The Impact Of Poverty On African American Communities

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The Impact of Poverty on African-American Communities

Justin Daher

Cleveland State University

UST 202

7/27/2021

The Impact of Poverty on African-American Communities

Blacks comprise 13.4 percent of the United States population. Previous studies have

indicated that African Americans have made notable progress for several years in American

society. In particular, since the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) recently

reported that 90 percent of blacks aged 25 to 29 years, are high school graduates, suggesting a

significant increase in educational attainment (Taylor, 2019). According to the report, college

graduation rates among African Americans have greatly improved. While blacks have made gains

in income, they still earn lesser wages than whites and other minorities, including Hispanics and

Indian Americans. This phenomenon explains why African American families across the U.S. lag

behind wealth accumulation. Likewise, only 40 percent of blacks own a home (Taylor, 2019).

Through the late 1990s and early 2000s, public attention to poor black Americans waned. The

media, mainstream politicians, and ghetto residents failed to engage in proactive discussions of the

plight of African Americans, further exacerbating their economic challenges. Recent natural

disasters and human-initiated efforts, such as Hurricane Katrina and activism, have revealed the

African Americans’ squalid living conditions (Wilson, 2011). These revelations have raised

various questions, including the historical context or sociopolitical causes of persistent black

poverty. While the U.S. government has proposed and implemented multiple policies to address

economic disparities, poverty remains a major social issue in African-American communities.

Social Issues: Impact

There is a growing consensus among American scholars and policymakers that specific

political, cultural, and economic factors are to blame for consecrated poverty among blacks and

their neighborhoods. Some of the broadly mentioned social issues include institutionalized racism,

poor educational achievement, classism, sexism, health disparities, and discriminative housing and

law enforcement policies (Wilson, 2011). Institutionalized racial discrimination is responsible for

the disproportionate unemployment across the country. African American neighborhoods are

characterized by concentrated poverty, compelling potential investors to consider these dangerous.

Typically, dysfunctional schools, joblessness, broken families, crime, drug, and human trafficking,

delinquency, and related problems are inextricably linked to poverty. Essentially, the blacks are

seen as naturally harmful, suggesting their high incarceration rates and why they have been

economically and socially alienated as people avoid them.

Obamacare has played a fundamental role in improving health care coverage and access for

all Americans, including blacks. Precisely, the number of uninsured African Americans hit its

record low as 2.8 million blacks gained coverage through the Affordable Care Act (ACA)

(Finegold et al., 2021). Though the ACA has led to significant health care gains, the African

American population is most likely to suffer from a wide range of chronic and mental illnesses.

Compared to their white counterparts with 5.4 percent insurance rate, up to 10.6 percent of blacks

are uninsured (Taylor, 2019). The high uninsured rate is attributed to low income and poverty. In a

recent study, Thames et al. (2019) found that 44 percent of blacks use private health insurance.

Besides employer-sponsored insurance, an African American worker relies on Medicaid and other

public health insurance programs. These findings suggest that poor health outcomes influence and

are influenced by economic plights among blacks. Ultimately, several social issues are associated

with high poverty levels in African-American families and communities.

Historical/Setting/Social Context

Public opinion polls have investigated the highlighted social issues and their connection to

entrenched black poverty. Unfortunately, these polls routinely reflect and perpetuate the

misleading notion that joblessness and concentrated poverty among African-Americans are their

own inadequacies (Chetty et al., 2018). In other words, just a handful of people often consider the

intervening role of the larger social forces in impoverishing blacks for several decades: slavery,

segregation, and systematic discrimination in housing, failing public schools, and reduced access to

economic opportunities. Concisely, these social issues comprise cultural, political, and economic

events and factors for understanding the historical origins, causes, or context of chronic poverty

among African Americans.

The institution of slavery that started in the 15th century contributed to white-black poverty

disparities. During the Trans-Atlantic Trade, enslaved Africans were bought and sold as mere

commodities. In addition, colonial laws denied prohibited slaves from legally owning land or

marrying (O’Connell, 2012). Besides being subjected to hard labor in cotton, rice, tobacco, and

corn plantations, commodified African slaves were assigned retrogressive tasks. According to