Disappeared Children

                                                                            

                                                                           Disappeared Children

     At a workshop in which chairs were arranged in a circle with one chair standing alone in the middle, participants settled into the ring of chairs leaving the center chair empty. The moderators asked why no one had sat in the empty chair. Answers ranged from “We thought it was for the speaker,” to “We didn’t want to sit alone.” 

The moderators explained that the center chair represented the “disappeared child,” — children who are forgotten, rejected, neglected, abused or without hope. These children live in trauma. They are lonely, isolated, and uncared for by society. They are unseen by those living in community — represented by the circle of occupied chairs. 

America has a history of disappearing people we find inconvenient. When the Constitution was being written representation in Congress was debated. The southern states, slave-holding states, wanted more representation in the national government, so even though they held slaves to be less-than-human, they wanted them to be counted. A compromise was made. Representation was calculated by including three-fifths of the slaves. Two-fifths simply disappeared as people.

After the Civil War, freed slaves were persecuted in the Reconstruction south. After a Constitutional amendment guaranteed the right to vote to all, local governments created obstacles that effectively denied citizenship to African-Americans. Thousands were lynched without trial. Thousands more were unjustly incarcerated. Lynched or imprisoned, they disappeared from society.

Today, thousands of children living in poverty are disappearing due to lack of resources, lack of access to equal education, lack of opportunity, and lack of compassion. All children need adequate nutrition and housing, fair funding for education, access to affordable healthcare, caring teachers and community workers, equal access to opportunities for growth and success, consistency of care, and equal treatment under the law. These rights extend to all children — those who live in your neighborhood, those who live in the inner city, those who speak different languages, and those whose parents cannot care for them due to the inequalities which exist in our society. 

A story is told of a king welcoming a group of people into his palace. Why they have been favored? The king answers, “I was hungry and you fed me, I was thirsty and you gave me a drink, I was homeless and you gave me a room, I was shivering and you gave me clothes, I was sick and you stopped to visit, I was in prison and you came to me.” Never having met the king, they ask how this could be. The king answers: “Whenever you did one of these things to someone overlooked or ignored, that was me—you did it to me.”

Are we overlooking or ignoring children in need, children who are suffering, children who are invisible to society because of situations they cannot control? Are we allowing children to disappear? Open your eyes to find these children. Shine a light on them. Advocate for programs that provide equal access to nutrition, security, and education. Encourage your representatives to support equal opportunity legislation. Work for and donate to programs that support children and those in need. Don’t allow a single child to disappear. Pull their chairs into the circle. Welcome them with open arms.

Opportunities Hoarded, Opportunities Lost

Opportunities Hoarded, Opportunities Lost

You’ve heard of hoarders, right? People who cannot part with any of their possessions right down to rubber bands and dryer lint. Hoarders treasures are lost amid piles of old newspapers and buckets of tattered shoes. What are they thinking?

In one way or another, we are all hoarders. Human beings like to hold onto what they have. One of the first words a two-year-old holds up against the world is, “Mine!” We unclench our fists ever so slowly. Most learn to take turns and to share possessions. We share our time, abilities, and knowledge. But there is one thing many of us hoard without even being aware of it — opportunity.

Opportunity hoarding “concerns the control of resources… that allow certain groups to exclude others from access to … resources or benefits accruing to them.” As defined in 1998 by Charles Tilly, a social and political scientist, opportunity hoarding is a social inequality system that allows certain groups to withhold opportunity from others, denying them social and economic mobility. Opportunity hoarders keep others from climbing the ladder to better lives by filling the rungs themselves.

Every parent wants their child to have a better life than they did, to have access to good schools, good neighborhoods, and chances for enrichment. There is nothing wrong with that. It is the job of parents to prepare their children to succeed. Parents do all that they can to move their children up the ladder. But that ladder is crowded. Some children can’t find places on the rungs.

Children whose parents stand higher on the social or economic ladder get boosted up to pass children whose parents, however, earnest and hard-working, stand lower. Many social structures favor children whose parents have more.

Teams and clubs require fees and parents who can provide equipment, transportation, snacks, and time. Legacy students snag places at the best colleges. Unpaid internships are filled by those who don’t need to hold paying jobs. Tutors charge fees. Libraries, churches, and museums move into the suburbs. Better schools are located in wealthier neighborhoods populated by those with better incomes. Opportunity hoarding magnifies social and economic inequalities. 

In simple words, the children whose parents have better academic, social, health, or economic status have access to more opportunities than children whose parents have not had them. Richard Reeves, an economist at the Brookings Institute, calls this the “perpetuation of advantage.” Those who have advantages keep them. Those who don’t can’t get them. Those who start at the bottom of the ladder cannot pass those filling the top rungs.

How can those at the top make room? Advocate for equal access to health care, affordable housing, good schools for every child, and a living wage for every parent. Support public transit systems, inner-city and rural community projects, and libraries. Vote for leaders who work to end social, racial, and economic inequalities. 

Teach your children to make room on the ladder. Sometimes they may have to step aside to let others take a turn at the top. Helping others pulls us all up. Opportunity hoarding leads to opportunities lost. Opportunity sharing yields treasure for all.