ty, compared to 5 million whites, in a nation in which only about 12 percent of the entire population is black (Chideya xvi).
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.
Racism is indicated by the way blacks are covered in the media. Farai Chideya writes, "'Black' has come to symbolize crime, reckless childbearing, moral turpitude--'pathology.' African-Americans have come to symbolize the worst America has to offer" (5). She points out that this stereotype comes from media coverage by a primarily white corps of journalists who tend to focus on black crime, blacks on welfare, and "repeated images of blacks as unproductive and often dangerous members of this society" (4-5). The exception to this practice is the media's interest in another tiny, unrepresentative segment of the black population, the black celebrity (Oprah Winfrey, Michael Jordan, etc.). Neither focus highlights the lives of the majority of blacks in America.
Nevertheless, because poverty traps a significantly greater proportion of the black population, experts can argue that poverty's black face is not a m...