Our Broken World: A series of ever-changing opinions

Stuck in this Endless Cycle

     Low income neighborhoods are often seen as problematic because they have higher crime rates, and the imbalance of black people to white people in jail is very dramatic, with, according to a study by the Bureau of Justice (BJS), as of 2018, black people being more than five times the imprisonment rate of their white counter parts. Though it is more likely that a person of color is to commit a felony than someone of European descent, this has nothing to do with nature, and everything to do with the environments they grew up in.

     Growing up in a poor neighborhood means that housing situations may not be great and that constant food and heating supply could be a bit shaky, among many other things. Places like this see increased crime rates mainly because education in these places are less prioritized by the district, so they are then funded less, meaning less learning opportunities, finding work that pays all the bills is harder, and the overall phycological damage leads to people turning towards drugs and alcohol to wash away the feelings of stress, loneliness, and just overall depression.

The struggle with schools

     Starting on the subject of schooling, grades K-12, not just in low income neighborhoods suffer from the ever decreasing school funding. Upon research, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found that 34 states in the U.S. are contributing less and less money on a per student basis than they did the previous years, and because states are responsible for 44% of total education funding in the U.S., these upsetting numbers mean a continuous lowering of school funding, even when the states economy was only inflating before the pandemic hit. As you may have suspected, of course, areas with higher poverty rates feel the effects of this problem more than anyone else. Many of these children eat food at school and have to get some supplies from there as well when they cannot afford it, but when schools barely have enough to scrape by as it is, it can easily be imagined that this would be quite problematic.

     With this problem in the schools, families back at home that may struggle enough to eat as it is need more money to feed children when the schools are no longer capable of doing so. This means that more high school kids have to get jobs in these areas, and that could mean putting off school work or not getting enough time to study, their grades coming at the cost of maintaining enough money to sustain a steady flow of food. Once these kids have had problems in high school, of course they are less likely to get scholarships because their resume just is not as impressive as something along the lines of those who had the time and money to take college classes in high school, volunteer, were a activists, and other things. It does not mean that these kids are not smart, they just did not have as much a chance to.

     Still on the subject of schools, if someone did manage to get a full-ride scholarship to some ivy league university, the odds are still greatly stacked against them, because they still have to pay for their own books, which are most often required for courses, housing and food. This means, again, they might need to get a job to go alongside college, which may block out the opportunity for getting an internship, something that looks quite good when applying to a job. This challenge with money can lead to people having to drop out of college, never having the chance to receive a proper degree, once again weakening their chances of finding a well paying job.

The difficulty of finding and maintaining jobs

     Continuing with this setup, we have a college drop out student. They need to find a job, if they do not already have one. They find a job and work at an engineering facility. No, not as an engineer, as a janitor.

     While people with this job may have the luxury of staying home for work if they feel a little sniffly, janitors have to come into work everyday or they do not get paid. This requires them to have a car, because they are most likely not able to afford to live right next to where they work, and busses may not come around to their area. However, having a car comes with the struggle of buying and maintaining it, and to buy a car, you need credit, and to obtain credit, people may often get loans and pay them back on time to prove that they are trustworthy, so to speak. Sadly, even after redlining went away, banks still are more likely to hesitate to loan out to people in 'risky neighborhoods' and their implicit bias only adds to that, with being less likely to loan out to people of color.

     Living in a house is another thing that comes along with working as someone who has to drive into their job everyday. But with home the wealth gap increasing between whites and everyone else, it can be easily seen why this would pose a problem, especially when 'gated communities' are around because rich people do not want to live in the same place as those that struggle financially, making them more susceptible to commit crime out of necessity rather than stupidity. This problem is yet another obstacle in getting a job, seeing as convicted felony does not look good when applying for such.

The emotional struggles

     People that live harder lives are often more likely to be depressed, and less likely to find help, for many reasons, like how if life is hard, it is difficult to spot that they are depressed and it makes it harder to diagnose them. Because many forms of depression are not caused from chemical imbalance, counseling is the best way to help, but that gets pricey rather fast, making it an undesirable option.

     If that does not make sense the first time, just take a second to think about it; if someone is experiencing out of place emotional pain that seems to come about for no reason, it is easy to spot because it is easy to tell that these people should be happy with their lives. They can also afford good counseling to support themselves, another thing to help vastly. But, if someone is living a life that leads to natural difficulties and high levels of stress, that said depression is much harder to spot because it looks normal until, in many cases, it's too late.

     These struggles can cause people to turn to dangerous substances to take the edge off of life, but often only making it worse, resulting in over spending and sometimes looping them into the use of illegal drugs, such as marijuana. Luckily, the use of this substance being legalized in the U.S. has been passed by the legislature, but still needs to go through congress. If it does get passed, then it would mean the progress of decriminalization of people of color.

How this is all tied together

     Starting a life in these areas that many people say are considered 'dangerous' leads to many problems, starting with the struggle of school, then the struggle to find a job and establish a life before, in many cases, it does not all work out and life throws people into the same cycle as their parents before them, and so on. The same thing can be said about the next generation, who will be born in these conditions and fall into the same patterns, but who's to say one cannot hope for change? It's what keeps this world going round, isn't it?