Richmond needs help
by Ross Catrow
Living in the River City, you tend to get used to the terrible things people say about our home. Things like “third per capita for murder in the US!” After awhile, those things — at least for me — slip in one ear and out the other. I think a lot of it has to do with my age and current situation in life:
- I am married
- I am wealthy/middle class
- I live in a great neighborhood
- Stuff generally goes right for me and has most of my life
Give all that, I consider myself pretty lucky among humans on earth. After 24 years of living the vida lucky, it can be hard to remember that some people have it worse than you. If you are one of those people — like me — who haven’t got a care in the world, I’d like to draw your attention to the following graph (taken from Report of the Mayor’s Human Services Committee):
82% of all African American babies born in Richmond are born out of marriage.
This makes me want to cry.
As someone who loves this city, it is difficult to read this report. I mean, 17% of all students drop out of high school. STD rates are 4-5 times higher than the statewide rates. HIV rates are 3 times higher. And this is all from the graphs on page 1-4. Seriously what can you do other than pray?
I don’t even know, but I’ve hosted the report on haduken in case it disappears someday, so please give it a read. Richmond needs all of our help.
Excellent job, and thank you for posting this report.
i mean, cities are always worse than other places. is there a report on norfolk or something you could compare it to, instead of the state as a whole? i feel like it is apples and oranges.
-midas
Midas,
I agree with what you are saying. At the same time I know this: apples that give you AIDS are fair game to be compared to oranges. We all know cities are bad, but I didn’t know just how bad.
By the way, that graph has an astoundingly low information density.
yeah i mean i’m not saying aids doesnt suck. i just have a suspicion that you could find similarly alarming statistics if you compared any reasonably large city to the entire state it is in.
-midas
Don’t even look at the statewide comparison. The fact that 82% of african americans born don’t have a mom and dad sucks. I mean who cares if it is like that elsewhere? That doesn’t make it any better, just because other places are equally as terrible.
haha i guess i was distracted by the giant bar graph comparing the city to the state?
as far as 82% goes, that does seem like a lot. but they do all have moms and dads, even if they arent married. i mean it’s just a word. or a sacrament i guess, depending on your point of view. ;)
-midas
Yeah it is just a word and a sacrament. You should go over to Gilpen Court and tell the kids that. If you make it out alive, come back here and tell me what they said.
we need to get midas some religion.
Maybe this statistic will help:
Of *ALL* live births in Richmond, 61% are born to single mothers. So there is no word, or sacrament there at all. There is no father. At all.
i doubt that the kids at gilpen court or wherever that is would be much more cheerful if you went over there and told them how all their problems are because their parents werent married when they had sex. which is all this statistic really says.
i guess i am just not especially impressed with statistics on who does what when they are married or not married. i don’t see 2 unmarried people as necessarily a single mother working at mcdonalds and a troubled youth, with a dad that doesnt exist. maybe they just arent married. the high school dropout and std statistics i find to be very nice, though.
isnt single mother defined as someone who is not married? i’m not sure how the 61% statistic is any different from the 82%? again, it’s just a word, or a sacrament, depending on your point of view. they still have fathers. i would guess that many still have families, communities, and so forth. havent you ever watched lifetime, television for women? single mothers always learn important lessons about life and love.
the problem is, everyone is poor. i mean, i agree that these are bad things. i guess i just feel like the marriage thing is more an indicator of problems than a cause. but then again, it’s all a feedback loop, which is what makes it such a difficult problem.
-midas
Yeah, I feel the same way, but in the city of Richmond, most unmarried births are from households where only one parent is around. The major question is, how as a white/middle class/generally lucky human being do you even begin to make something like that better? Connecting and ‘making a difference’ is not only hard, but in some cases, totally unwelcome.
Yeah we had a big conversation about just that issue at beerble study on Wednesday. I honestly think it comes from meeting people’s physical and immediate needs and building a relationship from that. You might start out with something small like picking up trash in the neighborhoods every Saturday — so people begin to see who you are. One of my friends said you have to be willing to go in there and be unwelcomed. But I mean you just have to keep on until it is clear what your intent. I think anyway.
Also midas, I think your point of view on single mothers / family is correct for people live in Richmond who are white and middle class. I mean ask my wife, or anyone who teaches or spends a lot of time with poor black kids in Richmond. Lack of a father figure (61% of kids in Richmond) contributes to deliquency, crime, violence, highschool drop outs etc. I mean if you read the report I linked to the Mayor has a five point program to help the city. One of those points is dealing with young “at risk” males. They mention — the mayor’s office not me — several times that factors like: no fathers at home, no male teachers in elementary school, etc contribute to the general suckiness of black male youth.
And the problem isn’t that “everyone is poor.” The problem in Richmond is if you are poor — unfortunately — you are probably black:
Map of “Persons who are black or african american alone”
Map of Mean Earnings in Households With Earnings
It is kind of confusing because the first map, the darker the color, the more black people in that area, the second map, the lighter the color the poorer the area.
i mean it sounds like you are saying it is okay to be a single mother if you are middle class but not okay when you are poor. by okay i mean your kid will not be a criminal or whatever. which would make me think that the real problem is the being poor. that’s all i’m saying.
i mean you know it sucks in a general sort of “that’s not equal” way that a lot of black people are poor, but does the color of your skin have anything to do with the practical effects of poverty, ie crime etc.? would it somehow improve high school drop out rates for instance if 60% of poor people were white and 40% were black instead of 20%-80% or what have you, given that the same total number of people are poor? i don’t think it would.
useless fact: if i remember my research from my college days, nationally anyways most poor people are white, by a rather large margin (since there are more white people total). but amoung black people, a higher percentage are poor than amoung white people.
i still think the root problem is poverty. the other things are symptoms which tend to exacerbate the root problem, but the root problem is still the root problem. but going back to my original point, i think this is something that exists in every city in the world, and that has existed in every city in the world since cities were invented. so i certainly dont have a solution, except “fix poverty.” so i know i’m very helpful and constructive :).
-midas
In Richmond, in the South, yes I think it would. Not because black people are less smart or what have you, because black people in the South have 300 years of history working against them.
It would be interesting to look at these statistics for Hopewell, or Eastern Chesterfield, or some poor white area.
i guess i dont understand. their history makes them more prone to crime? like take a random white person, make him poor, and take a random black person, make him poor. the black person is more likely to commit a crime or drop out of school?
-midas
If I was more eloquent maybe I could explain my point of view, but I am not. I feel like this convo is making me sound like a racist which is the exact opposite of my intention!