response as opposed to the middle class response view of Christianity. Some people that I talked to viewed that as kind of perpetuating a stereotype and I know your critics have accused you of that too. Do you feel that that is something that maybe you need to tweak in your program?

PAYNE: What I have made clear from the beginning is that it is an analytical study of class, looking at cognition. It is a cognitive study. It is not a system to how people think. There are patterns in how people think. If you read the "Blink" OK? He talks about how people sort patterns. Your brain sorts by patterns. I had a man say to me you shouldn't share this stuff with anyone because people use it to stereotype. And I said stereotyping occurs when you apply the patterns in a group to everybody in the group, OK? But your brain is going to process in patterns and they can be informed or they can be uninformed but you are going to process that way. And one of the deals is, is that in poverty, the whole thing in that Walter story, is you defend your own no matter what they do. That is what you do.

JACOBS: But you are not saying that her view of Christianity is inferior to a middle class view?

PAYNE: No, and what is misunderstood by the critics is that one set of rules in one class is better than another. Right? I have never said that. They are just different.

JACOBS: Do you have data on how many people have been able to raise themselves out of poverty as a result of applying your theory?

PAYNE; I don't know about applying my theory, but 40% of people in America do not live in the class they were raised in.

JACOBS: OK. But how about your theory?

PAYNE: I have no idea.

JACOBS: OK.

PAYNE; I have no clue.

JACOBS: Hey, thanks a lot. I appreciate this.

This is was an interview with Ruby Payne, 2/20/08.