The first step to addressing inequality is to recognize it exists.
by Elizabeth Blount
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Elizabeth Blount
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Few things astound and aggravate me more than when Berry students are unfamiliar with Rome, if they have never been to places that I consider popular parts of town.
The notion of the Berry bubble is unhealthy when students are so isolated from the community that they see no need to leave it. Individuals content to remain in this pocket of affluence frustrate me.
I try to explore the town. However, one encounter showed me how I, too, am ignorant.
A woman approached me one night as I walked down Broad Street and asked for money to buy a sandwich. I remember the feelings of discomfort as I told her that I had no cash, while in reality I had $20 in my wallet. Walking away, torn between the impulse to help this woman and the advice from my parents not to talk to strangers, I knew I had looked this woman in the eyes and refused her the help she needed.
Perhaps worse, I had wished that I could have looked the other way and pretended not to notice. While the $20 in my wallet was meant for weekend pizza and coffee money, for that woman the same $20 could have meant the difference between having something to eat or going to bed hungry.
This represents in microcosm the wealth gaps in Rome.
In a city that boasts beauty, charm and sophistication, one might overlook the run-down slums just a few streets away from Broad Street. In some areas of Rome, even the divider of one street can slice the median household income from $56,000 to $25,000. Further, in 2009, 36.2% of residents in Rome lived below the poverty level.
De facto segregation
This is especially problematic due to the proximity of households at each end of the spectrum, coupled with the tendency of those with higher incomes to turn a blind eye to the under-resourced.
Although I am befuddled when a fellow student tells me she has never ventured off campus to local places like Swift & Finch or Honeymoon Bakery, what might shock more is the number of lifelong residents of Rome who have never visited these places either, people for whom buying a latte or a cupcake is unthinkable. For these households, making $25,000 a year, or an income below the poverty line, there is no money for frivolity, and even fewer opportunities for increasing their income.
Issues associated with wealth inequality are unfortunately too far-reaching to change overnight, or even over the course of a school year. By no means am I suggesting that the key to solving these issues is merely for the privileged to merely shell out extra cash now and then to the less fortunate, as this offers little help aside from allowing the rich to feel momentarily better about themselves.
However, one of the first steps is to combat ignorance that might suggest that there is no issue, or that things just have to remain the way they are. Although not everyone living in Rome might suffer the effects of this inequality, this in no way means that a wealth gap does not exist or that those circumstances cannot be improved.
For those of us who happen to be able to buy the occasional cup of coffee, perhaps our first responsibility is to step outside of our own bubbles, see the people around us, and not to look the other way the next time we are asked for money for a sandwich.