A Portrait of Mississippi

This blog about my experiences so far is not through the lens of food or through pictures. It's through numbers.

The other evening I read the Human Development (HD) Report ("A Portrait of Mississippi) that presented the HD index numbers for Mississippi. The report related Mississippi to other states and the United States in general. It also, hypothetically, made Mississippi a state and compared to nations around the world. In addition to comparisons, the report breaks down the HD index number of populations (black female, white male, black male, white female) in the state and in the state counties.

I've been in Mississippi for two and a half weeks. I didn't need the report to tell me that Mississippi was in bad shape. My parents come from a poor part of Louisiana, and I live in South Carolina. The South as a whole is behind the curve, but the mid-South in particular (Louisiana, Mississippi, and Arkansas) lags behind.

A significant factor that contributes to Mississippi’s backwardness is its legacy of racism and classism towards blacks and poor whites. Both of these scopes act as the foreboding miner’s canary of the problems in Mississippi.

Health:

Infant mortality and life span act as the two best indicators of health. In my experience so far, I can't tell from looking around me what the rates are for either (however I can see, sadly, expanded waistlines) but the index numbers open my eyes wide and clear. The infant mortality rate in Alcorn-Prentiss for non-whites is 18.8/1000 births. 18.8! That’s more than Libya and Thailand. Clearly there are still some Third World places in this First World country. This infant mortality rate absolutely appalls and befuddles me. How can this be happening in the United States of America? It crossed between if most people in the United States remain in the dark over the issue or do most people just not care? I’m going to err on the side of the former, but I know full well much of the latter exists.

The average life span in Mississippi (not taking into account the differences between races and classes) hovers around 75 years in comparison to the nationwide average of about 79 years. That may not seem not that bad, but when you take into account the quality of the life (in terms of health) the difference is disparaging. Think about 79 years with fairly regular doctor visits and death of natural causes versus 74 years without medical treatment and death of acute myocardial infarction (heart attack). Not that bad doesn’t mean that good.

Education:

Education. You really can’t speak enough of the importance of it in the 21st century, the power of it in the 21st century, and the lack of in Mississippi the 21st century. Mississippi lies at the bottom of education rankings in both quality of education and the quantity its citizens have. Across the board whites are less likely to drop out of high school and more like to get a higher education degree than blacks. In terms of gender, white females are more likely than males to have a high school diploma, but the numbers make an abrupt reverse in higher education degrees. Conversely, black women are more likely to have degree at every level than black men.

At the University of Mississippi (and really all over the United States; once again, Mississippi is a canary) blacks just seem to “disappear” during the academic year because of their small numbers in comparison to white students (MTC staff member). The University of Mississippi does not reflect the white-black ratio in Mississippi as a whole. In a state where the white-black ratio is 60:40, the Flagship University is closer to 75:25. I haven’t yet heard, but it wouldn’t surprise me if most of the black students on campus were female. It’s a trend I’ve noticed even at Amherst, and have heard countless complaints about from black women in college.

I’ve been writing about higher education, but the real struggle is in the primary and secondary school. Maybe you can chalk up the ratio at the University of Mississippi to black students going to different schools in state or out-of-state all together, but there’s no where for primary and secondary children to go and it shows. In primary and secondary school poor whites are almost as bad off as blacks, period. In this case, class presents the issue. Almost without a doubt, a poor parent(s) does not provide the same educational opportunity for their child that a rich parent does. This is not to cast all impoverished parents in a bad light as if they were all dead beats. The fact is, even if an impoverished parent did everything they could to make their child “succeed”, poor parents just don't have the resources more affluent parents do. Resources include more than just dollars. Time to devote to staying home in the first few months or years, access to day care providers that have an appropriate academic curriculum, and a broader vocabulary and life experience. These resources you can’t buy, and often poor parents can’t provide.

I don’t mean to be judgmental, but you can tell. You can tell which children had those critical resources provided in the early years and still have them now. I could definitely tell at in my Third grade classroom in South Carolina and I can tell at Holly Springs Summer School.


Poverty:

Education disparities directly correlate to income and opportunity disparities and exist on race, class, and gender lines. In a depressing cocktail of all three, poor black women bear the brunt. Black women in Mississippi, on average, earn less than the typical American in 1960 (A portrait of Mississippi). Wait, what? Black female Mississippians plod 50 years behind America. In the words of Marvin Gaye, “What’s Goin’ On?”

One level up, blacks as a whole in Mississippi, still fare terribly. The worst off whites in Mississippi make nearly as much as the best off blacks. I was so shocked when I heard this. Firstly, the “best” income is barely an income at all, regardless of race. Secondly, difference between the income between blacks and whites harkens back to pre-and during the Civil Rights Movement when blacks and whites who held the same job titles earned drastically different wages and salaries. What does say to people? I know what it says to me; even at my best I’m no better than your worst. How the hell can you pull yourself up from your bootstraps when they’re glued to the ground?

Problem, problem, all these problems, how can we fix them? They seem too overwhelming. The cliché line is “A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.” The personal line is, “generations of injustice in Mississippi begin to end with one person. There is no panacea, there is only us.” The people in my next blog are the beginning of the end.