My mother (may she rest in peace) was illiterate. She never had the opportunity to go to school and obtain an education. Growing up in Cuba, she spoke one language— Spanish. Upon arriving in the United States, she had difficulty communicating in English. But what my mother lacked in formal education she made up for with street smarts. Needing employment, she, like so many other refugees, did whatever had to be done to procure a job. Failure meant that her child would go hungry. “Do you know how to waitress tables?” she would be asked. “But of course. Back in the old country I was the head waitress in one of the most famous and busiest restaurants in the city,” she would respond, even though she had never carried a tray of dishes in her life. “But can you read English well?” the potential employer would ask. “But of course,” she would reply, “I have a high school diploma from the old country.” In reality, she simply memorized some important phrases found on most menus. She did get the job, and I, her son, got fed. Had I been an ethicist back then and approached my mother questioning her character, her virtues, or her values, she simply would have laughed at me for my naiveté. If she demonstrated the virtue of honesty and confessed that she had no work experience, no education, and could barely speak the language, she never would have been hired. Yet the moral reasoning that she employed enabled her to surmount societal structures fundamentally averse to her very existence. “Which is more ethical,” I imagine her asking me, “doing what needs to be done to get the job, or letting the sins of others force us to live on the streets?”
For her, living on the streets was not hyperbole or a hypothetical case study; it was a reality she faced. She sought to meet the basic needs of her family— in other words, to survive— while retaining her dignity. Because she had no opportunity to obtain a formal education. Because she was a Latina in the United States living within a social structure hostile to her presence, few employment opportunities were available (racism). She simply did not have the luxury to wait for the “art of the possible” to feed her family.
Miguel A. de la Torre. Doing Christian Ethics from the Margins By Miguel A. De La Torre (Kindle Locations 531-533). Kindle Edition. First page of Chapter 2.