As I write this, we are waiting for the people of Alabama to choose the man who will fill the position that Jeff Sessions vacated when he joined President Trump’s cabinet. I recognize that many people see this as a pivotal election, that may be important to the balance of power in our national government.
However, I believe that Roy Moore, whether he wins or whether he loses, is symptomatic of a larger problem, both in Alabama and across the United States. He has become the face of privileged white male power in his state and in his party. If he is elected to the Senate, he will represent a specific segment of the population of Alabama, which is found in other states as well. A specific segment of the population that wants to protect what they see as “the traditional way of life.”
The traditional way of life is not always beautiful for everyone.
Back in September of this year, the Guardian reported on the conditions allowing hookworm, a disease of poverty prevalent in the 19th century, to thrive in Lowndes County, Alabama today.
To summarize briefly, the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, working in conjunction with Alabama Center for Rural Enterprise (ACRE), did a study in Lowndes County, Alabama, and found that 34% of the test group showed positive results for genetic traces of Necator americanus. That is to say, they tested positive for the hookworm parasite, which thrives in untreated waste water.
Hookworms enter the body when humans walk barefoot in polluted and infested water. They eventually get to the small intestine and become parasites that suck blood from the human host body. A human afflicted with hookworms has iron deficiency and anemia, weight loss, tiredness and impaired mental function. When children have hookworm, their physical and cognitive growth can be affected.
If the good upstanding voters of Alabama think that some poor people living in rural areas are physically and mentally “slow,” it might not be genetics, but hookworms — a scourge which was supposedly eliminated long ago.
Lowndes County contains a portion of the Selma to Montgomery road made famous in the 1965 march by Dr. Martin Luther King and his followers. A local black store owner who provided a camping area and food for the marchers had her business torched and burned to the ground after the marchers left. The majority of the population of the county today is rural, black — and poor and struggling to barely survive.
Extreme poverty is a problem in many places in the United States. Alabama isn’t alone.
On December 1, Philip Alston, a professor of law and human rights at New York University, officially began a mission for the United Nations: a coast-to-coast tour to study poverty in the United States. West Virginia, Georgia, Alabama, California and Puerto Rico are the targeted areas. His official title is “U.N. Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights.”
The links below tell what’s been reported on this mission so far. I encourage you to read these articles and to follow other news reports about this as they develop. Just FYI, the first item below describes the poverty found in Alabama as the “worst in the developed world.”
http://www.newsweek.com/alabama-un-poverty-environmental-racism-743601
http://bigthink.com/robby-berman/the-un-finds-extreme-poverty-and-human-rights-in-an-unexpected-place
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/01/un-extreme-poverty-america-special-rapporteur
Extreme poverty in any state within our borders is our national shame. America should be better than this.