 | By Laura Reston Senior Staff Editor, Opinion |
Stands of loblolly pine trees stretch as far as the eye can see on each side of Highway 14 as you drive from the area just north of Montgomery, Alabama, and deep into the rural part of the state. Multinational corporations and wealthy families own much of the land. But once you reach Selma, the trees clear to make way for crumbling buildings and shotgun shacks. Grocery stores, even convenience stores, are scarce. So are hospitals, schools and factories. |
The Black Belt, as this region is known, was once the heart of the Confederacy. Tens of thousands of enslaved people worked its rich black soil, harvesting cotton for the wealthy families who owned the land. All these years later, it's still one of the poorest parts of America. |
Its startling inequality was what first drew my attention when Robin Kaiser-Schatzlein proposed a story about the Black Belt. While the region remains inextricably defined by the legacy of slavery, it is also now captive to a stunningly complex array of distinctly modern problems. Rob's piece, an ambitious, beautifully written feature that we published today after months of reporting, research and edits, delves into law and class and the ways in which they intersect to keep the poorest of the poor — no matter their race — trapped in a system from which some may never escape. |
As Rob describes in his essay, the wealthy landowners who wrote Alabama's constitution in 1901 rigged the tax system so that they — and their descendants — could effectively avoid paying their fair share. Over the years, Alabama needed more revenue — to fund schools, build bridges, offer medical care and pay for law enforcement, jails and prisons — but Alabama's constitution usually bars lawmakers from raising taxes. Instead, the state came to rely increasingly on a system of fines and fees, levied each time someone pulls a public record, applies for a permit or gets a traffic ticket. |
We sent Rob to Alabama in April, and he returned stunned by just how many people had fallen into debt thanks to the heavy burden of fines, fees and court costs: gas station attendants, Starbucks baristas, grocery store clerks, even a professor, all shouldering the burden of a hollowed-out state. With every traffic ticket, fine and fee, they fund schools their children will never attend, hospitals where they may never receive treatment. Many will never escape the debts they incur. |
Fines and fees are, ironically, not a particularly efficient source of revenue, and they extract a human toll. One of the people Rob spoke to for this piece, Niaya Williams, told him she grows sick just thinking about driving: She spent years paying off the debt she incurred from driving without a license, and even now, after getting her license, the thought of hitting the road fills her with dread. |
The message from his piece is clear: This is an injustice, and without rewriting the tax code, there will never be economic or racial equality in this country. |
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