"Why The South Is More Violent Than The Rest Of America"

[DemocraticWing]

46. Poverty.

It's widely accepted that the root cause of violence is poverty and problems associated with it. Leaving young people (often men) disenfranchised from the system without education or job prospects leads people to become more desperate and make worse decisions. They are treated like criminal outcasts by the justice system (and its associated prison-industrial complex) for doing something as insignificant as smoking weed, and once people become criminals they are likely to be hardened and it raises the chances they'll commit a violent crime.

The south is the region most affected by poverty, and therefore more likely to have problems with crime and violence. This is how we explain crime in places like Chicago and Detroit, so while it may be easy to jump up and down and claim that southerners are genetically different from "real Americans" and predisposed to violence, it makes more sense to draw comparisons with crime and its causes in every region of the country. And poverty is the biggest culprit no matter the region.

As Democrats we should be addressing the problems of poverty in every region including the south, even if it is full of Republicans. It might just make the south less Republican.