Being poor is dangerous. Being POC while poor? Even more dangerous.
NO.1
The question, ‘‘Is being poor dangerous’, an easy question to answer for those who suffer from being poor. Yes, it is highly dangerous, spiritually, emotionally, and physically. People usually move to cities in the U.S, and cities are segregated. Each person, family, etc. has a different background, therefore they have a different connection with others unlike themselves. That means different habitus’ and different inequalities, for those who are not rich.
NO.2
This all has to do with the economic structure, between the poor, middle class, and rich. Segregation is everywhere, and in cities, it is an intermix of ethnicity, citizenship, indigeneity, and class, and when they are intertwined, they create systems of labor, respect, and suffering. The physical differences in the conditions of life, especially barbaric. Throughout the hierarchy of suffering, the opportunities decrease and the social hardships increase as you go down the ladder, and depending on what race you are, the more dangerous, psychologically strenuous, and physically stressful it can be. Everyone is structurally vulnerable, and each person can participate in what is called the Grey Zone.
NO.3
Primo Levi defines it as the knowledge of the corrupt system but trying to survive within it, whether you’re at the top or at the bottom, and when you are at the bottom, the system is designed to make people remain there. For Mexican workers who choose to make the difficult journey to work in the strawberry fields in Southern California, they are kept segregated by race, class, and citizenship; they have limited opportunities to afford the basic needs we use every single day, either access to affordable healthcare or able to get a decent paying job. Collective bad faith, or as Nancy Scheper-Hughes calls it, ‘‘is the self-deception to help you feel okay about your work in the moral gray zone. One example would be the strange concept of naturalization’’, like black deaths at the hands of police officers. A more basic definition would be seeing oppressed people and saying they like being oppressed, making you feel better about the injustice. Since we see it go on for so long, the moral injustice, we normalize it, or that it is just part of ‘the game.’ The game is to thrive, survive, and suffer in the social world, where you dominate and dominate. We justify it because they are different and say it is normal.
NO.4
‘‘For decades, experts have agreed that racial disparities in health spring from pervasive social and institutional forces. The scientific literature has linked higher rates of death and disease in African Americans to such ‘social determinants’ as residential segregation, environmental waste, joblessness, unsafe housing, targeted marketing of alcohol and cigarettes, and other inequalities; Racism, other researchers suggests, acts as a classic chronic stressor, setting off the same physiological train wreck as job strain or martial conflict: higher blood pressure, elevated heart rate, increases in the stress hormone cortisol, suppressed immunity. Chronic stress is also known to encourage unhealthy behaviors, such as smoking and eating too much, that themselves raise the risk of disease.’’ From How Racism Hurts—Literally.
