Race and Poverty

I've had friends attempt to tell me that poor blacks are not like poor whites and that working to solve poverty in a colorblind fashion won't help poor blacks. But I've never had anyone tell me why other than, "whites treat blacks poorly in economic areas". This fails because it doesn't mesh with my understanding of being a minority that is treated poorly in economic areas: women are steadily gaining ground and I can foresee a future where a woman's economic power will equal that of a man's (and might even see it in my lifetime), and we've been working on that for about a third as long as blacks have. Clearly the problem is poverty, not race.

Thankfully someone has come along and explained quite thoroughly, yet accessibly, why it is that working on poverty won't solve the problems of poor blacks have with a series of essays related to the city council shooting in Kirkwood: American Dream! (Not Available In All Areas)" (if you only read one, read that one and the comments for suggestions on what can be done about it), Kirkwood and Meacham Park from 1853 to 1990, and Ethnic Cleansing Does Not Condone Terrorism: Kirkwood, Meacham Park, and Cookie Thornton, which is a very specific example of how this still goes on.

(as an aside, I think one of those friends fails to realize that the rest of us don't know, in particular, the information in that first essay, which is why he gets terribly upset when people say we need to work on poverty in a colorblind manner)

Race and Poverty

I've had friends attempt to tell me that poor blacks are not like poor whites and that working to solve poverty in a colorblind fashion won't help poor blacks. But I've never had anyone tell me why other than, "whites treat blacks poorly in economic areas". This fails because it doesn't mesh with my understanding of being a minority that is treated poorly in economic areas: women are steadily gaining ground and I can foresee a future where a woman's economic power will equal that of a man's (and might even see it in my lifetime), and we've been working on that for about a third as long as blacks have. Clearly the problem is poverty, not race.

Thankfully someone has come along and explained quite thoroughly, yet accessibly, why it is that working on poverty won't solve the problems of poor blacks have with a series of essays related to the city council shooting in Kirkwood: American Dream! (Not Available In All Areas)" (if you only read one, read that one and the comments for suggestions on what can be done about it), Kirkwood and Meacham Park from 1853 to 1990, and Ethnic Cleansing Does Not Condone Terrorism: Kirkwood, Meacham Park, and Cookie Thornton, which is a very specific example of how this still goes on.

(as an aside, I think one of those friends fails to realize that the rest of us don't know, in particular, the information in that first essay, which is why he gets terribly upset when people say we need to work on poverty in a colorblind manner)