No More Poor Brains

Poverty is a political issue, not a social issue. We have the wealth, we have the means of redistributing it, and we even have the will to do so; we just don’t have the justification. Our country is in a grip of an idealism that puts a primacy on so-called “hard-work” and tautologically insists if you don’t have anything, it must be because you didn’t work hard enough.

This is backwards logic, and literally harmful to those who have to suffer under the yoke of financial oppression. And new research shows that poverty is harmful to the brain. This is no longer a matter of haves versus have nots, or even those who deserve and those who don’t. This is a matter of ignoring the injuries suffered by those who were, against their will, born without privilege.

Define poverty however you like, but noise pollution, overcrowding, and meager access to nutrition can cause the impoverished to suffer from reduced brain health. These are the same poor that some politicians believe do not deserve access to good health care. Nevertheless, it’s these same poor who are the major contributors, through labor, of our gross national product. Its these same poor who, despite not having access to health care, pay for it.

The Great Brain Robbery is walking a thin line here, we realize, taking on a political issue and not discussing brain science. But science is, at the end of the day, merely a tool that we use to better our lives. The essential word there is “our.” This research which has found the extremely negative impact of poverty on the physiology of the brain should be a wake-up call. This is not an issue that can be mitigated by shifting our social paradigms. We’re not going to be able to justify a lopsided distribution of wealth and call it culture. We are allowing the dehumanization of our poor citizens, and it has to stop.