Poverty, Intelligence and Life in the Inner City.

03Original abstract

There is now ample documentary evidence to show that poverty—and the physical, intellectual, and emotional deprivations that go with it—can be a direct cause of mental retardation.The poor of all races are affected and—in absolute numbers—there are more whites than Negroes who suffer from it. I am, however, particularly interested in this subject because the Negro poor are victimized by this alarming situation more than others, since, in relative numbers, there are far more poor Negroes than poor whites. Too many children, and all too frequently, Negro children, thus pay a heavy price for the injustices of our society.We know today that only a few among all those who are mentally retarded suffer from an obvious organic defect with genetic cause. Genetic defects affect all levels of society in the same way, whether those afflicted are rich or poor, white or Negro. But it is quite different when damage to the brain is due not to a genetic cause but to disease before or after birth, or else to accident, infection, or poisoning. The poor, whether they are white or Negro, are more often its victims. And the mentally retarded who do not show any organic brain damage—those who are only functionally retarded—come predominantly from the poorer sections of our society. Functional retardation is very rare among those with high incomes and among well educated segments of the community. But it is very common—it can be detected in as many as 15 percent of all children—in deprived rural areas and in the chaos of the inner cities. This is now so well accepted that we have given the name of “socio-environmental retardation” to this kind of functional retardation prevalent among the deprived. More than half of all mentally retarded people fall into this last category.What in fact are the environmental factors in the life of the poor that stunt their intellectual development?To begin with, we are now convinced that intelligence itself is largely controlled by the kind of diet a child receives. Evidence was presented at a recent International conference that malnutrition in the first three years of life may permanently impair intelligence and it has been estimated that more than half of the 90 million babies born each year may run a risk of permanent retardation resulting from malnutrition. Moreover, experiments with several kinds of laboratory animals suggest that malnutrition at certain critical times during development of the brain—for the human species this would be about the time of birth—can cause long-term damage to brain structure and to the bodily functions it controls.So, malnutrition among pregnant women as well as newborn children can be an important cause of mental retardation and is its major cause, on a worldwide basis.In our own country, the Department of Agriculture found that in two Mississippi Delta counties 60 percent of children receive less than two thirds of the minimum dietary allowance recommended by the National Research Council. Among the underprivileged children of our society in general, still other factors are at work, probably more often than simple malnutrition. There is a whole catalog of them—ranging from all those circumstances that threaten physical development to insidious but powerful psychological factors.The children of poverty—those who inherit the circumstances rather than the genes that predispose to mental retardation—have to fight against heavy odds from the very moment they are conceived.Their mothers—often undernourished themselves—are still victims of toxemia of pregnancy, as well as of infections and physical hardships that the more affluent do not encounter. Thirty percent of the women who live in poverty, either in rural areas or else in towns of over 100,000 people, never get medical supervision during their pregnancies. Among the 500,000 indigent women giving birth each year, 100,000 need special medical help for complications. Most of them never get it. For one thing they give birth to premature children three times more often than middle class mothers, and it is well known that three quarters of all premature children, weighing less than three pounds at birth, develop physical and mental defects.Knowledge of family planning, as well as realization of the importance of medical attention during pregnancy, is still widely lacking among the poor. Moreover, they don't know how to use, or else, for many reasons, cannot avail themselves of the resources that provide such knowledge and services. So illegitimate births, as well as families which are too large, not only for the parents' income, but also for their emotional and physical resources, occur all too frequently.Brain damage resulting from continuous low-level exposure to lead, to which the children of the poor are commonly exposed because of the cheap, lead-containing paints frequently used in the slums, occurs almost exclusively among the deprived. One study showed that as many as 5 per cent of the children in slum areas had dangerous levels of lead in their bloodstreams.In addition, infectious diseases are far more common among the poor: tuberculosis, for example, is 3 to 5 times more prevalent among them than among middle income or affluent groups. Crowded living conditions increase the incidence of several chronic and latent infections that have been suspected as a direct cause of mental defects in unborn babies when their mothers are exposed to such conditions during pregnancy. Childhood infections, some of which—such as measles—can cause brain damage, are more widely spread because too many children remain unvaccinated.It has been reported, for example, that in New York, in 1961, 21 per cent of children from families whose incomes were three thousand dollars or less, have not received smallpox vaccinations; only 4 percent of children from families with incomes of nine thousand dollars and over remained unvaccinated. The corresponding figures for diptheria-tetanus vaccination are 19 per cent and 2 per cent. “The situation is even worse in the small, minor income groups. In one of these groups (the second-lowest income) 31 percent of all students did not receive smallpox vaccinations, and 2.8 per cent had no diptheria-tetanus shots.”So there are still children who have suffered brain damage, after catching whooping cough, although vaccination has been available for this disease for several decades!Even accidents are more likely to happen to poor children, usually because they are inadequately supervised: in this country, one million children each year suffer head injuries—about 8 out of each 1000 children between the ages of 4 to 18 every year. Such injuries alone account for 10 percent of the institutionalized population.All these physical and environmental causes of mental retardation—most of them preventable—account for more cases of brain damage in the total population than all the genetic causes lumped together.And I have mentioned so far only grossly obvious, physically injurious factors.Let us now consider some others, social and psychological factors that are themselves by-products of the misery of the few and the prejudice of the many.In poor households, many children are badly cared for and so are deprived of intellectual, sensorial and emotional stimulation.There are many “unavailable mothers”—not only working mothers, but also those who are unable to supply the needs of their children because of difficulties of their own: they are emotionally unavailable. Among them are those who cannot arouse themselves sufficiently from their passivity or lethargy to show affection for their children. Others are deeply depressed or mentally ill and reject their children for any of a multitude of reasons.As a result of this there is often no proper family structure, the home becomes disrupted and damaging to the child's character. Parents do not seek help and very often distrust the social institutions that can provide it.Under such conditions, every individual has to use all his meager energies just to keep body and soul together. He has to fight all the time just to survive. Parents have neither the means nor the ability to provide their children with stimulating conversation, with books, music, travel, or the other intellectual and cultural advantages bestowed almost automatically on most children of the middle and upper income groups.When a lack of motivation and opportunity for learning in early years are added to other adverse conditions such as poor diet, bad health habits and inadequate sanitation, lack of pre-natal and post-natal care, emotional disorders, and crowded living conditions—it should come as no surprise that the result is often stunted intellectual development.Children from families like these come to school for the first time without either the experience or the skills necessary for learning. They are backward in language and have no ability for the abstract thought necessary for reading, writing, and arithmetic. Their failure to learn becomes complicated by emotional disorders like frustration and anxiety.And then, too just being poor is a frightful stigma in this country—where accomplishment is largely measured by economic success.Anyone who has watched poor children and their families in countries where poverty is the usual condition of humanity—in Africa, South America and Asia—is aware that poverty by itself does not necessarily preclude warmth and communication within the family. But in countries where poverty is found side by side with affluence, a new condition exists. It has been aptly described by Oscar Lewis as the “culture of poverty,” that appears in all large, poor communities isolated in the midst of general prosperity. It involves an attitude of lethargy and indifference, or sometimes strange forms of escapism and rebellion, that represent both a reaction to the stigma imposed by the affluent world and a defense against the poor opinion the underprivileged have of themselves. In Lewis' words, “the individual who grows up in this slum culture has a strong feeling of fatalism, helplessness, dependence and inferiority.”In the competitive and puritanical white society that prevails in this country, social and economic success have often become equated with goodness and, as a result, the unsuccessful and the economically weak have been regarded as inferior and bad. This belief was frankly and brutally expressed by a New Jersey farmer, who referred to the migrant workers on his land as “nothing . . . they never were nothing, they never will be nothing and you and me and God almighty ain't going to change them.”The tragedy is that the American dream, the myth of equal opportunity for all in this country, is so deeply ingrained, that even the unsuccessful often believe in it, and have therefore a painfully poor opinion of themselves.So the world of the “culture of poverty” is a world that rejects our targets of success and social status, ethics, and social values not for intellectual reasons, but out of despair. Nevertheless, it is a world with its own rules, taboos, pride, and scale of values. This is a world we have to learn to understand with intelligence and compassion, with which we have to learn to communicate, and which we must convince, despite its skepticism and its suspicion, that our goals are worthwhile. We have to prevent its spread, because it breaks the human spirit and so becomes the breeding ground of retardation.We, the Negroes, have suffered discrimination, abuse and neglect for generations and we still live, by and large, a life isolated from the mainstream of society. Crowded into urban slums, pressured from all sides, poorly educated, and poorly equipped to compete, we are further demoralized by the of the affluent society So the poorer among us the psychological of the slum and population cannot to opportunity by new poverty was a The is too It has to the very of its the time they poor Negro children often physical and psychological and in they are likely to new although less obvious, may be just as these are is by an of out in by and study the of on the of their they a school with and children, out percent of the children at and the that these children were as a result of psychological to be to during the school year. these children did not receive special and the of the school remained their a year up children whose was the to with, the most The children not as on the other showed less This was for many over several as well as in for and more when the were to their they described the of children in very like But when they described by an particularly one their had are the of that when a child is by his to be to the the child to be when never so and does not change his of child it and The were and, quite in their own to the children, in quite and in did the child's Moreover, their expressed who cannot be that is In a society where the poor are inferior where the for intellectual development is still largely a may have for deprived Negro can be can be measured by the of and that our school every all the injurious factors that the poor and particularly poor Negroes, I that when we come a of poor Negro children out of school or in for or the there is no need to for with the Negro people or “the Negro Negro has been and you for so I not against the nor do I to a of white from an in of the by the on on the of white in this country, may I suggest that of more of the of people, the of or the of the Negro we should the of a that can and reject or the of a that widely the for the but on its when of the of Such new of also provide some for Negroes, for who is than a to study white I have been by white how they their Negro and how they in who would know the of than a Negro family has being during of the of Negroes in this after years of and discrimination, to a for one further of within the Negro me out that Negro families to far more to the of a retarded child than do white study that middle class white families the of a child retarded usually in social for the class Negro families to retarded children very as they do other I also out that the of illegitimate among deprived Negroes is not evidence of the of the white middle class It is due to the high of and the a year study of in New from to that only and had were on white the other it has been estimated that of all the by by and in New percent were Negroes, percent and only percent women from other groups. Negro women themselves an not only are they more likely to their to but they are also more likely to keep their They know that for Negro babies is almost and the child would for in an or an We need go no further than this to understand the of mothers among Negro the of in the of our and in the of rural poor, many a child is and well equipped to with It may not be a we would on but it is his and in to it, often functions with an intelligence and a of that would the child of the white middle in as the slum child is to with a world and has to in it, is well and is of is that most of the deprived people who are as retarded at some time in their are usually as such in the school They are not either before or after their school they do not the of which both a intelligence and a failure to to social is the social they to We are at last to that this is so because the and by the as well as the used for we are with cultural to the world of the deprived. and largely on middle class and can be and we now know to the of slum simple it is to give a on to a New child will to understand and to one from the and that the child from is more One working with the children of the Negro poor found they usually an to the is when a of a with In the experience of these children are and it would have been of them to have In the of a of Negro children at the of them to a of a one of them it of them had a but they all the of the they had on a white middle class with and are to deprived the same children may be to that and that which a child has not or does not his intellectual is important to in that the we intelligence is to the and of ability and The slum child has exposure to and the has to his of however, within the slums, and new be that would the about the intelligence and of the slum you as I often the experience of a in on a There the is a social few people are interested only in a In one a in a few when I come in they all me how to the One of the and the intelligence of these and at the same time and depressed by all this human that society has to you the and the the and the you the of the in their and of the in their an of about the importance of is to than alarming thought that a of Negro children be as mentally retarded because of intelligence is by a of a it showed that among Negro mentally retarded was than among white mentally retarded More than percent of the Negroes were in the as to only percent of white It was out that the be due to intelligence which were to be less for Negro children than they were for middle class white children. to such the study reported, of the Negroes in the study should not have been as mentally one in the that mentally retarded are than mentally there being in this kind of I would rather that poor Negro children have without being as and the fact that such into their they the school is the that they in the school to the society they from and to which they as us now consider the condition of Negroes who are so retarded that their special the the Negroes are in institutions because all institutions have and to the of the a the Negro the other among the who may be institutionalized because of the Negro is white middle class retarded and the same often with his the Negro not the same social is to up in an the against does the of Negroes in to whites in such as the of Negroes in need of them in the it does in some but in most it does Negroes remain largely by those the they most And those needs are because the ability economically with a retarded child at home is usually less than that of his white Negroes are isolated from the they need is not often to their lack of or to their and in for such services. by the on because communities are to provide in to receive percent of all institutions for the mentally retarded are in middle or high income often a from the inner that need them This of from the people who need them is of to the of retardation among all the rural can be to prevent a and of human the of their per I will a of either in or else in the that should be or so as to all of the intelligence or it that they do the to within the culture of most people in this country, where a certain for abstract communication with a certain and a certain are It is therefore for all children to learn such skills well and early in to that they will be first to with the of school and to in the for three are that can the so retardation is due to disease or accident, health for all must also have a high in any for the of the bad health is largely due to poverty, the of Negro and health workers is probably the to its many is so because in most the of health available for Negroes is to the of Negro white has In the Negro there is only for each the time of the in there were an for every in the In the new over people, was not to with, to a or Negro or to the lack of in Negro one of all to were to rather than to in income areas conditions and therefore on very Negroes are of which they quite as being less to the poor than the of medical The result is that a of Negroes are even from diseases the of the as as the the relative health of the Negro to all the for example, was the white before then, it has to over times the white the in the but all of all are They will be the most and of medical to the Negro The American on as it must be with the alarming and in this of retardation due to should on the of the of Negroes in all and of its for the don't that we can never the of retardation due to environmental the whole that the “culture of poverty” is into it are and insidious discrimination, inferior poor and health care, and are in a to know how these can the spirit of of human and them and therefore is also to at that the of I have received of and from white people their and this and can be into will have in But you can do and need not to show This will have been only it with strong by on the of each of you and of and institutions should be at in of the of their their and their services. The is by example, not by Moreover, for too like has been more interested in and than in its social the poor and the families of the mentally are going to believe the of our for we have to that like this one are on their The in the to chronic and poverty in this country, should be those people who have the most from the American should on the of the no should the of America fall the no should the be to be his own I therefore that the most need of in the for and economic for is for a on the of white The of an in such a with the of our and of our this can their to high was we in which in when those who are not are more than those who And so it must be in

Intellectual and developmental disabilities, 2015 · doi:10.1352/1934-9556-53.6.418