the new york times recently ran an interview with will smith, discussing his new movie, the pursuit of happyness. the movie is based on chris gardner’s autobiographical book and tells the story of a particularly challenging time in gardner’s life when he and his son found themselves homeless in san francisco even as the single father sought to better their futures by working an internship at a brokerage firm.
the former fresh prince said that he could relate to gardner’s struggle and his continual striving:
“I have to be the best I can be. I have to achieve everything I can possibly achieve. I feel like I owe it to every single person I came into contact with, who knows my life, I owe it to them. It’s a call from God, or Allah, or Jehovah. I don’t even necessarily know why.
“The beauty of America is that we’re not realistic. The idea that anything is possible, that idea is being kept alive here. This story is why America worked — as an idea. The idea is that this is the only country in the world where Chris Gardner is possible. The pursuit is what makes America great.”
Then Will Smith did something surprising. He recited the Declaration of Independence. The whole first segment, including the “pursuit of happiness,” rapid-fire. When he finished, and noted the surprise of an observer, he said: “I believe it.” Pause. “I don’t believe we do it well.” And he recalled a moment from when he was walking through the Tenderloin with Mr. Gardner.
“We were just standing out there in this place of broken dreams. Of extreme poverty. And it washed over me that the greatest poverty is the poverty of ideas. Chris was equally impoverished as these people, but he never had the poverty of ideas. He was rich with belief. Rich with faith.” He smiled, that sunny It’s-Will-Smith-Things-Are-Looking-Up smile. “And I’ve always felt like that.”
why would i quote will smith on our public criminology blog? as criminologists, one of our jobs is to try to understand and explain why individuals commit crime, and why others who may be dealing with much more difficult circumstances embrace conformity. the poverty of ideas may be one explanation. i speak more often of the importance of hope, especially for our adolescents. how do we instill in them hope and belief and faith and then follow through by giving them the opportunity for meaningful work and satisfying lives?
anything is possible, right? how do we keep that idea alive for those who most need to believe it?
Comments 2
chris — November 6, 2006
yeah, michelle. i'm no will smith, but the simple belief that anything is possible keeps me going too.
Thomas Westgard — December 7, 2006
It seems as though the Fresh Prince is looking for the phrase Culture of Poverty.
"People with a culture of poverty have very little sense of history. They are a marginal people who know only their own troubles, their own local conditions, their own neighborhood, their own way of life. Usually, they have neither the knowledge, the vision nor the ideology to see the similarities between their problems and those of others like themselves elsewhere in the world. In other words, they are not class conscious, although they are very sensitive indeed to status distinctions. When the poor become class conscious or members of trade union organizations, or when they adopt an internationalist outlook on the world they are, in my view, no longer part of the culture of poverty although they may still be desperately poor." (Lewis 1998)
It seems to me that we could design a curriculum to teach the culture of poverty, with the hope that it would simultaneously provide those in it with insight as to how to improve their own lot, while providing people of more fortunate circumstances with better insight as to why and how people end up poor (and what better to do about it).
Not that any such thing is likely to happen under the current administration, but I have ideas. And hope...