Did you know there is one section of society that that is truly, fundamentally, completely diverse. Members of every race, religion, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and health status occupy this group without any trouble getting in.

Now granted, there are certain characteristics that make it more likely that you’ll be able to join this most diverse class. Be a single woman, or even better be a single woman with children. Be non-white. Be disabled. If you can manage to be all three, then you’ve hit the jackpot and your admittance is almost statistically assured.

Though I don’t think most of y’all wanna join this diverse class. It is the bottom after all. Poverty is the one truly integrated section of society, its own little rainbow coalition of the have nots.

I often wonder why it is so hard for the middle and the upper classes to be as integrated as us at the bottom. We don’t even have to try. Poverty doesn’t care if you’re straight or gay (though if you’re a gay teenager that has been kicked out of the house for said gayness, you get a free ticket) or TAB or not (though any disability makes it more likely that you are going to join out ranks, thanks to abysmal employment policies and even more abysmal private healthcare policies).

No, getting in is as easy as being laid off in a recession, or having a health crisis, or ending a marriage.

But getting out is a bitch.