When Poverty Becomes Violence: Mapping the Path from Scarcity to Harm
by Kai Warrior
When looking at youth violence, we must remember not to view it as an isolated event. It’s easy to simply grieve the state of our world, but we have to assess the factors that led us here. To identify the institutions that were clearly built on fault lines, and to see more clearly that there is a reality we can fix with our own hands.
Checking the Foundation
The umbrella of reasons why youth and violence intersect so substantially can largely be attributed to poverty. Poverty is the fourth-leading cause of death within the United States. Heart attacks and gun violence rank respectively first and second. Poverty is rooted in policy.
Finding Cracks in Our Systems
We’re a product of our environment, and our environment is polluted. Our healthcare system is impossible to navigate, and our mental health system is equally broken. We earn unlivable wages and are served by a failing education system.
Fault Lines on Every Block
But the military-industrial complex and carceral system are in bloom. We lack personal accountability, which reduces our understood responsibility for mutual care. Poverty is inherently violent, and when its impacts are evidenced within our children, what programs, institutions, and structures do we have in place to correct it?
Viewing Poverty via a Public Health Lens
UpLift Chronicles’ interview with University of New Mexico (UNM) Professor of Africana Studies and Public Health Jamal Martin, Ph.D., MPH, began with Martin reframing poverty as a public health issue. Viewing poverty and violence as a disease can help break down its causes and potential solutions for achieving optimal progress in child well-being and human development.
Reconnecting With What Was Stolen
Martin has dedicated his life to Africana Studies. In our conversation, he discussed the importance of regaining our dislocated ancestral identities to recenter our personal understandings of the social and political identities within ourselves.
Martin also said it’s imperative that we reframe the term “youth violence,” removing fault and blame from the children placed into that societal cog, and redirecting our attention toward the machine itself. Speaking on the impacts of poverty alongside lack of ancestral connection and knowledge, Martin brought up our “fight, flight, or freeze” response.
To be able to skillfully communicate and problem-solve as literacy rates continue to fall, it’s vital that we challenge our children and ourselves, to read and consume materials that exercise our empathetic and intellectual bounds.
Building Black Futures With Education
Martin is pushing for implementation of the Black Education Act, a program to improve high school and post-secondary institutional success from within New Mexico’s existing Black population.
He also hopes to introduce the “4+1” master’s program into UNM Department of Africana Studies; that would be four years of undergraduate learning in Africana Studies with one additional year of graduate study, enabling students to finish with a master’s degree, and resulting in more Black teachers in the state school system.
From Vision to Action
There are many sectors of our society that need to be adjusted so we show up better for our youth, and there are also organizations and programs actively working on it. Their purpose is to lower our incarceration rates, increase support within schools (especially when similar support isn't found at home), and to provide students and graduates with an imagination and a desire for more, both inside and outside New Mexico.