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In the Ghetto

As part of my job, I'm in the ghetto a lot.

I'm not talking about the ghetto as defined by a lot of my friends: lower middle class neighborhoods. I'm not talking about a place where blue-collar folk live in their small, affordable $100,000 homes and honestly make a living, or where hard-working immigrants plant the seeds of their new American life. I'm not talking about (for those of you who are familiar with KC) neighborhoods like 78th & Parallel, 83rd & Wornall, or Roeland Park, which are just crappy enough for me to say, "I'd never live there" but not crappy enough to be afraid to leave my car on the street for a couple of hours.

I'm talking about the ghetto where there are commonly drive-by shootings in schools. The ghetto where your 14-year-old client says "Make sure you lock your car and hide your CDs" when you are out of your car for 5 minutes while dropping her off at her group home. The ghetto where you don't stop at lights or stop signs, and where even a pack of 12-year-olds can pose serious risk to your person and property. The ghetto where good people don't go outside at night. Like, you know, 22nd & State or 12th & The Paseo. The kind of place that makes it hard to believe that wonderful places like Overland Park even exist.

I have an observation to make about the ghetto. EVERYONE IN THE GHETTO SHOULD BE FAT.

Let's say it's lunch time, and you need to buy food. You are in your car, in the ghetto, and you need to get something quick. You don't have the convenience of running inside the Super Wal-Mart to purchase groceries, nor would you have the place to prepare said groceries.You find a busy intersection with a Wal-mart, a KFC, a Pizza Hut, a McDonald's, a Chinese buffet, a Popeye's Chicken and Biscuits (I just wanted to write chicken & biscuits. I suppose just Popeye's would have sufficed), a Wendy's ... are you noticing anything here?

There is no healthy food in the ghetto. In my nice, safe, wonderful upper middle-class neighborhood, there is always a Subway or Mr. Goodscents or Chipotle or Baja Fresh or some other non-deep-fried-and-saturated-fat-laden convenience food place. These things do not exist in the ghetto. I had to drive 10 miles from the ghetto to find a Subway for lunch.

I have theories on this.

1. It is all a conspiracy by The Man to keep poor folks down. If we fill them full of fattening foods, and turn them into bed-ridden blimpozoids, they will no longer bother us.

2. Fried foods are tastier than wholesome foods, and poor folks fancy that they have too many other things to worry about than to add on the stress of eating unpleasant things.

3. These "restaurants" are cheaper than their healthier fast food competitors and therefore more accessible for poor folks. Or at least, that is the misnomer that the poor folks believe. In reality, a McD's extra value meal, a Wendy's value meal, a KFC meal, a Chipotle burrito and a Subway value meal are all around the same $5-6 range.

4. Poverty leads to depression and hopelessness, which leads to unhealthy adults, who become in turn shitty parents, who feed their kids McDonald's to shut them up, which establishes poor eating norms.

posted by Jen @ 9/29/2005 12:44:00 PM