By Steven White, east Tennessee native, and UFE intern
John Edwards – 2004 Vice Presidential candidate and founder of the Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity at the University of North Carolina – pointed out the importance of not losing sight of rural poverty in a recent interview with the Institute for Southern Studies. And as he aptly noted, “[e]ighty-two percent of the poorest rural counties in America are in the South.”
Discussions of American inequality usually focus on urban poverty, seemingly with the implicit assumption that if we address urban poverty, the problem will be solved. Rural poverty, however, is distinctly different than its urban counterpart, both less understood and in some ways more tragic. I don’t mean that urban poverty isn’t harsh or that it somehow receives too much attention. Rather, rural poverty simply receives far too little. And as Edwards pointed out, to understand rural poverty we must understand the South, a region with its own very distinct characteristics.
What makes rural poverty so different than urban poverty? Unlike the poor in big cities, impoverished rural dwellers are often severely isolated. The urban poor can walk or take public transportation to large libraries, community centers, and up-to-date hospitals. The rural poor, in contrast, often must own a car to access even a small, poorly-funded library. Recreational facilities for the young and old alike are far less prevalent. Rural hospitals can be few and far between, and often lack adequate funding. The South, furthermore, is the only region in the country where wealth is actually declining, with the median wealth of southern families dropping by 18.8% between 2001 and 2004. It accounts for half of the 10 worst states for foreclosures and bankruptcy rates in the region are among the highest in the nation.
Children especially fare much worse in the South than the rest of the country. The Kids Count Survey, which measures child well-being in the 50 states, gives its worst rankings to the southern ones. Of the 10 worst states, 9 are in the South: North Carolina, Kentucky, Alabama, Georgia, Arkansas, Tennessee, South Carolina, Louisiana, and Mississippi. Only Virginia ranks in the top 25. In some states like Mississippi, the situation is especially dire, particularly in the poorest rural counties.
One notable similarity between urban and rural poverty is the disproportionate number of African Americans that suffer from it. According to researchers at Wake Forest University, some predominantly African American counties in Mississippi not only have infant mortality rates higher than the state average, but they are in fact higher than the average for many third world countries. Remarkably, at least one county has an infant mortality rate higher than only 4 countries in the entire Western Hemisphere. TV hurricane coverage isn’t the only place where the Gulf South can look like a third world country. Sometimes even statistics do the job.
And while most of the media’s hurricane coverage focused on urban New Orleans, the majority of affected residents in Mississippi actually lived in non-metro areas. These residents were 9% less likely to have a college degree and came from families that earn on average $10,000 less than their urban counterparts. Minority populations are 7% higher in these areas. 40% of non-metro African Americans in the area lived in poverty and were generally more likely to live in mobile homes. This has been mostly overlooked, partially because the images from New Orleans were so shocking, but also because we tend to focus on urban centers, unfortunately at the expense of their rural neighbors. These rural residents, however, are often even more vulnerable.
Racism, while a major factor in urban poverty as well, is even more blatant in the South than the rest of the country. The region’s addiction to slavery before the Civil War changed into other ways of maintaining white economic supremacy afterwards – legally with Jim Crow laws and extra-legally with groups like the Ku Klux Klan, founded in Tennessee. Nostalgia for past race relations can be found in sometimes surprising ways. Statues commemorating fallen Confederate soldiers are not uncommon. Until 1997, Virginia’s state song was an old minstrel tune narrated from the perspective of a former slave. Referring to himself as an “old darkey,” he expresses improbably longing for his old “massa.” It was reduced to “state song emeritus” after protest. Florida’s state song, however, still has its origin in minstrel shows. Mississippi has the distinction of having the only state flag in the nation to incorporate the Confederate flag in its design (in the same section as the 50 stars on the American flag). In 2001, voters chose to keep it instead of a new design considered less offensive. Just recently, 19 southern Republicans in the House of Representatives even voted against renewal of the Voting Rights Act.
How has this racism affected the South economically? In the late nineteenth century, the white politicians in control of the region were willing to sacrifice education and social welfare to maintain profit and white privileges. Over time, this became embedded in southern law, and today the South still suffers disproportionately from low-quality education and poor social welfare. Politicians did everything in their power to prevent solidarity between poor whites and African Americans and they mostly succeeded, something that carries over into the present. Poor whites in the rural South are in many ways less fortunate than poor whites elsewhere in the country: more isolated and with fewer opportunities to change their stations in life. Poor rural African Americans fare even worse, one reason the South has the highest rate of black youth military recruitment in the country. In fact, 70 of the top 100 counties for black youth recruitment are found in the South, where many poor rural youth see no other hope for advancement.
In 1938, President Roosevelt declared the South to be the nation’s number one economic problem. It was then, and unfortunately it still is now. To accurately understand this problem, we must understand the distinct nature of both rural economics and southern political culture. Not only southerners, but also the nation as a whole needs to pay attention, once again, to the specific and distinct forms of inequality found throughout the rural South. Only a nation-wide awareness can help genuinely lift up the nation’s poorest region.
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