Not in Our Lifetimes: The Future of Black Politics by Michael C. Dawson

Author:Michael C. Dawson [Dawson, Michael C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Ethnic Studies, Public Policy, American, Discrimination, Social Policy, Civil Rights, Social Science, African American & Black Studies, Political Science, General
ISBN: 9780226705347
Google: 9r0lEAAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 52387551
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2011-10-07T00:00:00+00:00

POVERTY

As table 10 shows, African Americans have not begun to close the poverty gap with whites. Although the black poverty rate has declined for the past twenty years, it remains three times as severe as that of white Americans. According to data collected before the onset of the worst economic crisis the nation has faced in decades, one out of four African Americans still resided below the poverty level. It can be assumed that the number now is higher.

Ironically, in cities such as Chicago, black suburbanization has served mainly to relocate areas of poverty once concentrated in the “central city.” As a result of the demolition of public housing in Chicago proper, a heavy concentration of poverty has been substantially transferred to the south suburbs. We have seen this pattern in places from Oakland, California, through the Midwest to the eastern seaboard, of poor urban residents being forced out of the inner city by a variety of mechanisms, including the destruction of public housing and gentrification. Thus, for many poor African Americans, moving to the suburbs is not a mythic fulfillment of the American dream, as it was for millions of white Americans of earlier generations. Instead, it is often accompanied by continued poverty combined with fewer social services, more costly yet fewer transportation options, and thus amounts merely to a relocation of what Malcolm X called an “American nightmare” from city to suburbs.

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