Facebook asks me what’s on my mind. Instead, I’ll tell it what’s been weighing on my heart this afternoon and evening.
Poverty.
The words in my head aren’t making much sense. Or, the words are there and make sense, but they feel so vile. The words — swear words — in my mind and on the tip of my tongue are words I try not to say too often. I certainly won’t write them here.
That said, here are some questions I have:
- How can we justify piercing children’s brains with a poison that could likely stunt their development, hold them back through adulthood, and shorten their lives?
- How can we admire the problem of poverty, measuring it this way and that, teaching many courses on what the affliction does, yet rarely do we name the role that power so obviously plays in keeping people who experience it down?
- I feel so sickened by the number of times we absolutely must acknowledge how poverty’s impacts disproportionately fall on communities of color. What a horrible refrain to get comfortable saying, don’t you think?What a vomitous intentionality that so obviously unearths white supremacy!
- How can we rationalize that acute or chronic poor health sentences some to poverty and a large subset to bankruptcy? The latter often places improper shame on those who must live with the fact that life ain’t fair.
- Whose job is it to pit one poor community against another poor community — an evil act of deflection? Oh, alright, that one is too easy to answer. But it’s still a question worth asking often and in many venues.
If poverty weighs on your heart, please do something about it. While I want people to be charitable, I also want them to seek justice. Make a call to an elected official whose job it is to change such things. And then tell them some ways to do so.
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