Poverty and Race

Paper Summary:

This paper looks at the relationship between poverty and race in the U.S. and how a black person is more likely than a white person to be poor, to have a lower family income, a lower paying job and fewer resources to get out of poverty. Through a literature review, it examines how experts have suggested a number of reasons for this situation, from different cultural expectations to greater historical barriers. It also argues that racism plays a significant role in perpetuating black poverty as well as contending that racism can be used as an excuse for self-perpetuation, obscuring other causes of poverty and preventing many blacks from making full use of what resources they do have to secure the kinds of lives for which they long.

From the Paper:

"The reasons for this disparity are not clear-cut. Civil War and civil rights have gone a long way toward equalizing circumstances between blacks and whites in America. Yet this equalization has not been economic, and one of the most significant explanations is that racism continues to be a powerful force in American life. Legislation eliminated the most blatant forms of institutionalized racism, but it could not stamp out the subtler ways in which dominant forces continue to try to suppress and discriminate against those who are different. As Jacqueline Jones points out, "From the time of slavery onward, white farmers and nonagricultural workers maintained historic advantages over black people, no matter how outwardly similar the situations of the two races" (6). Social reforms could not prevent the ruling classes from trying to hold onto whatever advantages they had already managed to secure."

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