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Poverty a social issue
Racial Discrimination and Social Status in the United States
Racial Discrimination and Social Status in the United States
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Recommended: Poverty a social issue
Society has been fighting one of the biggest current social problems for well over a decade. Poverty is relentless across our entire Nation and the Globe. Today, we find poverty is a trending problem for ethnic minorities in the United States. Two articles, More Than Just Nickels and Dimes: A Cross-National Analysis of Working Poverty in Affluent Democracies and The Geography of Exclusion: Race, Segregation, and Concentrated Poverty came from a scholarly journal . While I collected other information from two popular website articles from National Poverty Center | University of Michigan and Racial and Ethnic Disparities Among Low-Income Families. The articles puts into perspective how poverty is a growing problem in the United States.
The first article I reviewed was The Geography of Exclusion: Race, Segregation, and Concentrated Poverty. Lichter et al. stated “the twenty first century began with a great recession which brought the collapse of the stock market, falling house prices, high foreclosure rates, and increasing unemployment rates”(Lichter, et al. 2012). The year 2000 found 32 million Americans living in poverty and by the end of the decade 46.2 million. Over half of those people include ethnic minorities. Overall, African and Hispanics americans’ poverty rates are three times as high as whites. Which has brought up the question of a targeted concentrated poverty (Lichter et al.2012). Thirty percent of America’s poverty live in poor places, which supports the idea of concentrated poverty. Lichter and et al. (2012) believe too much time has been spent studying and helping the people in inner cities while neglecting the rural poor.
The second article More Than Just Nickels and Dimes: A Cross-National Analysis...
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Brady, David, Andrew S. Fullerton, and Jennifer Moren Cross. "More Than Just Nickels and Dimes: A Cross-National Analysis of Working Poverty in Affluent Democracies." Social Problems 57.4 (2010): 559-585. Print.
Harris, David R., and Ann Chih Lin. "National Poverty Center | University of Michigan." RSS. The University of Michigan, n.d. Web. 6 Apr. 2014. .
Lichter, Daniel T., Domenico Parisi, and Micheal C. Taquino. "The Geography of Exclusion: Race, Segregation, and Concentrated Poverty." Social Problems 59.3 (2012): 364-388. Print.
Simms, Margaret , Karina Fortuny, and Everett Henderson. "Racial and Ethnic Disparities Among Low-Income Families." Racial and Ethnic Disparities Among Low-Income Families. Urban Institute, n.d. Web. 6 Apr. 2014. .
Poverty in America is a very complex issue that can be looked at from many directions. There are a plethora of statistics and theories about poverty in America that can be confusing and at times contradicting. It is important to objectively view statistics to gain a better understanding of poverty and to wade through the stereotypes and the haze of cultural views that can misrepresent the situation.The official poverty line in America begins with a person making at or below $12,060. To calculate the poverty line for a family, an additional $4,180 is added to the base of $12,060 for each additional member(“Federal Poverty Level Guidelines”). According to the last U.S. census, over 45 million or 14.5% of Americans are at or below the poverty line(Worstall). At this level, the U.S. poverty level has not changed much from the 1970s when the government began a “War on Poverty.” However,
Charles, Camille (2003). The dynamics of racial residential segregation. Annual Review of Sociology, 167. Retrieved from http://jstor.org/stable/30036965.
Morton explains that political, institutional, and structural factors lead to the segregation of poverty in minority communities because of their lack of access to educational and health service, reliable public transportation, and job (Morton 275). Morton recognizes that the achievement gap goes much deeper than the education realm and she believes
Lichter,Daniel T. and David J. Eggebeen. 1991. "Race, family structure, and changing poverty among american children. “Department of Counseling Psychology, Lewis & Clark College, Poland, Oregon, USA, 25 June 2010. Web. 12 May. 2014.
Farley, J. E. (2012). Living Apart: Housing Segregation in America. In J. E. Farley, Majority-Minority Relations, 6th Edition (pp. 310-342). Pearson.
America has been described as a "melting pot"-- a land full of diversity. With that diversity comes a full range of income levels and statuses of its inhabitants, from the very, very rich to the destitute. Ronald Taylor's article entitled "African-American Youth: Their Social and Economic Status in the United States" focuses on the issue of polarization. Polarization occurs when an increase of the percentage of people in poverty coincides with an increase of the percentage of people with higher incomes. Fewer people are considered 'middle class', but are either rich or poor.
Zuberi, Dan. Differences that Matter: Social Policy and the Working Poor in the United. New York: Cornell University Press, 2006.
During this course, this author has been taught about various social issues in today’s society as a whole. Some of these issues include perception of race and culture, poverty, social inequality, urbanization, and more. After exploring all these issues and more, this author has chosen to finish his last assignment on racial discrimination and Hispanic Americans. This author decided upon this specific issue because he has observed this in almost every town or city he has visited as a truck driver. This author thinks it is unfortunate that minorities are still treated unfairly. As citizens of the United States of America, it is useful to become educated on what racial discrimination is and see how it is applied in everyday life. This author decided to investigate this issue and determined the genuineness and voluminous of it.
Undisputedly poverty has been one of the major persistent social problems in the United States for hundreds of years. Poverty does not discriminate against Caucasians, African-Americans, Hispanics, Jews, homosexuals, heterosexuals, age, gender, or persons with disabilities. Poverty can strike any population, community, ethnic group, and family. According to the U.S Census Bureau, 43.6 million people were in poverty in 2009 which was an increase from 2008. (Insert citation for website). There are multiple causes of why a family or individual can fall into poverty, which includes but not limited to, disability, unemployment, age, and recessions, as for which we have seen through the 2008 recession and the Great Depression. Throughout this paper I will address poverty as a social problem and its causes. I will also focus on how children and family households headed by single mothers are effected by poverty, and how Temporary Assistance for Needy Families came about to help children and families in poverty.
It is hard to believe that after electing a minority president, the United States of America can still be seen as a vastly discriminatory society. A question was posed recently after a viewing of Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream…” speech of whether his dream has become a reality. After consideration, a majority of the viewers said no. Although many steps have been taken to improve racial equality in America, there is still no way to legislate tolerance. Dr. King’s message of equality for all has been lost in a black and white struggle over the taken meaning of his context. Until our society can allow all people to live in peace we will never truly achieve King’s dream. Case in point, referring to President Obama as our "our First Black President" should not be considered a statement of pride over how far we have come. Placing this racial qualifier, even in a positive light, only serves to point out his minority status, not the fact that he is the President of the United States. According to Dr. King's dream, a man or woman, black or white, would be viewed as President without qualifying their differences from mainstream America.
Since poverty affects a wide array of people, poverty has evolved into a very complex issue. And even though the government has passed legislature to try to ameliorate the situation, many of these means-tested measures like food stamps, have only been able to help the surface of poverty and fails to rip out the long roots poverty has grown throughout history. Poverty’s deep effects are seen especially in minorities as they struggle much more to leave a current situation that has been created by historical process. Even though government assistance like food stamps do help alleviate some of poverty’s burden, these measures fail to recognize the reality that many of the impoverished minority have undervalued homes or no homes at all and even if they can rent, that rent can be high enough to take up more than fifty-percent of their paychecks. Overall, poverty in America is a vastly complicated issue rooted throughout history. And even though the government has attempted to pass legislature to help provide relief from poverty, America still has yet to provide measures that target the roots of poverty and until then, the government assistance it does provide will only be superficial and fail to provide long-term solutions to a complicated
The issue of poverty in the United States is complex, and no one root cause is sufficient to explain why, in a wealthy developed nation, such poverty should exist. However, a principal factor which may contribute to the nation’s poverty lies in problems with the U.S. labor market. According to Freeman, while the U.S. has witnessed a “substantial growth in GDP per capita” (20), only a relatively small portion of the population, the wealthiest Americans, has seen the benefits of that rise in GDP. Many poor and working class Americans do not have access to this wealth and receive little actual benefit from the nation’s increased wealth and prosperity. While productivity has increased in recent years, the gains from the nation’s economic growth has not increased the real wages and benefits for U.S. workers (Freeman 20). The U.S. labor market fails to distribute gains to low wage workers, resulting in their poverty, which in turn, puts their children at a higher risk for being in poverty themselves.
Insular poverty, elucidated by Professor John Kenneth Galbraith in his 1969 essay, The Position of Poverty, refers to the collages of people who are poor because the designation of their lives trap them on ‘social islands’ where nearly everyone is living in these standards. (Galbraith 404) Poverty has flagrantly become a ‘back of the mind’ subject in America. The underlying question remains; is American society responsible for the uprise of insular poverty? Despite the "efforts" America puts off to relieve the world of insular poverty, American society is indefinitely responsible for its popularity due to the absence of will for the impoverished to climb out of the hole of poverty, the absence of opportunities given to poverty minority, the absence of compassion for the povertized.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2014 African Americans held the highest poverty rate of 26%, with Hispanics holding the second highest rate at 24% (DeNavas-Walt & Proctor, 2015). When comparing this to the poverty rates of Whites at 10% and Asians at 12% in 2014, we see that in America, racial and ethnic minorities are more vulnerable to experiencing poverty (DeNavas-Walt & Proctor, 2015). In addition, discrimination is seen between genders among those living in poverty. Family households of a single adult are more likely to be headed by women and are also at a greater risk for poverty (DeNavas-Walt & Proctor, 2015). In 2014, 30.6% of households headed by a single woman were living below the poverty line compared to 15.7% for households headed by a single male (DeNavas-Walt & Proctor, 2015). Many factors such as poor wages for women, pregnancy associations, and the increase of single-woman parented families have impacted the increase of women in poverty. Children are most harshly affected by poverty because for them the risks are compounded, as they lack the defenses and supports needed to combat the toxicity surrounding them. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 21% of all U.S. children (73.6 million children) under 18 years old lived in poverty in 2014 (DeNavas-Walt & Proctor,
The problems of race and urban poverty remain pressing challenges which the United States has yet to address. Changes in the global economy, technology, and race relations during the last 30 years have necessitated new and innovative analyses and policy responses. A common thread which weaves throughout many of the studies reviewed here is the dynamics of migration. In When Work Disappears, immigrants provide comparative data with which to highlight the problems of ghetto poverty affecting blacks. In No Shame in My Game, Puerto Rican and Dominican immigrants are part of the changing demographics in Harlem. In Canarsie, the possible migration of blacks into a working/middle-class neighborhood prompts conservative backlash from a traditionally liberal community. In Streetwise, the migration of yuppies as a result of gentrification, and the movement of nearby-ghetto blacks into these urban renewal sites also invoke fear of crime and neighborhood devaluation among the gentrifying community. Not only is migration a common thread, but the persistence of poverty, despite the current economic boom, is the cornerstone of all these works. Poverty, complicated by the dynamics of race in America, call for universalistic policy strategies, some of which are articulated in Poor Support and The War Against the Poor.