Laura Ungar’s survey of the healthcare in Kentucky made me rethink what it means that disability, or in this case illness, is a social construction in itself. In her discussion of the threats of untreated illnesses and late detection it is clear that the no healthcare and poor conditions are the sources of problems. Moreover, problems like distance and inadequate supermarkets and food contribute to the poor state of health. In this course we’ve seen how similar problems construct disabilities and how social constructs lead to subjugation of certain groups. Here we see this former piece as well as an argument against this latter. Jay Wolfson argues "As a society, we're allowing the weakest link to rot…But the weakest link is part of the chain.” In other units, we’ve seen how social constructs have purposely meant for this “weaker link to rot”, but Laura Ungar critiques those social constructs to prove that, “When poor people get sick…everyone pays through higher taxes and rising medical costs. The population as a whole also becomes less productive and prosperous.” This may be the first, current example we’ve seen in this course of a critique about social constructs and how they’re damaging society as a whole. Rather than us analyze how healthcare and poverty has influenced societies past, we can see a contemporary example and expression of how we create things that hurt certain groups and ultimately ourselves.
Additionally, Laura Ungar’s work helps me think about what it means to be poor, a question we approached a little bit today. Not only does this article discuss problems with healthcare, it reminds us of a poor, forgotten portion of American in the rural south. Ungar paints a portrait of the trailers, the distances, and the people. She even provides parameters with which to measure poverty- death rates, high school and college graduates, and percentage of people in the labor force. These are things we always think about when we think about poverty in the US, but at least for me, I hardly think of them in respect to this geographic area because I’m from New York and my standpoint seems to be city-centric.
1 comment:
I think that you raise a valid point by saying that this demographic of poverty often goes unnoticed. Poverty in cities is often more recognizable while poverty in rural areas can be more difficult to understand. I have read a similar article to Laura Unger's article in the New York Times that spotlighted high infant mortality rates (particularly among black women) in rural Mississippi. I think people would like to think that a lot of things in the South have changed, but the rural poverty that plagues Kentucky, Mississippi, and other states still lingers and breed many of the same problems that it did decades ago.
Post a Comment