Growing Up In Poverty

 

Well, this is a subject that has been an issue in socioeconomic discussion since the time of reconstruction.  The initial problem of the poverty created by being strangers in economic society is helplessness to change your condition, in particular the substantive part of life.  We know that conditions have a direct effect on your stability and health.

 The article in Vox makes the statement that “living in a poor neighborhood changes everything about your life.”  I don’t know if people really understand how true that statement is.  I grew up in poverty, and we like to say that we were not poor, but rather “po,” without the other “o-r.”  There is a sense of hopeless and destitute reality that poor people live with and feel that can be suffocating.  I have often described as the defeat of defeatism. If I might explain, if you consciously see that no matter what you do, the same outcome will produce of all that is around you, then you stop believing that other things exist.  Of course, they exist, but for you that isn’t a part of reality.  Thus, you are defeated by defeat, and that is a tragedy of many people who grow up in severe poverty, and that poverty is more than resources.

The real poverty is the scarcity of opportunity which creates a feeling of futility. 

If you pair poverty with education, according to the articles, imagine trying to learn but real-life situations weigh and bombard your conscience at all times.  The oldest child, due to living in poverty becomes a caretaker, thrust into a responsibility that usually cause resentment, which often turns to societal anger.  It can also create a sense of unfairness, in which one believe that the world has two sets of rules subconsciously.  That becomes self-fulfilling prophecy when the behavior trends in the direction of negative realities.  Yet, education says that if you try hard enough you can change your stars.  How can one combat your dreams and hopes with reality that not only stares at you but bludgeons you on a daily basis?  This creates emotional and mental stress, and as the saying goes pressure burst pipes.

Another article we have read in this class confirmed what we know naturally through experience that the library of your vocabulary directly correlates with your upbringing.  If you are not accustomed to hearing certain words, and phrases, when you encounter them from a functional education point of view, you are literally behind in literacy.  Without the ability to decipher language, that will impede your understanding of sciences, mathematics, theories, and more.

Accordingly, the article addresses the problems of capital and location.  Children that live in more affluent neighborhoods or situations have a tremendous advantage not just from a resource point of view, but also from the alleviation of external issues that children in poverty have to overcome. Above we gave an example of how external issue impact internally.  If you compound that with the home life and the condition of the parent educationally, professionally, and mentally, one can see the conflux of the perfect storm.  Statistics bear it out in the articles that this issue is well known and complicated, but there is reason to believe it can be mitigated.

It is no secret that we have the money to alleviate poverty.  The question is not ability but desire to do it.  I hate to say this, but poverty is profitable and serves systemic need.  If it did not, then all would ascend like the Italians, Jews, Irish, and Chines of the early 19^th century tenements and slums.  Poverty seems to be in particularly related to a couple of social groups. That is not to say that the people of Appalachia, Arkansas, Alabama, and the likes don’t have it, but we all know how it affects the black and Hispanic populations.

The chief means of alleviate this disease, is to allocate the resources necessary.  It is not complicated at all.  Secondly, cease to permit silent segregation in every quarter. 

The wealth problem cannot be so easily solved because that is individualistic and a product of capitalism.  You can’t make up centuries of the lack access to wealth building institutions.  What you can do is create a better playing field and reduce the marginalization of society in respects to the poor.  Better schools and learning mechanisms can be provided, along with teachers who are the equation equalizer all across the world.