Poverty: An Open Discussion

Happy Friday lovelies!

Hope everyone is having a good week and excited for the weekend ahead.

This week's topic is one personal and close to my heart through anetodal experience as well as through academic and professional awareness.

Poverty is a controversial subject that is extreme conditions of financial hardship and lack of econonic opportunity and/or resources. I decided to take a microscopic look at my hometown of Chicago, Illinois.

With Chicago gaining national noteriety for its increased influx of gun violence ( a seperate topic of itself), there have been many questions asked about my city- both indirectly and directly- concerning to the bug WHY; WHY DOES CHICAGO HAVE INCREASED GUN VIOLENCE?

As much as many "professionals" and experts try to give a clear cut answer, its nit simple to explain or understand. The one size fits all theory does not apply to describing the concentrated amounts of gun violence in the city's south and west sides.

Fun facts that are an prologue to the discussion is that roughly 10% of the city's families live in extreme cases of poverty- half the national poverty level with the largest concentrations being that of African-Americans. *Gasp*

Its no surprise, at least to me, that the highest concentrations if poverty happen to be in my own backyard because not onky did I personally experience this narrative, but poverty and race have become almost synonymous due to defacto segregation and political infrastructure.

I can go on and on about how Chicago was literally built and designed to benefit affluent, white migrants over black laborers that migrated to Chicago during the industrial revolution but I won't go there today. (MY undergrad degree is ALL about Urban  Politics so I can go on and on) However, poverty disproportionately affects African-American communities due to the lack of economical and social resources that allow families to get and stay ahead.

"What do you mean Chanel?"

Outside of disproportionate property taxes that fund local schools that are built like prisons, the hiring of unqualified white teachers from surrounding suburbs that lack cultural sensitivity and understanding, and the limited economic opportunity due to the inability to own land and create ownership without being bombarded with debt or high interest loans that can never be paid off.....

It ALSO breeds.....*drum roll* VIOLENCE. And with Indiana and its lax gun laws next door and Trump sending FBI agents to the south and west side to FURTHER the distrust and turf war with even more semi-automatic weaponry, you would think people would stop asking stupid questions. -____-

My mentor and esteemed colleague, Natalie Chadwell, MPH, sat down and spoke with me concerning the poverty and its affects on the Black community. Chadwell is the accreditation specialist for The University of Illinois Hospital while formally serving  on the board of directors for their subsidized, health care division.

For twenty plus years, Chadwell hss dealt with poverty on a first-hand basis through her work in public health. Poverty is a public health issue that not only affects the physical but the mental and emotional conditions of a community that perpetuates a toxic mentality through a lack of understanding, compassion, and access to resources.

Chadwell enlightened me that poverty within Chicago was not by accident but designed due to the creation of ghettos that mimicked those in WWII, redlining, and illegal political and economic practices that kept African-Americans from ownership and integrated spaces.

The poverty that bred violence began with the public housing projects-the notorious Cabrini Green that gained national head lines for Girl X- and how they were systematically designed to keep the males out of the household; leaving female-led homes that ran on limited income. Once those public housing sites were demolished, the issues that were once concentrated to a confined space from a set group of people within that area became disbursed into the general population.

Chicago then morphed into "factions" based on blocks or neighborhoods and gave birth to the current enviornment as it stands.

The effects of poverty literally shorten a lifespan by creating a constant physical reaponse towards stress and anxiety to where the body does not recognize how to regulate itself. Poverty also delays ckgnitive maturation due to the prefrontal cortex being under developed from the lack of emotional regulation; increasing the amount of emotionally charged responses. Health and nutrition in poverty affects the physical and psychosocial due to  limited nutritional value in the affordable foods that are available from local gricers that inflate prices due to the food dessert enviornment.

Many public school students get the bulk of their daily nutrition from school lunches while programs such as safe passage ( a city sponsored initiative puts neighbors of a community on "hot spots" to keep kids safe during thier walk to school) exist to keep children from getting inducted or affected by gang violence.

Children can focus in a school that has chicago police in every classroom, metal detectors, and teachers that are only present to have federal loans forgiven and be expected to succeed. Not only are they biologically wired to have more emotionally charged responses and are immersed in an enviornment that is literally killing them because of stress, they are placed with expectations that they are aware they are not believed they can meet.

These issues of poverty have allowed me on my journey to educate and be a role model to the most vulnerabe children in black and brown communities due to a lack of opportunity and resources. Poverty gies beyond the financial hardship and burden of a family and extends to the social, emotional, and cognitive maturation of Children that grow to be incomptent adults that literally do not know better.