You live in Arkansas....remember Central High school in 1957.....still to this day has integration problems
More than half of all Arkansas children live in a household that struggles financially. Children of color are more likely to live in poverty, but the number of white children in poverty is much higher than African-American and Hispanic children. Poverty impacts the entire state but does see areas of concentration, especially in the DeltaI live in Arkansas.
" Arkansas was once a democrat-voting blue state and even produced a president history doesn’t hate. But over the last 50 years, the state has sunk deeply into the GOP hand basket and anyone not riding in it is going straight to hell.
Let me lay out some basic demographics that might give you an idea of what we, the blue dots, are up against. First off, my entire state has about 3 million people, which is only about one third the size of New York City. My state also has nearly 6000 churches. That’s one church for every 500 people.
Of the 3 million people who call this place home, 77% are white; the rest of the minorities get lumped together under “other” and make up the final 23%. This state considers itself overwhelmingly Christian, with 86% of the population claiming church affiliation. Probably you won’t be surprised to find out that of them, the largest group is Southern Baptist -- the group that only got around to saying, “Yup, slavery was bad,” in 1995, and which continues to preach that God set men in charge of everything and, less explicitly, that those men are white.
Actually 80% of the Southern Baptist Convention is white. The rest of the Christian-affiliated people break down into groups even more conservative than the SBC. This is not exactly a foundation on which to build a progressive world view. From this perspective, socialism is evil and they don’t want taxes or welfare, but you can carry a concealed gun to church if you want. (Really.) And you can buy that gun at Walmart. (Oh, yeah. Arkansas is home of Walmart. Our bad.)
It’s assumed when you meet someone that that person is a conservative Christian who will vote based almost unilaterally Republican because “Jesus” and “abortion.” The people who represent this state in congress are all male, all white and nearly all Republican. Our two Democrat congressmen are Representative Vic Snyder and Senator Mark Pryor. Both vote like moderate republicans, so it’s hard to take them seriously as Democrats
Since Clinton, our governors have been basically indistinguishable. Both have been called Mike and both are Baptist. Whether it’s a Huckabee or a Beebe is pretty irrelevant as they’re both carbon copies when it comes to political stances on women, poverty and pretty much anything else not dealing with rich white men. Rich white men get tax cuts, schools get closed, funding gets cut, anything Obama said is categorically rejected and meanwhile, the state sinks further into a miasma of educational and economic bankruptcy.
Arkansas is ardently “pro-life,” if by “pro-life” you mean “anti-abortion and family planning services.” This state has exactly 2 abortion providers and both are Planned Parenthood clinics. They also exist in the more affluent and progressive area in the midsection of the state. There are more than 50 “Crisis Pregnancy Centers,” though, that offer adoption counseling, pregnancy coercion, guilt and “post abortion therapy.”
But our state government keeps the minimum wage at $6.25 an hour, has cut unemployment insurance again as well as food stamp assistance for needy families, so if you can’t support the children you have to have, too bad."
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