My Neighborhood Makes It Easier to Get Pregnant Than To Go To College

[CFLDem]

By Shanice Joseph Time Magazine

'You should get pregnant,' a friend told me. 'Girl, the government will take care of you, trust me.'

If I were to get pregnant, I would know just where to go for help: the local offices of Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), the federally funded food and nutrition program; Planned Parenthood; and the Family Resource Center. All three are places where I stood in line for hours with my siblings as a child growing up in Watts. But finding local resources to pursue higher education is harder. As one of the few community college students living in Watts, I can’t find a place to print out an essay or get college-related advice.

When I ran into a friend who grew up in the same low-income housing development as I did, she said there was an easier way than to struggle through college. “You should get pregnant,” she told me. “Girl, the government will take care of you, trust me.”

Full article here

[Squinch]

1. Oh, good. The mythical welfare queen gets an article in Time. And then someone posts

it on a putatively liberal site.

It is easier in EVERY neighborhood to get pregnant than to go to college.

[CFLDem]

2. I don't think that's the gist of the article at all.

It actually encourages the government to provide increased support for needy families to make it to college/ tech school to break the poverty cycle.

[Squinch]

3. I work in a Watt's-type neighborhood with young people. I don't hear any girls saying to

each other, "Girl, just get pregnant and the government will take care of you." The girls I know are much smarter than that, and the idea that that is what they are saying to each other is insulting to them.

[CFLDem]

4. Thank you for clarifying that.

It's important to combat rightwing media spin.

[upaloopa]

5. Food shelter clothing basic necessities.

Education is not. Apples to oranges.
But I do wish education was more readily available.

[CFLDem]

6. I disagree

nourishing the mind is just as important to survival as feeding the body in today's society, if not more since the the former can feed the latter.

We as a society should demand a quality education from our government. Heck half of the reason college is mandatory nowadays is because we have a largely insufficient education at the high school level.

[WhiteTara]

7. Yep. nt

[Squinch]

8. If there is an actual girl from Watts saying those words, and this is not some pseudonymous

right-winger fantasy of what a girl in Watts says, I'll eat my hat.