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Poverty as a Racial Issue

This paper is an examination of poverty as a racial issue. A black person in America 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. Experts have suggested a number of reasons for this situation, from different cultural expectations to greater historical barriers. This paper argues that racism plays a significant role in perpetuating black poverty. However, this paper also contends 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.

While the earliest blacks to arrive in America came as indentured servants seeking, along with their white counterparts, a better life and greater economic opportunity, most of the original population of American blacks arrived as slaves. Taken forcibly from their homes on the African continent, they were brought to clear the wilderness, farm the plantations, and provide the brute labor that most of even the lowest classes of whites were unwilling to do.

The slave trade eventually became illegal, but the institution remained in place until the violent confrontation of the Civil War finally brought emancipation. However, freedom came with few economic or social guarantees, and, unlike members of every other immigrant group, American blacks began their citizenship in the worst possible position.

Since the Civil War, a distinct black middle class and even an upper class has managed to rise in American society, yet blacks remain disproportionately represented among the very poorest members of society. A 1991 survey of California residents showed that 14 percent of the population lived below the poverty line, while almost 25 percent of these were black (23). In the country as a whole, more than 2 million black families live in pover...

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Poverty as a Racial Issue. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 11:22, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1691518.html