Invisible People

Or: Apartheid in America

It's like this because that's how we want it. We don't want our lives to be touched by "those" people. We want to stay in our safe little enclaves, filled with people with the same background as us, and who gives a damn about somebody we don't even know?

There's a semi-subversive comic book available called "The Invisibles" which is totally unrelated to the topic of this message. Still, the title could describe the plight of the poor in America. I've talked about how those unemployed men standing on the street corners in the bad part of town aren't unemployed, aren't employed, they just AREN'T as far as the Department of Employment Statistics is concerned. I've talked about how an entire group of people has been written out of existence because we do not want to face unpleasant facts such as 90% unemployment amongst adult males in some neighborhoods. But we don't care, because they don't live in our neighborhood.

So how is apartheid enforced in America?

1. Public Transportation -- wherever public transportation goes, that is where you find the Invisible People. Nothing blights a neighborhood faster than having a bus line extended to it. So the bus lines are carefully routed so that they only go through "undesirable" neighborhoods. Poor people are thus forced to live in those neighborhoods and only those neighborhoods, since they have no way of getting to more desirable neighborhoods even if they had the money to live there.
2. Mandatory Auto Insurance -- Mandatory Auto Insurance is a scheme where a poor person with a $500 clunker has to pay the same auto insurance as a rich person with a Mercedes Benz. According to an official with the North Carolina Department of Insurance (via EMAIL), over 20% of drivers in the state of North Carolina do not carry the mandated insurance. This immediately makes criminals of these people, since they cannot renew their drivers licenses and their cars can be confiscated on the spot if they are ever stopped by a cop. The net effect is to keep cars out of the hands of poor people. We don't want "those" people migrating to "our" neighborhoods, after all.
3. Other Anti-Auto Measures -- Many Northeastern states have policies aimed at making automobile ownership expensive and use of public transit cheap. The goal is to reduce congestion and pollution. What happens is that by making automobile ownership expensive, poor people can't afford autos. But middle class and upper class people still have and use their autos. So once again, poor people are forced into their mass transit ghettos, and the net effect is to keep "those" people away from our nice (gated) communities.