Mattie McQueen was about five years old when her mother offered a surprise: “Let’s all go for ice cream.”
McQueen and three of her siblings scrambled out to Mom’s old blue station wagon. They talked, on the way, about what flavor of ice cream they’d get, till Mattie noticed they weren’t traveling the usual route to Dairy Queen.
“Don’t worry,” her mom replied. “We’re going for ice cream.”
Minutes later, she parked and led them into an office waiting room. “I’ll be right back,” she said.
She didn’t come back. That night, the children were placed in foster care.
Mattie McQueen is 52 years old now, but this story still brings on the tears. McQueen is a big woman, round all over, with straight black hair cropped just above her shoulders, and when she cries, all of her shakes. Throughout her life, she’s been on the move, from Bridgeton, New Jersey, to North, South and West Philly, and through a series of relationships that left her with five kids of her own. “I wanted to do right by them,” she says, “but early on, I was in and out of taking care of them.”
Today, McQueen is unemployed and cares for her three grandchildren the best she can. Her living room in West Philadelphia is almost barren. What looks like a 20-year-old TV, with its heavy backside, sits against one wall, facing a few metal folding chairs. A tricycle stands in one corner, parked there by her youngest grandchild, Khaalid Casey, known as Booda.
A cycle of poverty has repeated itself. The poor parents of Mattie McQueen, themselves raised in poverty, gave birth to poor progeny. More than 407,500 Philadelphians live in poverty, about 26 percent of the population — the highest poverty rate among the nation’s 10 biggest cities. The sheer enormity of need strains the city in innumerable ways, from massive social spending to stunted tax revenue to schools. City teachers educate kids suffering from traumas that teachers in suburban districts rarely encounter. The poverty rate among Philadelphia children is a terrifying 36 percent. Many of those children are heirs to a lineage of destitution that stretches back generations.
Mattie McQueen’s past can’t be undone. But researchers studying the cycle of poverty are now contending that she — and millions of men and women like her — must be seen in context, as the vital heart of a family, a woman whose painful history reaches back generations, and who has three grandkids depending upon her today.
To read the full article by Steve Volk, click here.
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