We read in Holy Scripture, “For you always have the poor with you…” (Matthew 26: 11). Yet, despite the fact that millions of Americans live in abject poverty, devoid of hope, devoid of opportunity, devoid of good educational facilities, devoid of good healthcare, devoid of fair justice, and devoid of any semblance of what an acceptable life actually should be in America; this is absolutely ignored, by a huge swath of the population, who believe literally in the adage that what is out of sight, is out of mind.
The bottom line in America, is that the poor and disadvantaged to the degree so possible, are consistently segregated into enclaves of poverty and neglect, and subsequently kept as far as possible away from those that have money and power, so that those with all the accouterments of material success, will not have to ever stumble upon these impoverished people, ever; for those that are the superrich and privileged do not desire to have anything happen in their field of vision that would upset their distorted view of what they believe their worldview represents, and do not ever wish to have their family or good friends, to see something that they need not be seen or even commented upon.
Not only are the poor, completely out of sight for all those that have lots and lots of money, but to a very large extent, the poor do not infringe into the domain of the successful middle class, as well. Basically, those that are desperately poor, are deliberately placed into dilapidated places that nobody in the right mind, ever visits for there isn’t any good or valid reason to go there, and hence these poor people are effectively ignored as if they don’t exist, and to the degree that the government or other private charitable agencies provide aid and help to them – they do so to a very large extent by these organizations, deliberately or not, making it a point to remind those that have nothing that they are effectively, nothing.
There will never come a time when poverty is eradicated in America, not because America doesn’t have the ways and means to do so, for it most definitely does; but rather it has everything to do with the fact that the government is an enabler of those policies that create as well as those policies that separate the poor and disadvantaged from the mainstream population, and until there comes a time when the poor are fairly entitled to actually become part of the established population these disadvantaged people will not progress. In fact, if communities were actually built that were inclusive as compared to being deliberated designed as exclusive, of which, the impoverished were instead fairly entitled to some fair portion of that community, those good members of that community, would take it upon themselves to provide what was so needed to uplift the community in whole, so that those previously not provided with any fair chance, would actually have the infrastructure to lift themselves up, which they would therefore gladly embrace.
In America, the poor typically live amongst the poor; hidden away and ignored as if they don’t exist, but they very well do. The least that we should do is to bring the poor inside the gates of opportunity, hope, and equality, thereby permitting them to become an integral part of the multi-color fabric of American life.