Column: The suffering of the 'Other America'

America is the most industrialized nation in the world, making up nearly a third of the world's wealth. Here at Duke, we see the benefits of American capitalism. Our gothic walls, technologically advanced classrooms, simple meal plans and closed-in aesthetic environment have fortified us in a wealth bubble. We are one of the wealthiest schools in America and the world. We are the fortunate sons and daughters of American democracy and capitalism. But Duke's concentration of wealth is matched by Durham's concentration of poverty. This is a microcosm of America's predicament.

Duke lives in a poverty-stricken city, where only a mere ten feet off East Campus the brutal reality of the "Other America" has its home. Most of us avoid the "Other America" and simply blame laziness, alcoholism and stupidity. This prejudice ignores the fact that the ostentatious characteristics of the poor are often the symptom and not the cause of their poverty. Regardless of how these citizens landed in poverty (I leave that for yet another column), these citizens are still Americans, our peers and our neighbors. Should they not deserve basic healthcare, education and other necessary services to sustain a basic quality of life? Isn't it true that economic studies show that increased healthcare and education improve a family's socio-economic standing?

In the richest country in the world with the capacity to provide for all its citizens, we have chosen not to fix the problems plaguing this class of Americans. It is not a matter of whether we can or cannot-we just won't.

The suffering of the "Other America" in our midst is alarming. How can we ignore that over the past two years 2 million Americans lacked health insurance? This includes entire families, where children cannot receive the proper care when sick. I was recently surprised to learn that out of the developed Western nations, America's life expectancy is one of the lowest. Public schooling has been equally as horrible. Just recently, schools in Oregon had to close a month early from lack of funding. That debacle emphasizes the already existing problem millions of public school students in American ghettos (like in Durham) and rural "islands of poverty" (like in Appalachia) continue to deal with-that is, insufficient funding, bad teachers, old books and miserable facilities. Even the seemingly infallible American justice system has stumbled into crisis. Mississippi currently lacks the funding to provide for anything more than assembly-line justice for indigent defendants; a county in Mississippi is suing the state because poor defendants do not get legal service for non-capital crimes. Mississippi is actually among a handful of states that suffer from the same problem. Even in our home state of North Carolina a study of its death row by the Common Sense Foundation in Raleigh proved that nearly a third of its inmates lacked a proper defense during their trial.

Getting jobs, healthcare, education and proper legal defense to America's poor seems like a necessity, yet it is rarely properly addressed in Washington and state legislatures. And it won't get any better considering the across-the-board state budget crises if we are not careful. North Carolina is a prime example. Instead of discussing ways to increase revenue for the state government (e.g.. taxes, eliminating corporate tax loopholes) our legislators have chosen to put the brunt of the burden on the weak back of America's poor.

In fact, the budget plan that is emerging from the N.C. state house is not as "family friendly" as legislators would have you believe. It proposes huge cuts to our schools ($2.35 million cut to teachers' assistant funding), cuts to feeding programs for our poor children ($2.7 million cut to our school breakfast program), cuts to child-care programs that allow poor parents to work ($3.9 million cut to child-care subsidy) and cuts to the N.C. Health Choice program which provides healthcare to 100,000 poor children.

Along the same lines, the George W. Bush administration has avoided and ignored the problems of the lower class and instead opted for socialism for the rich and free-enterprise for the poor. Bush has decided that subsidies to American companies (Bush cronies including Bechtel and Halliburton) and massive tax cuts that benefit the richest Americans are the best policy. Administrators deceptively promise social reforms, including those related to healthcare and education, yet only nominally tackle these issues. His "leave no child behind" is coupled with massive cuts to children's nutrition, cuts to medical care for children and cuts to child-care assistance and support for foster care and adoption. And with the distraction of the war in Iraq, Bush is well on his way to getting away with this medieval autocratic policymaking. The inconsistencies of "compassionate conservatism" become horrifyingly obvious even as the war in Iraq provides a shield to the Republican domestic political agenda as their critics are denounced as unpatriotic. It's sad that in one breath Bush praises and supports our troops and in another cuts veteran benefits (no joke). We cannot let "a corporate President" get away with the same sort of "I don't care about the people I'm working for" mentality that has infected CEOs and plagued the shareholders and financial markets on Wall Street.

Bush needs to provide an emergency spending package to state governments and actually pursue universal healthcare coverage and education reform. But Bush cannot do everything at once, even if he once promised he could. The tax cut needs to be reduced even further, considering the need for domestic reform. And considering how the war in Iraq has yielded no proof of the existence of weapons of mass destruction, I wish we hadn't wasted our money on bombs over much needed books and drugs that Americans so direly need.