Every Tuesday and Friday afternoon I drive by the White House, the U.S. Capitol, opulent embassies and sprawling, grand residences in order to make my way to a low-income housing development in Southeast D.C. The tragic irony of the location's vantage point is that it provides some of the best views of the city from within the city. The Barry Farms Housing Development is what many of you might call a "ghetto," overlooking our most cherished city on a hill. For Donte, the 12-year-old youth I have spent the past two years tutoring every week, he calls it "home."
The District of Columbia provides an opportunity for Congress collectively, and for members of Congress individually, to act as a mayor through the administration of this fair city. The result: tremendously affluent and peaceful neighborhoods easily within sight of some of our nation's most impoverished and violent communities. How can we reconcile such disparity within our society?
I wake up to our national arboretum of a campus and neighbors who are among the most powerful figures in the world. Donte goes to sleep to the sounds of gunshots, drug busts and gang violence every night. Yet we tell ourselves, on some level, that such class differences don't matter. That if Donte has the will to overcome such obstacles, he can undoubtedly find the way. We comfort ourselves with such illusions while our government works diligently to take the welfare check out of the hands of Donte's single, working mother and starve his already poorly funded public school of resources because it is "failing."
Come with me to Southeast one day. Please. There are no white people. Witness for yourself the demographics of poverty in our nation, as characterized through this starkly representative microcosm that is the district, and then tell me that affirmative action is no longer necessary in our race-blind society. Because in America, particularly in urban America, poverty has pigment. This is not to say that only people of color in America are poor or in need of assistance, but it does distinguish reasons for their existing in this state in such lopsided numbers.
John Edwards spoke to our school Sunday night about a subject that is very near to his heart: poverty. I was struck by how quickly and passionately he advocated for making the eradication of poverty a national priority. In subsequent discussions about poverty, the welfare state and wealth redistribution with fellow students, I have been struck by how reluctant we, the privileged, sometimes are about giving up a little of all that we have been blessed with so that others might live and perhaps advance beyond their present social condition. I've heard the idea of government fighting poverty demonized as socialism in disguise and the thought of setting idealistically broad goals without establishing a precise infrastructure for funding those goals called impractical and "not good policy."
But I tend to agree with Edwards that we must first recognize the problem for what it is. The fact that the unemployment rate for urban blacks can be tracked above 10 and 15 percent in some cities is abominable. If our national unemployment rate were such, we'd call it a depression. So at what point did we become comfortable relegating such economic conditions to specific races? Wouldn't the race specificity of such poverty, especially among urban minorities, make us all the more indignant and determined to see it end?
After coming to terms with the problem of poverty, we then dedicate ourselves to defeating this social condition, at home and abroad, by any means necessary. But we have yet to even make this national commitment.
The privileged are concerned all too often about how they are oppressed as opposed to how our lifestyles and social choices, directly and indirectly, oppress others. This is the rather natural product of our being a "thing-oriented" society concerned with possessions and profits far more than people. We are all guilty of such sins and therefore are all without the ability to escape responsibility when it comes to fighting poverty.
Even as I write this article, I think to myself about how I will continue to live my life despite my empathy and best intentions. Working with Facilitating Leadership in Youth (FLY) in Southeast D.C. has taught me much about the nature of poverty and how it affects individuals.
The next time that you feel the urge to call Southeast D.C. or places like it a "ghetto," remember that people live there. Don't you dare think of them as objects, creatures or anything otherwise inhuman out to hurt you or steal from you. Now replace these people with your mother, father, sister or brother, and then choose a word to describe their condition. Then ask yourself whether or not people deserve to live there. Ask yourself how your life might have been different if you were born in a place like that. Take a trip there and experience it firsthand. Not because it is a liberal or conservative thing to do. Not because you can throw it on your resume or gain recognition for your good deeds. Do it because it is the humane thing to do. Don't ever forget, they are human. And so are you.
