Poverty as a Racial Issue

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 poss

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-white enclaves, such as universities and Fortune 500 companies. Yet Jacob's argument, like affirmative action itself, is also a subtle suggestion that blacks need extra help because of their own inherent deficiencies. While more whites than blacks benefit from government welfare programs, Jacob sees governmental cutbacks as primarily injuring blacks. His implication is that the white recipients of government assistance benefit or suffer as individuals, while black recipients benefit or suffer as a group. This is racist thinking, masked as a plea for special support as a means of quelling white guilt. Elizabeth Wright, voicing the opposing view, also flirts with racism. She argues that, by accepting government help, the black community surrendered its legacy of self-sufficiency and self-help: "Black energy was diverted away from the drive for economic independence and turned, instead, to making whites take notice, move over, and give--all in the name of 'social justice'" (153). In her view, any help that appears to be given from one race to another is harmful and wrong, and the black community's willingness to accept assistance from the "white" government dilutes its own power and diminishes its strength as an independent e
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Approximate Word count = 2073
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)