The South was devastated by state-enabled poverty. Coronavirus will do it again.
Rev. Dr. William Barber and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove
Though President Donald Trump insists on calling it an "invisible enemy," COVID-19 is ever before us and the data increasingly make clear that the South will soon become ground zero for coronavirus deaths.
According to a new analysis from Pew's Stateline, the South is poised to see more death and economic loss from COVID-19 than any other region in the country and not only because so many Republican governors delayed stay-at-home orders, included extreme religious exemptions that allowed large crowds to continue to gather, and now seem poised to reopen everything from beaches to nail salons long before the curve has truly started to flatten. Stateline notes that decades of policies that undercut government programs and left individuals to fend for themselves have led to higher poverty rates, gaping holes in the social safety net and a health care system in which 75 rural hospitals across the region have been shuttered in the last year alone.
COVID-19, then, is a contrast dye, highlighting the South as the native home of poverty in America.
Long before this present crisis, the South suffered from a pandemic of poverty that was broadly hidden from public life. Politicians who preached freedom from government as the heart of American liberty used any assent to deregulate corporations; they preached "individual responsibility" and used that to justify the dismantling of and resistance to public services and anti-poverty programs. If people are poor, they said, it is not the fault of the wealthy who used the labor of the poor with too little care or remuneration; it is not, they said, the fault of the government that failed to promote the common good when it could promote a limited one.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/the-south-was-devastated-by-state-enabled-poverty-coronavirus-will-do-it-again/ar-BB12ZxYk?ocid=msn360
jimfields33
(15,450 posts)One day it will get bad. One day. Everyone keeps saying it. Maybe next week.