Impact Of Poverty In Low Income Black Communities
When you are raised in a black community, there are many times in your life where you are going to go through a rough time. Being black means being powerful by the way you carry yourself, being strong mentally and physically, being hated for the color of your skin, and always finding a way. Coming from low black communities, you are doubted because people don’t think you will make it.
There are plenty of problems when coming from a low income community. You have kids that grow up with a single parent that’s usually the mother because they father is either in jail or ditch the family and then you have some kids that have no parents and are being raised by their grandparents since they parents are on drugs or can’t raise them. Also, growing up in this situation, you have to fight for survival by always finding ways to eat, to get clothes on back and to have a roof over your head since times are rough. Your mother has to work more than one job just to make sure her kids are taken care of and having to be on FoodStamps just to have a little support.
Drugs and Violence are a main concern when it comes to poverty. Being raised in low black communities, you are surrounded by drugs and gangs. Being surrounded by these two can get you caught up or you find a way to stay away from it. People that follow that crowd ends up leading you to either dead or in jail. Joining a gang is putting your life in danger as you will always be around drama, dangerous situations and tough situations that can cost you your life. For example, being a part of drive by shootings, gangs coming to your territory, being killed for selling drugs, going to jail for robbing and killing, etc.
Coming from nothing is a blessing. Going through all the struggles in your life either makes you or breaks you. How strong are you mentally to fight through everything you are going to face and make it into a good outcome? When you go to school and you come from a low income family and community, you are being doubted by teachers who think that you can’t make it and that you aren’t going to be successful in life.
Dealing with the struggles, black students would go to public schools where they barely had any supplies and books for their classes. With government not giving the public schools any funding, it was a stressful for them to get the education they needed. Not only that, the struggles they were dealing with outside of school as in being around drugs and all those kind of things made it hard for them to focus.
Coming from these communities, as a young man, society sees you ending up dead or in jail, and as a young girl, society sees you ending up pregnant at a young age. Staying positive and self confident will help you get through all the doubt and giving you the will and power to prove everyone wrong. Life is always going to be hard for African Americans, whether you a boy, girl, man or woman, but the main thing that matters is how you handle the challenges and tough times.
Overcoming these situations as in being a single mother or a kids prepares you towards success. Being a single mom, you make sure you teach your kids everything that they need to know in life to prepare them for the future. As a kid, you sit there, see your mom struggle and stress out over the bills and working hard to take care of you will humble and motivate you to push yourself in life to make it out the hood to take care of your mother so you guys don’t have to struggle no more. For example, Lebron James was raised by a single mom as his dad had left the family behind. James had saw his mom sacrifice a lot of things in her life being a young single mother. However, James took that as motivation and worked his tailed off so that his mother and him wouldn’t have to struggle no more which led him to pursuing his dream on being an NBA player.
