America's Disparity Deserts

Deserts not of sand, but silence.

Photo by Avi Waxman on Unsplash

America is full of deserts, and I don’t mean the Mojave or Sonoran. I mean the kind that don’t just lack water, but access, opportunity, and basic dignity. A desert, at its root, is a place devoid of something essential. We usually talk about this in terms of food: neighborhoods where fresh produce is mythical, and the closest thing to a farm is a picture on a cereal box. But food deserts are just the beginning.

There’s a whole ecosystem of absence baked into American life, a scorched patchwork of disparity deserts, engineered by policy, preserved by indifference.

Food is only the appetizer.