We’re losing this battle, and there’s no sign that’s going to change.
We’re spending millions of dollars every year to combat poverty in Rochester, and we’re losing this battle.
Every year for the past seven years, the organization known as ACT Rochester has released what it calls a Community Report Card, showing how the nine-county Greater Rochester area is doing in areas like poverty, health, and education.
And every year, the report tells the same story. You can find a few bright spots. But mostly, we’re doing very, very badly.
Far too many residents of the City of Rochester are poor. They are disproportionately people of color. And that situation isn’t getting better.
In 2012-2016, 54 percent of Rochester’s Hispanic children and 53 percent of its African-American children were poor.
Seventy-six percent of the city’s African-American families and 61 percent of Hispanic families were headed by single parents.
In the city school district in 2017, the four-year graduation rate for students – the vast majority of whom are children of color – was only 57 percent.
This is all connected. Poverty has an impact, in everything from health to education. And concentration of poverty – neighborhoods in which many of the residents are poor – causes enormous problems.
The City of Rochester has some of the worst concentrations of poverty in the state – and in the nation.
This is not news. The only news is that we’re still doing very little about it except talking. We talk about it a lot. And we give. Money, food, clothing… time. We volunteer, at soup kitchens and schools and service organizations. All of that treats symptoms. We’re doing almost nothing to address the poverty itself – or its concentration.
We’re perfectly willing to address poverty, to help the poor, in ways that make us feel good, as long as poverty stays in its place.
But we’re not about to let poverty come out where we are. We’re as content to leave poverty in its place as we were when we put it there.
And we did indeed put it there. We put it in the specific blocks of inner-city neighborhoods in Rochester and New York City and Chicago and Detroit…. Poor people – and specifically, poor people of color – aren’t living in concentrated poverty neighborhoods by accident. We put them there. And we did it deliberately. And we’ve done precious little to let them out.
Federal regulations, bank practices, local zoning codes, real estate practices, social service agency practices: all have limited where people of color can live. This is fact. And numerous academic studies and books have documented the results.
America’s post-Civil War history is one of deliberate segregation: blatantly racist policies and actions. And for all our talk about helping the poor, for all our talk about overcoming racism, we have no intention of breaking up the concentration of poverty in housing or education.
We will let a few black children attend suburban schools through the Urban Suburban Transfer Program. But no suburban school district will step forward to help create an integrated city-suburban school. We’ll applaud Habitat for Humanity’s effort to build housing for the poor in the city’s poorest neighborhoods. But no town official or suburban county legislator will lead an effort to ensure that housing is available for poor people of color in the suburbs.
And no state politician will suggest linking state funding to housing and education efforts that break up the concentration of poverty in the state’s cities.
Decades of studies have shown that poor families do better, and poor children do better, when they’re able to move to economically diverse neighborhoods and schools. None of those studies have caused us to change. And so we have another ACT Rochester report, showing that we’re losing the battle against poverty. And there’s no sign that’s going to change. Because we’d prefer that it didn’t.
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This article appears in Apr 25 – May 1, 2018.
Mary Towler, makes a simple fact plan and brings it to the forefront for Rochesterians to see. If I had my way, I would build housing where NO RENT was charged, Community Colleges Where tuitions were free, and the opportunity to open a business was less stringent. In my perfect world Childcare would be free, and there would be a garden of fresh fruits and vegetables on every corner in the city where residents could pick for free. In my perfect world, health care would be cost-free. I realize my perfect world only exist in my mind and perhaps in the minds of others especially those who are mentioned in this article. So perhaps the bigger and more imposing questions here are:
1. WHO IS GETTING RICH OFF OF THE BACKS OF THE POOR.
2. WHO STANDS TO LOSE IF THE PLAYING FIELD BECOMES LEVELED
Mary, if we address these questions, a lot of so-called bandaids providers would become surgeons of mercy and cut out greed and sew up the wounds of poverty….. in my perfect world…..
Well said Mary. You’re right, we like to talk, give, and volunteer but it does nothing to address the root causes of poverty. We suffer from a ‘not in my backyard’ syndrome and we have been taught by our politicians to do as such. Then, when we look at the amount of money that is literally ‘thrown’ at the problem we have to wonder, like RevDenise Lynn Smith states: Who is getting rich off of the backs of the poor?
My suggestion is to take the BILLION dollars that we currently spend on the experiment that has been the City School district and redistribute that into the following:
1. Cost of transferring city school students to working Suburban schools.
2. Programs for job obtaining education to city residents on government assistance.
3. Cost of offering working parents free child care services. One of the major expenses in a family single or otherwise, is the cost of child care.
4. For those who need it: Cost of assisted housing for working poor families.
5. Increase in housing authority expenses to help eliminate under equipped housing and increased violations to negligent landlords.
So, let’s reiterate:
Eliminate the underperforming City School District and their overpaid administrators and put that money to better use. That will not only hopefully create better citizens but better children.
I agree with everything Mary said. It is well said, and all true. But it doesn’t go far enough in laying the blame at the feet of the “we” – the white middle and upper classes for whom systemic racism was designed; this “we” does not want to lose the benefits “we” have gained from white privilege.
It seems that by using the term “we,” Mary assumes her readers are all white and middle or upper class, that no poor person of color reads City Newspaper. She dismisses Black and Latino/a people in poverty who are activists as well as others who organize people to address the discriminatory practices and root causes of poverty.
Otherwise, why say:
“We’re perfectly willing to address poverty, to help the poor, in ways that make us feel good, as long as poverty stays in its place.”
“But we’re not about to let poverty come out where we are. We’re as content to leave poverty in its place as we were when we put it there.”
“None of those studies have caused us to change. And so we have another ACT Rochester report, showing that we’re losing the battle against poverty. And there’s no sign that’s going to change. Because we’d prefer that it didn’t.”
If she is speaking directly to privileged white people, then say so. That would be more effective than lumping poor people of color into the “we,” which is offensive and inaccurate. Why not just name it – call out white people who continue to benefit from racist practices as the audience for the article, which makes it more challenging and might cause people to really take a look at their own complicity in the high rates of poverty for people of color?
It’s time to start naming systemic racism for what it is, and how white people continue to be directly involved in is continuation. It is not enough to use veiled vague statements laying the blame with “we.”
Barbara Lacker-Ware