Have You Ever Been Excluded?
The cost of exclusion and what to do to benefit yourself when you are excluded
I just read a powerful editorial published yesterday in the New York Times written by Matthew Desmond, who is a professor at Princeton and director of the university’s Eviction Lab.
Desmond documented how the U.S. has made only negative progress in the War on Poverty declared by President Lyndon Johnson in 1964. I was a small child at that time.
So my life has been conducted during a time when all of the ideals I was taught growing up as a 60s and 70s kid have been busted down, one after the other.
I have lived this life of exclusion.
Because I am a woman, I was suited for jobs “helping” the poor. I am the former Executive Director (10 years) of Family Service Assn. in my hometown of Redlands, California, a small, conservative, and tight-knit Southern California community. A “famous” book author affiliated with the community is James Fallows, who also probably still writes for The Atlantic. I no longer believe my hometown is all that special. I’ve seen what many current residents say when the community attempts any type of inclusion. There could be few more exclusionary communities than the place I mostly grew up.
