Improving conditions of race and poverty require proactive policies | Guest Opinion

According to many proverbs, it’s useful to imagine experiencing life from our neighbors’ perspective if we want to better understand society. The recent death of George Floyd by Minnesotan police and numerous other killings would give many Black Americans a feeling that it’s “open season” on them.

A few years ago, I had an eye-opening moment when I was listening to a local African American give a presentation, and he confessed to once having a panic attack while lost driving around the beautiful farmlands north of Pasco, where I once lived. The reason for his angst was fear that he’d encounter a hostile group of rednecks. This is the grim reality that many people of color experience in our society.

There doesn’t need to be as much strife and poverty as exists in contemporary America. In some nations, such as New Zealand, city residents will not understand a question about avoiding the “bad part of town,” for they have no such areas. Moreover, in parts of Europe, parents leave their babies outside restaurants in their strollers while they dine inside. It’s possible for us to create a society that is just as safe, but we often march in the opposite direction.

Realistic models of society and people are needed to better address our social problems. In a debate over alleviating poverty, I once heard someone, referring to low-income people, simply say, “I believe in social responsibility.” It sounds good. Can’t people just be more responsible, pull themselves up by their bootstraps, and our poverty issues will be solved? For some, this is a convenient, albeit unrealistic, solution. But, in reality, numerous groups need to be more socially responsible, and how much individual people can change their behaviors without new social arrangements and policies is limited.

What is it that makes a human being? Three main influences are a person’s (1) biology, such as genes and prenatal development, (2) culture, and (3) idiosyncratic experiences of their unique life history, such as with their parents. The interaction of these variables is what shapes our personalities.

Take adrenaline junkies, for instance. There is a biological influence on their personalities, but whether they become gang leaders or medal-winning fighter pilots is mostly environmental. Moreover, the environment is what we can collectively change.

Hence, peoples’ station in society, the directions they take and decisions they make are largely determined by chance events, how they look and speak, opportunities available, and by unconscious mental processes resulting from the interaction of their genes and environment. Cognizant decision making can sometimes play a role; but as much as we like to believe in free will and self-determination, such actions are not as influential in our personal lives as we believe. For a variety of economic, social, and psychological reasons, people tend to remain in the same socioeconomic class in which they were born.

Social problems generally require social solutions. To improve race relations, to alleviate poverty, to sooth our societal troubles, we need to take meaningful, proactive steps. Some concrete actions could involve education, jobs, and creating a new ethos of more equitable sharing of the nation’s wealth.

People who do well in life and contribute much to society generally come out of good schools. Since poor neighborhoods don’t have abundant funds to invest in schools, this requires the transfer of funds from affluent to impoverished areas so that every child has an enriching educational experience.

Jobs of low-income individuals are often the fewest and most vulnerable to economic swings. Yet having a decent job is of critical importance for people. Instead of just seeing what the market offers, we could purposefully provide jobs in areas where people need them. When folks have jobs and vital social services, many desirable things follow.

Economic inequality has soared over the past 45 years. What sense does it make to fault people for being poor while at the same time supporting policies that transfer increasing amounts of wealth to the richest Americans? Governmental policies need to structure a more equitable social environment and encourage more generosity among the aristocracy.

Our approach for too long has been to use the police to hunt down those who don’t behave lawfully, ignore racial inequities, and to blame people for their own impoverishment, without realistically evaluating the underlying causes. Providing good schools, jobs, and addressing the issue of rising economic inequality can vastly improve matters. There’s plenty of wealth in America, among high-income individuals and corporations, to attain the same beneficial social results that citizens in other countries achieve.

If we collectively have the will, we can find the ways to solve our societal issues. The effort must come up from the bottom, out from the middle, and down from the top. People have to be more socially engaged, and leadership must be involved. The way that we attain such leadership is by voting for individuals who show a genuine concern for people, all people, and who have a vision of a better world.