Comments on: Income Ladder Hard to Climb If You’re Born at the Bottom, New Report Shows

By: Bits on Uphill Battles — and Downward Falls « Poverty & Policy

Bits on Uphill Battles — and Downward Falls « Poverty & Policy — Mon, 13 Aug 2012 11:06:06 +0000

[...] recent post on the Pew Center’s economic mobility report alluded to its findings on blacks born to [...]

By: Michael Dahl (@speakforwe)

Michael Dahl (@speakforwe) — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 16:19:48 +0000

Wow! Thanks for sharing that quote. Powerful and true. But let’s do some liberating to begin with at least.

By: Kathryn Baer

Kathryn Baer — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 15:31:49 +0000

Your image reminds me of one in a speech former President Lyndon Johnson gave at the dawn of his War on Poverty: “You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, ‘you are free to compete with all the others,’ and still justly believe that you have been completely fair.”

By: Michael Dahl (@speakforwe)

Michael Dahl (@speakforwe) — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 12:59:14 +0000

Reading this post, an image popped into mind.

There are two infants trying to learn to walk and then climb a ladder (it’s just an image, not reality, okay).

One infant has weights attached to its legs, arms, and neck. The weights are named things like “poverty,” “stress,” and “discrimination.” The other infant is surrounded by props that help it learn to walk and climb.

You get the picture.

Thanks for tipping me off the new report. I’ve got to check it out.