The statistics in the 2009 Mississippi Human Development report got me curious. I still think I will research the connection between being a child of a parent who receives welfare and school achievement next semester, so this report offers some important windows into making sure my search for causal factors isn't spurious. Using the Web site's map application, I thought I would "test" the report's claims, (1) that "MS is among the four states with the largest disparities between the two groups (white and black)," and (2) "when looking at geography and rae combined, the gap[s] nearly triple." I focused in on the area of teen pregnancy. this is relevant to girls who excel academically, but may be daughters of young mothers on welfare themselves. In creating the comparison maps below, I kept the intervals (lo/medium/high) and scales fixed so as not to skew anything between them, since the purpose is to make comparisons across race (Click on these images once or more to enlarge them.).
At a glance, it is readily recognizable that the regions in which there are high teen pregnancy rates in the state differ. Whereas the Delta, Columbus and Laurel are the heaviest for teen pregnancy for blacks, Tupelo, Clarksdale, Laurel and the Gulf Coast were “hotspots” for white girls. The lo/medium/hi interval break-down across races is also telling. For black teen girls, “low” denotes 67-90 births per 1,000 girls (note that the bottom of the smallest category STARTS at the highest rate in the nation – this week’s article in TIME magazine shows MS is the leading state in teen pregnancies, at an average of 68 per 1,000 teen girls); “medium,” 91-102, and “high,” 103-139. Compare these rates to whites’: lo= 30-55; medium=56-65; hi=66-85 (the bottom of the hi is the bottom of blacks’ low).
I liked the HDI's explication of what its measurements represent (i.e., medical benefits represent material well-being; degree attainment represents access to knowledge [or social-cultural capital, sociologists might say]). Also, its graphs of ideal human development as an upward trend/trajectory from constraint to access also aligns with social theory; social deprivation theory has the same tenets: macro-social forces can either support or cripple a person, and often, it is somewhat easy from this perspective to explain or forecast the case of a one being "crippled." For example, if one has less access to institutions from birth, a subsequent deterioration (or systematic "slicing off") of opportunities will follow, as a result of a combination of the resources one is born into, and bad choices [sometimes only very minor] one makes along the way.
I was happy, but distressed, to see that the state’s urban center (Jackson) holds the brightest futures possible for students (in terms of their likely educational prospects and earnings). Distressed because the potential that is here for them still falls below what it could be if they went elsewhere, and also distressed because I know the rest of the state falls below it.The report's attention to comparing HDI nationally and internationally was especially sobering. Mississippians today live like other Americans lived in 1993? That's hard to see materially, as our students own current cell phones, but easy to see when they work with laptops in class and have extremely limited knowledge about word-processing techniques (or even how to type) by age 16. I can't believe infant mortality among blacks in this state is comparable to some Third World countries.
I never would have guessed I would have landed in Mississippi to start my working life. I also wouldn't have guessed it is a place with so many idiosyncrasies. It is a sociological puzzle, to be sure - both in comprehending how inequalities persist so blatantly without anyone's effective indignation, and in brainstorming how to break these long-standing social trends, which emerge as consequences of how seemingly immovable/unchangeable social forces are established (institutions such as criminal justice, education, family, churches...).
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