I am convinced that if every American voter spent a day in the Mississippi Delta, it would be virtually impossible for Republicans to win any elections.
Of course, it is abundantly clear that if every American voter took a minute to think about the poverty that exists in this country and the extent to which Republican politicians make sure that the rich get richer, while the poor get poorer, Democrats would win every time and Republicans would be exposed for their absurdity.
But I never realized the extent to which this was the case until I came to the Mississippi Delta for the first time in October.
I came to visit my girlfriend, who teaches sixth grade science and social studies in Leland, Miss. as part of the Teach for America program, which takes the best college graduates in the country and puts them in the poorest areas for two years to teach in the poorest school districts in the country. After that trip, I wrote a column about what I saw for my school newspaper, but didn't have time to expand on it, and perhaps there is no better place to vent than this site, where people understand the magnitude of the problems here.
I had read all of stats about Mississippi and how it's dead last in the country in every imaginable category, but I didn't imagine it could be like this. To avoid rambling on forever, I'll list a few highlights (or lowlights) of what I now know about kids in Mississippi,who I'll see this afternoon when I go to pick my girlfriend up from school, how they have almost no chance to succeed, and how radical change is necessary if we are, as John Edwards says, to have one America instead of two.
- As is the case in every other state, public schools are amazingly under-funded. Mississippi, as you'd expect, has the lowest teacher salries in the country, and there's absolutely no incentive for good home-grown teachers to stay here. Hence, all of the teachers who can go to other states, and those who can't stay here and, in some cases, make under $25,000 a year. My girlfriend, who shares a house with three other young teachers, can't afford to turn her heat on. And she's one of the wealthiest people in Leland. I can't imagine what it's like at her kids' houses.
- Thanks to No Child Left Behind and other un-funded mandates, the schools teach strictly to mandated standardized tests, and if something isn't on the test, it doesn't get taught. Some of my girlfriend's kids have never been taught social studies before, and can't locate the United States on a map.
- In one class, the students were asked to draw pictures of what they might do if they were in different regions of the country. My girlfriend told them that in Aspin, people might do some shopping. So the student, not knowing anything differently, drew a Super Wal-Mart. At first, I wondered how it was possible for these kids to know absolutely nothing about the rest of the country. Then I realized, the rest of the country knows absolutely nothing about them.
- It's sometimes hard or impossible for the kids to do their homework because A) some of them don't have any school supplies, B)some of them don't have running water, and eating and bathing has to come before schoolwork or C)if they're old enough, they have to work to help pay the family's bills. Tragically, sometimes they work to pay for their father's drugs.
- The schools in this state are completely re-segregated. All of the white people send their kids to private academies, so even though there's a sizable white population here, the public schools are 95 percent black. Thus, nothing distinguishes the schools today from those in the 1950's.
Of course, there are other variables involved, and I'm not saying some of the people here are completely incapable of helping themselves a bit more than they do. But the bottom line is that Mississippi is a third-world country. Until the rest of the country, some Democrats included, start paying some attention to it -- and not only after natural disasters like Katrina -- the problems will continue, and these kids will be born into a world in which they have no hopes, no dreams, and virtually no chance to get out of the Delta and into the America that most of us live in.