Poverty Charges Interest: How Living With Less Costs Us Everything

Poverty doesn’t just make life harder—it multiplies harm. The less you have, the more it costs to survive, turning today’s small struggles into tomorrow’s impossible crises. In a system designed to exploit the most vulnerable, poverty charges interest—and we’re all paying the price.

Living under capitalism, particularly as a Black American, often feels like navigating a system intentionally designed to exhaust and exploit you. The weight of systemic oppression, generational trauma, and financial inequity doesn’t just hurt—it compounds. For many, survival feels like an endless uphill battle, and the kind of change needed to break these cycles can seem impossibly far away.
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This isn’t an appeal for empty hope or hollow validation. It’s a call to confront the forces that keep so many of us trapped and to name them for what they are: systems that thrive on inequality. This is about refusing to let those systems win, even if the solutions feel out of reach.

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​The System Was Built to Exploit

The challenges Black Americans face today didn’t appear overnight. They are the direct result of policies intentionally designed to exploit and exclude. From slavery to sharecropping, Jim Crow laws, redlining, and mass incarceration, systemic racism has shaped the economic landscape of this country.

One of the most devastating examples is the war on drugs, which disproportionately impacted Black families. Between the 1980s and 1990s, mandatory minimum sentencing laws for drug offenses disproportionately targeted Black men, tearing families apart and leaving Black women to spearhead households alone. By 2000, more than 1.5 million Black men were missing from their communities due to incarceration or early death (Equal Justice Initiative, 2015).

This systemic dismantling of Black family structures has become normalized. Today, nearly 70% of Black children are raised in single-parent households, compared to just 25% of White children (Pew Research Center, 2019). This norm—rooted in systemic oppression—forces Black women to shoulder not only the emotional burden of raising children but also the financial responsibility of paying bills, securing housing, and building wealth in a system designed to work against them.

As Dr. Dorothy A. Brown observes in The Whiteness of Wealth, “The consequences of discriminatory policies compound over generations, creating a cycle of disadvantage that Black women are often left to navigate on their own.”

Poverty Charges Interest

The financial consequences of systemic inequality are staggering. Rising housing costs, stagnant wages, and inflation disproportionately affect low-income families. And here’s the kicker: poverty charges interest.

When you can’t afford to solve a problem today—whether it’s paying a bill, repairing something essential, or addressing your health—the cost doesn’t stay the same. It grows. Over time, small problems turn into big ones, and the resources needed to fix them become even harder to access.

This is how poverty traps people in a cycle. The lack of immediate resources forces decisions that solve today’s emergencies at the expense of tomorrow’s stability. It’s not just about being broke—it’s about how poverty compounds harm, creating situations that feel impossible to escape.

Meanwhile, Black women are disproportionately employed in low-wage industries like retail and service jobs, earning 64 cents for every dollar earned by White men (National Women’s Law Center, 2021). This wage gap means less access to resources and an even greater vulnerability to financial emergencies.
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Angela Glover Blackwell points to the need for systemic reform: “When we invest in the most vulnerable, we create conditions where everyone can thrive. But right now, the system is designed to do the opposite—exacerbating harm for those who need the most support.”

Performative Solutions Aren’t Enough

Even the solutions offered to alleviate suffering often fall short. Grants like the Amber Grant for Black women or programs through Black Girl Ventures can be life-changing for a few recipients, but they’re far from guaranteed. Thousands of women apply for these grants every month, making them highly competitive. Mutual aid networks, while faster and less bureaucratic, are often underfunded, with 63% of urban programs reporting a lack of resources (Center for Economic Democracy, 2021).
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At the systemic level, companies launch diversity initiatives or promote wellness campaigns that fail to address the root causes of inequality. Without actionable policies—such as fair wages, universal healthcare, or affordable housing—these efforts amount to little more than window dressing.

The Fight for Change

The change we need—universal basic income, reparations, guaranteed housing—may not come to pass in our lifetimes. That’s a devastating reality to sit with, especially when our ancestors fought and died for a better future, and many in our generation fail to use the tools they sacrificed for, like voting or activism.

So why fight at all? Because change isn’t just about the future—it’s about reclaiming moments of joy and power in the present. Resistance isn’t always about dismantling entire systems; sometimes, it’s about creating space to breathe, rest, and survive in a world that tries to suffocate you.

Bella’s Apothecary—a business I’ve built to center care, rest, and healing for Black women—is one small piece of that resistance. It’s not about fixing everything; it’s about refusing to let the system take all of me. Every product, every ritual, every act of care is a reminder that we are more than what this system wants us to be.
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As Audre Lorde said: “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”

The world isn’t fair, but we are not powerless. Every moment of healing, every small act of care, and every refusal to give in is a step toward reclaiming the life we deserve—whether we see the results in this lifetime or not.

​Sources

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1. Pew Research Center (2022):
   • “Wealth Gaps Across Racial and Ethnic Groups in America.”
   • https://www.pewresearch.org
2. Urban Institute (2020):
   • “Black Homeownership Gap in the United States.”
   • https://www.urban.org
3. Federal Reserve (2022):
   • “Distribution of Household Wealth in the U.S., 1989–2022.”
   • https://www.federalreserve.gov
4. National Women’s Law Center (2021):
   • “The Wage Gap for Black Women in the United States.”
   • https://www.nwlc.org
5. Kimberlé Crenshaw:
   • Quote: “Inequality doesn’t just happen. It’s engineered, embedded in policies, and upheld by institutions that were never designed to be equitable.”
   • Sourced from various speeches and works by Crenshaw on systemic inequality.
6. Angela Glover Blackwell, PolicyLink:
   • Quote: “When we invest in the most vulnerable, we create conditions where everyone can thrive. But right now, the system is designed to do the opposite—exacerbating harm for those who need the most support.”
   • From her writing and interviews at https://www.policylink.org.
7. Dr. Dorothy A. Brown, The Whiteness of Wealth (2021):
   • Quote: “The tax code in America is a cornerstone of systemic racism, channeling wealth to White families while leaving Black households to carry a disproportionate financial burden.”
   • https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com
8. American Heart Association (2021):
   • “Cardiovascular Health Disparities Among Black Americans.”
   • https://www.heart.org
9. Center for Economic Democracy (2021):
   • “The State of Mutual Aid in Urban Communities.”
   • https://www.economicdemocracy.org
10. Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Race for Profit (2019):
    • Quote: “Capitalism is predicated on inequality. Its very existence depends on the systematic deprivation of whole swaths of people.”
    • https://www.versobooks.com
11. Audre Lorde, A Burst of Light (1988):
    • Quote: “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”
    • Widely cited across feminist and social justice literature.