The Huntsville Times recently ran a three-part series on two Madison County neighborhood tracts-one rich, one poor-that revealed a wide disparity between the two based on United States Census Bureau 2000 data. The Census Bureau defines a tract as a statistical geographic area of a county with approximately 1,500 to 8,000 people. In this case, the standard characteristics (social, labor, housing, income, and education) were presented through a comparative analysis. Many of the indices listed were quite grim for the poor tract, with the cumulative effect of placing this tract in the hardcore, at-risk category. Clearly, the series documented one indisputable fact: the poor tract is approximately 75% African-American and the rich tract is 93% Caucasian. Interestingly, except for the details, any average member of the poor/rich tract could have provided the same analysis on the different demographic niches of these two groups. Over the past 40 years, the evidence presented has become well known: poor neighborhoods compared to higher-income neighborhoods have poorer quality and more crowded housing, fewer employment opportunities, fewer empowerment resources, schools with poorer performance records, steep income disparity, limited developmental capital, nil wealth-generating assets, and bleak youth outcomes.
If both tracts could claim historical parity, the recitation of the deep-rooted plight in the poor tract would be cause for despair. But history, particularly in the Deep South, has a way of explaining the unexplainable. Of course the series did not address the historical context of the poverty. Perhaps this oversight was positive. We all know the history and impact of slavery, segregation, and racism on Southern society. I suppose those issues were a given in the preparation of the series. The challenge now is to decide what to do about the ones left behind and there is no doubt about who should go back and get them. Certainly, anyone from the 3,492 residents of the rich tract may decide to help out. But those of us who escaped through the portal of opportunity provided by civil struggle and legal breakthroughs over the past 40 years have a moral, cultural, and ethical duty to reach back for those "left behind."
The series painted a picture that warrants ample cause for concern and more concerted intervention. Clearly, The Huntsville Times' series documents with demographic evidence that 581 poor residents of Madison County's census tract 16 were left behind. Unlike Harriet Tubman, who never lost a passenger on her Underground Railroad, we lost a few in our frantic but successful efforts to leave poverty behind. But the cargo is small enough (581) for us to reach back and get all of them. Our internal resources in the African-American middle-class village in Huntsville are vast enough to support a well-orchestrated backtracking to those still on the banks of despair, intractable poverty, and community disintegration.
The African proverb should be our drum call--It takes the village to save a people. The trek of the Magi bearing gifts to the poor child lying in a manger is our holiday North Star.
Merry Xmas!