The Persistent Poverty of African Americans in the United States - by Daphne M Cooper Paperback

About the Book

This book sheds light on American politics and power that has disadvantaged African Americans through the implementation of public policies, causing them to remain poor and underprivileged in the United States.

Book Synopsis

The purpose of this book is to shed light on American politics and power that have disadvantaged African Americans through the implementation of public policies, causing them to remain poor and underprivileged in the United States. History demonstrates that African Americans have inherited gateless poverty: exacerbated by living without training and skills; living in slums without decent medical care; having the devastating heritage of the long years of slavery; and a century of oppression, hatred, and injustice. African Americans in the United States started off at a disadvantage; they were hobbled by chains for years and then abruptly liberated, and brought to the starting line expecting to compete with everyone else.
This book will scrutinize persistent poverty using a model of institutional policies that have been implemented to keep African Americans as a permanent underclass thus withholding any measure of true equality, which I foundationally understand as racial and economically unjust. This book produces evidence that public policies, programs, and institutional practices have impacted African Americans. Therefore, it is important to challenge the long-standing misdirected paradigm, which blames the individual for being poor instead of holding the government accountable for the structural failures within the governmental system.
The persistent poverty that exists among African Americans is a result of the unanticipated consequence of a flawed policy system that was intended to alleviate problems but has, in fact, caused them to worsen. There has been considerable debate in both academic and policy arenas over the extent of long-term poverty. Some scholars argue that there is no long-term poverty problem and that most poverty is temporary and reflect short-run adjustment problems or life-cycle changes. Other scholars argue that some individuals and families remain poor for longer periods, perhaps over generations. One view blames poverty persistence on poor labor market opportunities, segregation, discrimination, inadequate under-funded schools, and the lack of community resources in disadvantaged neighborhoods. An additional group points to the work and marriage disincentives in the welfare system, the increasing number of female-headed households, the increases in teen-pregnancy and illegitimacy, deviant subcultures, and the personal deficiencies of the poor.
According to the Institute for Research on Poverty, African Americans and Latinos have poverty rates that greatly exceed the national average. Poverty levels differ depending on where people live; the metropolitan poverty rate differs greatly between suburbs and the central city, it also varies by region and within regions. According to Scott Allard, African Americans are impacted by federal housing policies, public housing practices, discriminatory mortgage lending, and racial steering, which all played a major role in the creation of poor Black neighborhoods. Douglas S. Massey argues that residential segregation is the primary structural cause of the geographical concentration of poverty in the U.S. urban areas. Research indicates that residential segregation is the principal structural feature of American society that is responsible for the perpetuation of poverty, which represents the primary cause of racial inequality in the United States. According to Wilson, Massey, and Denton, racially segregated urban poverty is one of the most recognizable products of housing discrimination and housing policy in America.

Review Quotes

"Because of its interdisciplinary nature, the book, as outlined, will be an important contribution to several disciplines, including sociology, politics, and African American studies. The aim of Dr. Cooper's book is to demonstrate that African Americans are persistently poor due to the structural failures of government, not individual characteristics." --Dr. Michael L. Clemons, Old Dominion University, United States

"There is no better time and no greater need for attention to be paid to the impact of public policy on the lives of African Americans. The title is both relevant and timely. The proposed book has the potential to become the catalyst that will change the view of poverty for African Americans moving fully away from a 'blame the victim' view and approach to decision-making. The book will also be pivotal in initiating a full review of existing policies and all resulting changes. The author has presented well-researched information and provided conclusions fully supported by the information gathered. Anyone who reads the book will acquire more knowledge and better information on a topic so critical to the improvement of decisions affecting the poverty experienced by African Americans in the United States." --Phyllis Wilson, Founder, PH Balance Life & Yarning to Help

"This book closes the gaps other conversations about this topic leave open. Having conversations regarding concentrated poverty where governments allowed for redlining, little to no infrastructure (roads, streets, bridges, schools, potable water, and grocery stores) investment in these communities, lack of employment with livable wages, restrictions of when and where non-whites are able to live/work/travel ... then to connect these suppression and oppression policies to the long-term dependency of people in communities to government's social welfare. To fully appreciate the dependency, understanding root causes allows for the audience to begin to unravel their own biases about social welfare and blacks/Latinos by recognizing the economic/dependency situation created by long-term policies in the individual states as well as federal government." --Tammy Greer, Georgia State University, United States

"This book is a good example of a keen analysis of a concrete problem in a solid theoretical context. The authors study a very acute problem of poverty among African Americans from historical and sociopolitical perspectives and arrive at important reasoned conclusions. The most fundamental among these conclusions is that poverty among African Americans is a systemic problem of the American state and society at large rather than an outcome of any 'specific features' of Black Americans as personalities or a community. This makes the book an important addition to the growing set of academic literature on systemic racism as the 'original sin' of the United States of America." --Dmitri M. Bondarenko, Russian Academy of Sciences, Russia

About the Author

Dr. Daphne Cooper Associate Professor of Political Science at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, Greensboro, NC.