Imagine 50 smart-looking sailing crafts jockeying for position at the starting line of a high-stakes regatta. Your boat isn't the fanciest or newest, but it is certainly one of the best; it was crafted decades ago with careful attention to detail by proud, hardworking people and is crewed by skillful sailors who share an incredible work ethic. Your team hoists its sails and prepares to tack into the wind as the cannon sounds to start the race. Then something terrible happens. Most of the other 49 boats sprint away from you, leaving you in their wake. Suddenly you realize that you forgot to weigh anchor. While the other boats sail over the horizon, your crew struggles to recover from the negative effect of the neglected anchor.
This is the meaning of the parable: the 21st Century will be a fierce, competitive race with huge consequences, good and bad, for winners and losers. Alabama doesn't enter the race on equal terms. Historic decisions about race, education, and tax policy (many of them not very wise) put the state at a significant disadvantage. Of the state's many liabilities, none is more significant than its long heritage of poverty. Varying from 14 to more than 20 percent, Alabama's poverty rate continues to be among the nation's highest. Affecting nearly equal numbers of blacks and whites, urban dwellers and rural people, the one aberration in statistics seems to be age. Alabama's poorest residents are its youngest and oldest.
What does it say about the moral values of a society when its poorest, least powerful, most neglected people are its children and its senior citizens? Alabama trails most other southern states in population growth and per capita income. But inside Alabama wide discrepancies exist as well. Nearly one-third of the state's 67 counties regularly show population declines in the decennial census. These counties stretch from the mainly white Appalachian hill counties through the Black Belt into southwestern Alabama. These concentrations constitute the anchor holding Alabama behind sister states.
Of course not every town or county experiences poverty in the same way. Towns and counties with well-funded public schools in which citizens take pride, with well-educated populations, with highly skilled, well-paying jobs prosper and grow while poorly-educated populations with low income stagnate. For instance, in 2004 Shelby County's rate of poverty-6.5 percent-ranked that county by far the lowest in Alabama, the only county in fact with single digit rates of poverty. By contrast the wealthiest antebellum Alabama counties, located in the Black Belt, were the poorest Alabama counties at the beginning of the 21st Century: Bullock, Dallas, Greene, Lowndes, Macon, Perry, Sumter, and Wilcox all had rates above 30 percent. Race, of course, is as important to Alabama poverty as region. Black Belt counties are not only the poorest in the state, they are also the most heavily African American. Blacks constitute some 26 percent of the state's population, but own less that than 7 percent of the state's businesses. Auburn University Montgomery's Center for Demographic Research reports that the median income of black households in the state trails white's by a staggering $17,000 annually. Thirty percent of blacks live in poverty compared to 10 percent of whites, and the black infant mortality rate is twice that of whites.
Because whites outnumber blacks nearly three to one, the total number of poor whites in the state is about equal to the total number of poor blacks. But with the black population predicted to increase to a third of the total within the next two decades, the rate of poverty may soar as well. Whether viewed from the perspective of Judeo-Christian ethics, Biblical imperatives (note the admonition contained especially in Matthew 25:31-46), or pragmatic concern for the skill of the state's labor force and the viability of its economy, poverty in Alabama must be understood, the sources of that poverty addressed, and progress made to curtail, reduce, and finally eliminate poverty. The state simply will not be able to compete if apathy and neglect continue to characterize the response of most affluent citizens to poverty.
Because of ethical concerns by a multitude of business groups, and philanthropic interest by a number of foundations, this data book about poverty in Alabama is made available to you. Based on census data provided and organized by Auburn University Montgomery's Center for Demographic Research, the county-by-county figures provide raw material that allows each reader to become his/her own analyst, deciding on the basis of what he/she reads, what the future of each county might be. Remember as you read that the race has already begun. Ready or not, your sail is hoisted into the wind. Is your anchor still in the water?
"The psychological
pain-and the ethical shame-of American poverty are made greater by the fact
that this country possesses the wealth and the energy to raise all children
to a minimally decent standard of living."
Kenneth Keniston, U.S. professor, human development; All Our Children, The
Carnegie Council on Children 1977
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