AS THE country heads into another election year, even the politically uninformed have a pretty good idea what most of this year's talk will be about: national security and the slow recovery of the economy. They're both important topics, and ones that both parties will expend a great deal of resources and attention addressing. But in last week's annual recognition of Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday -- a day when we've come to expect token gestures of attention from conservative officials -- national civil rights and liberal leaders took the rare opportunity to plead with Americans to begin paying attention to an equally serious but much less publicized crisis taking place: that in our own communities. Even a cursory look around our country reveals disturbing economic trends taking place in poor, working class and minority communities. Americans must understand what's happening today in our own backyards and towns -- and how, if left unchecked, our very democracy and society lie in grave peril.
Here at the University, we lucky few who are privy to an incredible college education are almost completely insulated from the realities of poverty. As we form most of our perceptions about the world and the state of our country from the popular mass media, many people become conspicuously ignorant of what reality is like for those groups least represented there -- namely, the poor. For example, we don't realize that the minimum wage, when adjusted for inflation, has actually declined sharply ever since the 1970s, resulting in a rapidly deteriorating standard of living for the large swaths of American citizenry who work for low-wage jobs (according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which tracks the steady decline of workers' real wages).
We also don't realize that school quality in poorer rural districts and inner cities has sunk steadily for decades in tandem with rising levels of racial segregation (which result from wealthy districts attracting mostly white inhabitants, leaving minorities in poorer ones). These are just two examples out of hundreds of very serious social and economic indicators that show our country is becoming more and more characterized by a massive gulf between the rich and the poor -- and that mobility across that gap is becoming much harder.
The Hon. Anne Holton, Chief Judge of the Richmond Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court, spoke last week on the anniversary of King's birthday about the dire gravity of this steadily increasing gap between the "haves" and the "have-nots." As The Richmond Times-Dispatch reported Jan. 20, she commented extensively on how many of the children she encountered in her court "live in a world apart from you and me," and how many of them she meets have never even been out of Richmond. Even here in Charlottesville, the sharp contrast between the wealthy, professional, often University-associated class and the low wage-earning or unemployed one is obvious. In virtually every major city in the country, the story is the same -- in the last 10 to 15 years, the rich have become more and more insulated from the vagaries of reality by walling their communities, sending their children to predominantly white, wealthy schools (Northern Virginia, anyone?) and limiting their contact with the less fortunate or wealthy to the convenience store or cleaning service. "Wealthy America" is becoming increasingly oblivious to the fact that reality is much different for many Americans -- those for whom a minimum-wage job is a coveted thing, college is never seriously considered and affordable health care, insurance or a quality education are virtual impossibility.
This crisis is as urgent as it is systemic. Its scope transcends only one election or another, but politics does play a central role in how -- or if -- it will be addressed. The Bush administration and the Republican majority, for example, consistently ignore or feign patronizing support for the under-$100,000-a-year crowd. Fortunately for most University students, this doesn't harm their pocketbooks -- at least, not directly. But for the 35 million Americans under the poverty line -- 14.1 million of them in "severe" poverty, according to the U.S. Census -- this crisis of inequality and poverty in America is a serious problem, and it affects our entire society. So the next time you hear Republicans decry as unnecessary or excessive funding for welfare assistance, social programs, education or job training -- all of which President Bush has slashed time and again when it came to the federal budget -- think again about the kind of society you want to live in. America is not the place for a permanent underclass.
(Blair Reeves' column appears Tuesdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at breeves@cavalierdaily.com.)
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