POVERTY

Child being bathed

Poverty is disproportionaly experienced by some minority groups, and by single parent families headed by a woman. In addition, poverty itself is often stigmatized by preconceptions about why people are poor, and what poor families are like. At the same time even those of us who are not poor may be fearful of it, especially if we live one or two paychecks from homelessness as is the case of many families in the United States. Sometimes this fear may focus on minority groups or women, a feeling that they are getting the jobs and the breaks that you are not.

This is a page of stories that share the experiences of being poor - how did it come about, how did it feel - and/or of encountering those who live in poverty. It is also a place to share our fears and the situations that bring them out.

I see the neglect in cities around the country, in poor white children in West Virginia and Virginia and Kentucky--in the big cities, too, for that matter. I see the neglect of Native American children in the concentration camps called reservations. The powerful say, "Pull yourself up by your bootstraps." But they don't really believe that those living on denuded reservations, or on strip-mined hills, or in ghettos that are destinations for drugs from Colombia and Iraq, can somehow pull themselves up. What they're really saying is, "If you can, do, but if you can't, forget it." It's the most pernicious of all acts of segregation, because it is so subtle. ----Maya Angelou

POVERTY

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