Who are you?

It’s Christmas and I wonder if anyone else has held on to the startling statistics posted in class regarding the poverty rate of children in Texas. For children under 18 in 2003 the poverty rate was 24% and in 2001 the poverty rate for children under 7 was 22.71%. Do we want to know what the poverty rates are today? The state owns health and human services and regardless of where we stand in the nation these numbers are terrifying all by themselves. Allow me to define poverty in Texas monetarily speaking; a three person family (mom, dad and child) makes around $1300.00 a month. How can you provide for your household with $1300.00 a month? Let’s forget about the parents for a moment and how/why they are in a position to earn a poverty level income. Let’s focus on the children; during Christmas there is an insane amount of holiday giving and cheer. Associations, organizations and the wealthy adopt children and families for the holidays. If one can not afford a Christmas, “Come to my organization/association and we’ll give you a Christmas meal and a few presents for your children.” The poor walk away humbled or humiliated? The rich walk away feeling better about themselves because they gave back to society.

Sometimes, I do think we make it entirely too easy for people to be poor in Texas but on the other hand I think our ways of helping the poverty only pacifies them and keeps them. The cynical part of me, simply a sort of band-aid?

I challenge Texans to dig deeper into their hearts and past the selfish desire to make you and yours so comfortable and recognize the human duty to care for those beyond you. Specifically the children in Texas, how many of them will become a product of their parents? As a child of poverty my parents were always to busy trying “make the rent,” they didn’t know anything outside their present means which might have looked a tad better than their means as a child. I aggressively searched for a way out but others aren’t so driven. People I love who don’t share my drive live in poverty and they posses talents that with only little encouragement and love as a child could have been influenced into something beyond what they are today. Today they are adults, whom are less attractive to us and viewed deficient. So, I ask you, help the child in them.