06/09/2025
Being poor is expensive. Respect is down. Kanitha
Being poor is expensive.
Not just financially, systemically.
• If you’re poor, your food costs more (because your ZIP code doesn’t have a grocery store).
• Your car breaks down more (because you bought it used and prayed it made it through the month).
• Your medical bills are higher (because you waited too long to go, or weren’t believed when you did).
• You pay more for rent in unsafe neighborhoods than some folks pay for mortgages in gated ones.
💡 Poverty is not the absence of money. It’s the compounding interest of being shut out.
It’s getting hit from all sides, economically, emotionally, spiritually, and being expected to smile through it like you’re in a toothpaste commercial.
And respect?
Down bad.
Because in this society, respect is tethered to what you wear, where you live, what degree you have, and how much you can fake stability.
You can be brilliant, compassionate, hard-working, but if you’re poor?
You’ll be called “lazy.”
If you’re struggling?
They’ll say, “You should’ve planned better.”
And if you dare to tell your story in a movie like Straw?
People will say, “Why are you airing dirty laundry?”
We don’t lack morals. We lack mercy.
We mock what we don’t understand.
We judge pain we’ve never had to feel.
And we ignore the systems we benefit from while blaming people just trying to live.
Being poor is expensive.
Being Black and poor is exhausting.
And being a Black woman trying to survive it all while maintaining dignity? That’s a masterclass in endurance.
So before you criticize the storytelling,
ask yourself, what privilege lets you pretend it’s fiction?
10/10
