Nicholas, Urban Poverty in America, and Social Justice in Our Cities

The Following Research Paper was drafted in Response to a New York Times Article by N. Whitaker titled “First Born, Fast Grown: The Manful Life of Nicholas,” which discusses urban poverty in Southside Chicago, and the Citizen’s Committee’s “Keeping Track of New York City’s Children” which details poverty, health, housing, welfare, employment, crime, and other New York City statistics and their effect on the youth. 

The New York Times Article can be found here, and is a pre-requisite before reading the text below.

The Citizen’s Committee text can be found here, and is not necessary to the text below, however it is also recommended.

Abstract:

The life of Nicholas growing up in Southside Chicago in an impoverished single-mother home is just one story out of the hundreds of millions of Americans throughout history who suffer from human rights abuses as a direct result of the inequality and stratification of society created by capitalist economics. Urban, Poor & Working-class, and especially minority-populated neighborhoods in New York paint a picture of condensed socio-economic oppression and exploitation comparable to the undeveloped world. The struggle of Nicholas’s family to survive in the Chicago inner-city is all too common across America as a result of the inability of the capitalist system to provide the necessary social services that the poor and working class need to live. Through organizing and providing communities with essential social services, employment resources, and better housing; we can turn marginalized low-income areas into thriving working class communities with a brighter future for our children.

Introduction

For a little over a century, Poverty in marginalized urban areas has existed as a epidemic that has become accepted as the result of an economic system that designs classes so that there can be no other way but downward mobility; This is illustrated by the constantly increasing demand for food stamp benefits in New York in the past decade as youth are coming of age in poverty, and are demanding food stamps in higher numbers than ever before (Citizens, pp. 79). The institutionalization of poverty has led to biological, social, and psychological damage to low-income communities. The capitalist economic system designs working class and minority populated urban areas to have a lack of access to proper educational, health, and employment opportunities, whether it is Southside Chicago or Mott Haven in the Bronx (Citizens, pp. 32). Accelerated by belief in trickle-down ideology, eligibility-based welfare reform, and cuts to public employment, Medicaid, and housing (Carter, p.1); We have seen the lives of poor and working class families like Nicholas’s face dire abject poverty as only the shell of a safety net has been left. Drastic cuts have left millions who need assistance out of luck, as the new corporate welfare Clinton-Gingrich system that replaced the socialistic New Deal one is based on keeping people who need assistance off the rolls (Ibid, p.2).  What’s worse is that banks like JP Morgan and are profiting off of Nicholas’s misery (Wright, 2011).

Unemployment is now nearly at 10%, Under-employment at 20%. (Gallup, Figure 1, 2.), and amongst minority communities in New York the figures are even higher (Citizens, Fig. 44, pp. 67). Yet at the same time the federal government has cut taxes for the richest 10% (Jimenez, 115). The city announced in the past few years an end to new Section 8 vouchers which give working New Yorkers Access to affordable housing. Then the Advantage Subsidy was discontinued as well, which was essentially the only sort of program to help homeless people get housing (New Destiny, p.1) Furthermore ‘at-will’ employment makes firing employees without just cause easy, and thus exploitation of the desperate even easier.

This is the result of capitalism’s race to the bottom. We saw this clearly in ’95 with AT&T’s downsizing layoffs that led to an increase in stock value of 10%. (Karen Ho, Liquidated, p.1-5) Afterwords many companies like Enron and Bank of America then followed suit. With outsourcing often ending up in raising wages, forcing companies to then move to the next market (Chan, Pt. 4-13.), a savage system has been set up where breaking people’s backs in turn means great profit.

Few people see a connection between the cuts to social services, the increasingly volatile greed of corporate-profit motives, and America’s inner-city ghettoes. In marginalized areas of America’s cities, like ‘The Lower’ or ‘Mott Haven’ in New York, households under the poverty line make up half of the neighborhood (Citizens, pp. 68). The bio-pyscho-social internalization of this is principle to lives of working and poor people in America. The reality of the environment that Nicholas grew up in is one of few jobs, educational opportunities, decent housing, or even nutritional opportunities. The modern low-income urban neighborhood has been designed by the top one percent to be a pool of cheap labor (and high unemployment) where people live desperately, and thus will accept lower and lower wages; This is evident is the large discrepancy between state and citywide unemployment in New York (Citizens, Fig. 43, pp. 66). Furthermore, because the people who live in these areas are already marginalized; the political establishment refuses to keep promises of maintaining housing infrastructure. This is supported by the presence of rats, rodents, and endless maintenance deficiences in New York apartments, primarily in public housing areas like the Lower East Side, Mott Haven, and Brownsville where sometimes half of all apartments in a neighborhood face these issues (Citizens, Fig. 75, 76, 77, pp.88-89).  Nicholas’ Struggle should be seen as a call for a social-orientated economy in America; one that treats poverty as a human right abuse rather than the norm.

Biological Constraints on NicholasLife for many people in marginalized urban areas of cities like New

York in Chicago has created a biological cycle of repressive factors. Nicholas is eating bologna because working class people and minorities have been subject to generations of stagnant wages, and a constantly rising cost of living (Pollack, 2008). As a result Nicholas is forced to eat cheap bologna, and live in a barren apartment. Working class and poor individuals have seen attacks on rights like food stamps and housing that have have disasterous consequences. JP Morgan’s profiteering from the program, and the fact that the scale gives a decreased amount of credit after the first person (Carter, 2012). Years ago, Cabrini-Green Chicago’s largest project was unjustly bulldozed despite the displacement of hundreds of thousands of poor families, and now Obama is continuing this policy by defunding the HUD, Section 8, and housing complexes all over the country (Clark, 2012).
But the most challenging biological issues pressing Nicholas are the the use of crack by his mother in the often violent community, which undoubtedly effects the family everyday. The family also lacks a steady father figure, which is difficult for multiple boys growing up in a inner-city environment. In New York, low-income neighborhoods are more prone to biological adversities as a result of poor access to nutrition as well as enivornmental adversities like crime and pollution; For example over 10% of New York households have lead contaminated tap water, which lead to learning disabilities in children (Citizens, Fig. 94, pp. 99). low-income communities such as Mott Haven and ‘The Lower,’ face epidemic health issues as a result of proper access to healthcare facilities and health insurance (Citizens, Fig. 310, pp. 228-229). This is complicated by underfunding to medicaid and medicare as a common practice, causing doctors not to accept it’s payout or give less treatment. It is yet to see whether the expansion of medicaid, secured through a long struggle for universal healthcare culminating in Obama’s Affordable Care Act, will have the matching funding needed to support a system that has often been underfunded. Also an issue is that many high-level doctors do not want to take medicaid’s low pay-out. When Deamonte Driver and Esmin Green died it was the result of the failure of healthcare for low-income people in America (Walden, 2008). In order to provide children like Nicholas with necessary medical and counseling services; medicaid needs to not just be expanded but completely restructured to accomodate the needs of a first world industrial country.

Social Problems Effecting Nicholas, His Community, and Family

The Social issues that Nicholas, his community, and family face are all connected to the austerity measures, marginalization of low-income areas, and neoliberal economics that deprive urban communities of the resources necessarily to building thriving working class and low-income neighborhoods. In 1996, a Republican-led congress passed welfare reform

with the assistance of democrats; Reform that abolished New Deal Era Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), and implemented Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) (Hasking, 2006, pp.1). TANF’s first major issue was cutting the welfare roll by requiring work of people who were out of work, or unable to acquire work as the result of a lack of education, training, and other circumstances (Ibid, pp.1). Immediately the most vulnerable segment of the population was choked of assistance it needed, and this doesn’t just effect low-income African-American communities. A
Report to Congress on Native-American TANF use illustrates TANF’s inability to provide a pathway for the unemployed, and combatting poverty (GAO, 2002, pp.2). Secondly, TANF had a time limit; Nicholas and his mother’s struggle against systematically-induced poverty does not have a time limit, and two years of small monthly checks isn’t going to help raise a family in the inner-city. (Jimenez, 2010, pp.30). Thirdly, TANF has been administered in  small block grants to states, which in turn results in the lack of funds to cover even half the people that need the assistance (Ibid, pp. 34-35).
Living in a marginalized urban area, Nicholas and his brothers have grown up accustomed to shootings, narcotic use and trafficking, a underfunded school, decaying urban housing, a lack of employment or employed role-models. A recent recession has accelerated the stratification

of wealth that has resulted in the foreclosed homes, lay-offs, and evictions. Inner-city communities all over America are entrenched below the poverty line. In New York, most of the Bronx has a median income that is just over the poverty line (Citizens, Fig. 35, pp. 62). The economic isolation of the low-income Bronx is definitive in the American use of the Jewish term, “Ghetto,” for the isolated ethnic concentration camp deportation neighborhoods where the Nazis penned minorities and radicals before sending them to their death. In America, the term became popularized as a metaphorical definition of how bad conditions had become in inner-cities as the result of inability of the economic system to provide a better future for marginalized people.

The Pyschological Effects of the Ghetto on Nicholas

Growing up in an urban ghetto, many youth face constant traumatic stress stemming from the frustration of family life, the neighborhood, and the inability to break the cyclical chains of the poverty and urban decay, which surrounds youth in these neighborhoods. The effect of the lack of opportunities and the violence are extremely prevalent on Nicholas’ family; Nicholas’ and his brothers witnessing a shoot-out is an all to common traumatic event in New York when the desperation of intense poverty pours out into the streets. The trauma that these incidents induce upon youth force the children to feel unsafe, stressed, and scarred for the rest of their lives. It can lead to use experimentation with controlled substances which by high school in New York ranges from 5-30% of students (Citizens, Fig. 236, 237, pp. 182-183), also the need to protect oneself has resulted in approximately 10% of New York City students carrying a weapon for protection (Citizens, Fig. 232, pp. 180).

Children in the city become embedded in the street, fearful of each other, defensive, or emotionally hardened as a natural reaction to whatever trauma is most bluntly experienced. Nicholas and his family keep positive through the bonding love of a struggling family, but it’s not always so for many families.

In order to feed her children, Nicholas’ mother has worked a series of low-paying labor-intensive jobs. The pyschological effect of these jobs never paying enough is this feeling of not being able to achieve success, which leads to an apathetic mentality of giving in to oppression. Already Nicholas is handwashing clothes and cooking dinner; an introduction into the hard life of his mother, and the cycle of life for households in the southside.

The hardships of Nicholas’ childhood can both build character, and way him down with the hopelessness of being unable to realize the life he envisions. One thing is for sure; the life of the inner-city youth dealing with complex issues of concentrated poverty has the possibility of a far more negative effect on the pyschological development of youth, when compared

to those well-to-do suburban environments. As a result of pyschological damage, youth are often marginalized and unprepared for college or careers, and are forced to turn to the streets as the result of an economic system that is stacked against them (Citizens, Fig. 232, pp. 180).

Conclusion: A Better Future for Urban Youth

The Biological, Social, and Pyschological adversities that youth growing up in neighborhoods like Southside Chicago, Mott Haven, and other low-income areas face on daily basis is often overlooked and forgotten as the result of an economic system that naturally has these stratified unequal elements of society. In order to improve the safety, education, housing, and job situation; major employment programs, public works, community outreach, and attention on the economic inequality that exists in our inner-cities is crucial. in order to create a better future for the next generation.
Nicholas’ life represents the biopyschosocial problems of the third world existing all over America. But it doesn’t have to be this way; communities that improved in poverty statistics over the past decades, like the Lower East Side, have demanded stronger community assets and programs (Citizens, Fig. 310, pp.228-229). By organizing communities and providing opportunities and resources; inner-city neighborhoods can become great communities without displacing low-income residents.

References

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Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. U.S. Government Printing Office (2008). One year later Medicaid’s response to systemic problems by the death of Deamonte Driver : Hearing Before the Subcommittee on Domestic Policy of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, House of Representative.<http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CHRG-110hhrg49775/pdf/CHRG-110hhrg49775.pdf&gt;.

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