The Corner People

I've been meaning to make a post about this for awhile. The situation happened a few months ago. I was driving home from school to my apartment in the city (around Penn and 122nd st). Now, in this area there are a lot of people who stand on the corner asking for money. Whenever I see them, it really aches me not to help them...and it's generally awkward for me to just keep looking ahead and ignore them. Occasionally I would roll down my window and give them a dollar or two if I had the money on me at the time. But at this situation, I just ignored the man, like most of the other drivers at that spot, and I finished driving back to my apartment. This was around noon-1pm. I left my apartment that afternoon around 5ish, and driving back to the same corner, I saw another man standing there with kids who had posters saying that they were a football team that needed money for new jerseys or something like that. The response from the other drivers at that stoplight was pretty tremendous. A lot of them were rolling down their windows and tossing money into the little bucket, me included. After giving them the money and starting to drive off, I remembered that earlier I hadn't given the money to the man that previously stood at that corner.

So here's the deal. The drivers that I saw [including myself] were more willing to give money to kids for a recreational sport as opposed to another fellow man for necessities. Okay, so the kids won't get new jerseys for their team, but this guy gets to eat tonight or make a purchase that will ensure longer term survival. True, the man could have been standing there looking for money to score drugs or alcohol; however, even if whatever statistics support the likelihood of this claim, we are judging this man by actions that we have no proof of knowing.

I realize that my argumentation is not the best here, and I know there are reasons for giving the money to the kids as opposed to the man, but it kinda bothers me that I would value giving money to benefit these random kids recreation as opposed to helping feed the random person. It just seems like the priorities seem a little skewed...