I love stories of redemption.
That’s why every holiday season I look forward to watching a production of “A Christmas Carol.” I’m a sucker for seeing the transformation of Ebenezer Scrooge from a miserly misanthrope to the kindly soul who brings a prize Christmas turkey to the Cratchit family on Christmas morning and vows to save the life of sickly Tiny Tim.
And so I was surprised to learn that according to his biographers, when Dickens wrote “A Christmas Carol” in 1843, it wasn’t redemption that drove the story. It was condemnation.
Dickens’’ tale was inspired by a harrowing 1842 parliamentary investigation of “The Employment and Conditions of Children in Mines and Manufactories,” which documented the horrifying conditions faced by child laborers in England. Dickens saw the report as an example of the broader problem of the indifference of England’s wealthy to the conditions of the poor. “A Christmas Carol” was his response. Remember Scrooge’s answer to the charity workers who ask him for a Christmas donation for the needy: “Are there no prisons? No workhouses?” he sneers.
Bob Cratchit, Scrooge’s hapless employee, like many of the working poor in Victorian London, wasn’t paid a decent wage, and he struggled to feed his family. And the Cratchits no doubt lacked access to good medical care, which contributed to Tiny Tim’s illness.
But here’s a question: What would Scrooge have seen had his three ghosts taken him on a tour of 2023 Atlanta?
Conditions in Atlanta’s poorest communities aren’t as squalid as Victorian London’s tenement districts. But the wealth gap here is as dispiriting as that of Dickens’ England. The Ghost of Christmas Present would probably show Scrooge the most recent data from the U.S. Census Bureau, revealing that Atlanta has the largest degree of income inequality of any major city in the country, with the median income for a white family at $83,722 compared to $28,105 for a Black family.
And the Ghost could also give Scrooge a distressing look at a nutrition gap, too, not just in Atlanta but statewide, as well. The Atlanta Community Food Bank reports that 15% of Black families in Georgia are “food insecure,” a USDA term meaning they lack access at times to enough food for “an active, healthy life.” And whatever the race, many more low-income Georgians are food insecure.
The Ghost of Christmas Past would likely point out to Scrooge that the inability of minority families to accumulate generational wealth perpetuates the cycle of poverty. The Atlanta Wealth Building Initiative, an organization working to identify the problems that cause the generational wealth gap, cites data showing that if you are born into poverty in Atlanta, you have just a 4% chance of escaping it in your lifetime. And according to Prosperity Now, a Washington-based nonprofit economic equity advocacy group, 30% of Georgia’s Black families have zero or negative net worth compared to 10% of white families.
As he guides Scrooge through locations in Atlanta, the Ghost of Christmas Future might point his skeletal finger toward the sites where metro Atlanta hospitals that primarily catered to the underserved like Wellstar’s Atlanta Medical Center and their facility in East Point have closed their doors. The Ghost would ominously whisper in Scrooge’s ear that the problem of health care for the needy is exacerbated by the fact that Georgia is one of just 10 states that haven’t expanded Medicaid to all who need it.
Scrooge wakes from his night of ghostly visitations delighted to realize it’s Christmas morning and he still has time to become a better person, a lesson Dickens hoped might awaken the consciences of Londoners of means. What If we, like Scrooge, awoke this Christmas morning with at least a clearer awareness of the inequities in our community? What might we accomplish then?
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