Why are African Americans so disproportionately impoverished in a society as affluent as ours? To understand the answer to this question requires a broad understanding of the history of African American impoverishment. It also requires that we acknowledge facts that counter numerous inaccuracies and myths concerning poverty in general.
"When my ancestors immigrated here, they had nothing," says my father. "They were as poor as can be, but they worked hard, saved their money, learned the language, and prospered, just like the other European immigrants." He derides the failure of African Americans to assimilate and prosper, noting, "If my ancestors could do it, so can they." What he and other Americans fail to recognize is that African American migration to this country is not analogous to that of the European immigrant experience; this is strongly relevant to understanding their plight today. Europeans may have arrived without money, but they arrived with two valuable resources: their language and their culture. There were also essential resources available to Europeans when they arrived here: cultural societies to help them settle in, and an abundance of low-skilled industrial jobs. While some groups (notably the Irish and Italians) experienced racism directed against them, there were no laws which curtailed their legal rights. And poor as they were, Europeans immigrated to the U.S. of their own free will.
The vast majority of first-generation African Americans were conveyed here in chains against their will. Once here, they were forbidden to speak their native tongue or to practice their religion. Families and communities were split up, causing much of their culture (and the positive social values that went with it) to disintegrate. Would a slave have been likely to cherish those values held by his/her master? Yet these were the only cultural values to which they were exposed.
The majority of African American immigration northward occurred in the early- to mid-twentieth century, after the boom in industry had peaked. Without jobs, without a distinct cultural ethic to guide them, without the support of existing cultural societies to assist in their assimilation, and in the face of extreme racism, African Americans were forced into the ghettos of the cities. Legally sanctioned segregation and widespread racism assured that they would remain marginalized and isolated for decades to come.
Although slavery was abolished by the culmination of the Civil War, African Americans did not achieve true equality until well into the twentieth century. Segregation remained unchallenged for the next hundred years, during which time African Americans were excluded from almost all aspects of the American life which European Americans were free to enjoy, such as the right to live where one chose, the right to eat where one wished, and the right to participate in the decision-making bodies that ruled over school boards, governments, etc. The Social Security Act, passed in 1935, failed to cover the occupations (such as farming and domestic employment) of most African Americans at the time, while the GI Bill of 1944 was all but useless to African Americans because they were denied admission to (segregated) accredited universities. The Voting Rights Act, which prohibited discrimination at the polls, was not passed until 1965.
It was not until the Civil Rights movement of the 1960's that African Americans began to attain equal legal footing with whites. By this time the disparities between whites and minorities were intense, and the struggle was profound. That segregation was so fully institutionalized and accepted in our society was perhaps best dramatized on June 10, 1963, when Alabama Governor George Wallace stood in the doorway of the University of Alabama to physically prevent black students from entering. It was only at this late date (a little more than forty years ago) that the U.S. government began to dismantle our segregated society in earnest. Urban riots half a decade later demonstrated that an institution many hundreds of years old was not going to disappear overnight. The government's Kerner Commission (set up to investigate the causes of the riots) concluded that "We live in a nation divided, one white, the other black," and predicted grave consequences if this situation went unremedied. Yet the FBI's "Cointelpro" (Counter Intelligence Project) program continued to be directed against groups and individuals who spoke out or acted to espouse minority rights (as documented by the government's Walker Commission in the mid-1970's).
After over four hundred years of marginalizing African Americans, the U.S. government finally began instituting laws to help African Americans (and other marginalized groups, such as women and minorities) to regain the opportunities which they had been denied. Legislation was enacted in the 1970's which mandated that, all things being equal, women and minorities were to be given preference in hiring situations. Affirmative Action laws never encouraged that race or gender be given preference over experience, and stories to the contrary are almost always apocryphal urban legends. The intention was to give minorities an extra edge in order to render the playing field more even.
With Civil Rights and Affirmative Action came welfare programs. A common view today of welfare recipients is that the majority are lazy minorities who would prefer to collect welfare rather than to work. Many perceive that welfare recipients are draining the public coffers, and in so doing are contributing to the national debt and our precarious economic situation. These views are inaccurate and insidious. Although minorities are disproportionately represented (because of the historical conditions described above), whites still make up the majority of welfare recipients. The typical welfare recipient is a woman with two children, who collects food stamps for an average period of one and one half years. Of course there are people who abuse welfare benefits, but they are estimated to be relatively few in number. And welfare has nothing to do with the bankruptcy of our economic system; all welfare programs combined (excluding Social Security) account for 2-3% of the national budget, and states generally spend 3-5% of their budgets on state welfare programs. It only takes a few days for the U.S. military to outspend an entire year's budget for federal welfare programs.
Such myths and scapegoating, together with racism, are what perpetuates a system whereby minorities remain marginalized to this day. Welfare alone cannot rectify this situation completely, but as one piece of a comprehensive program it certainly can contribute. Neither welfare nor Affirmative Action has yet been given much of a chance. Is it reasonable to assume that programs initiated in the past three or four decades and only begrudgingly funded can completely undo centuries of deprivation? Yet this is what many Americans today expect.
The impoverishment and ghettoization of African Americans can only end when their historical conditions are understood, when myths concerning welfare are shattered, and when social programs and public education are funded amply and given sufficient time to achieve their goals. Those who claim that all Americans have equal opportunities fail to recognize the importance of history and the continuing legacy of racism. Claiming that the playing field is now level for all is the equivalent of allowing someone to belatedly join a game of Monopoly after most of the properties have already been purchased; without an intentional redistribution of resources, fairness cannot be expected to advance of its own accord, which is what Affirmative Action and welfare intend to accomplish.
back to al's home page