African American Poverty

This data shows us that there are about 8,420,300 more white families living in poverty than African American families. Though I will concede that for the population that African American make up there is large amount poverty among single parent households. Out of this data, there are 25 in which there are white impoverished families than African Americans. This proves that poverty is not just a race issue and should be treated more as an American issue. If white American’s are born with white privilege why are there in total more impoverished white American than that of other races. If white privilege were to be true, then why are there so many improvised white people. Those 17,981,400 white families living in poverty should have all the advantages
yet, they are living in poverty. What this shows is that poverty cares not for the color of yours skin but the color in your wallet. How does poverty occur and what are ways to prevent it? Well in an article by The Times-Union There are three main ways to get say out of poverty and that is “[Have] a full-time job”, “Waiting to get married until after 21 and do not have children till after being married.”, and finally “Graduating from high school.” (The Times-Union), The article then goes on to state, “do all those three things, your chance of falling into poverty is just 2 percent.” (The Times-Union). You should be able to accomplish this three thing easy no matter what race you may be. If it were to be argued that it's harder for minorities to get full-time jobs because of the color of their skin, then they should take legal action against the company because according to “Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VII), which prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin” (The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission), it is illegal to decimate when hiring people. The next set of waiting to get married to have children is just as simple as waiting till you’re a real adult to get married and have children. This may seem silly but it is a large reason for poverty epically when we look at the African American community. According to a study by the University of Ohio “Approximately 60 percent of U.S. children living in mother-only families are impoverished” (Kirby), From this, we begin to understand that single mothers have it rough, in financial terms. This hurts the African American community hard because of the epidemic of single mother’s families. Because of this, “African-American mothers are less likely to awarded child support payments, to receive child support payments, or to have a second wage earner living in the household” (Kirby) since there is no second parent there to help provide for the child.
White Privilege is not causing these African American fathers to leave their children’s mother, that is up to the individual person. Then we get to graduating high school. While in poverty-stricken districts it hard to get a good high school level education because, “the public school system is largely funded by local property taxes, which are based on the value of real estate.” (Gale). Education systems with these impoverished communities are bound to be worse, due to lack of adequate funding theses high schools are abounded to produce uneducated children. Some argue that White people have an advantage when it comes to the school system, because of their skin color, but poverty stricken white communities are not going to have the same education as those with money regardless of the so-called white privilege. This is a failing of how we fund education because so will get a better education not because of their skin color but because of the amount of wealth they control. Instead of making poverty and poor education a race issue why not make it a funding
issue.
Many claims that white people have an advantage when it comes to greater education such as college.
This is untrue because of Affirmative action. Affirmative action is a racist and only hinders African Americans. Affirmative action is an outdated system what only hinders the growth of education competition of all people and enforces racism though legitimizing stereotypes. Affirmative action is an executive order by John F. Kennedy from the civil right era, that allows for African Americans and other historical discrimination against minorities to get into colleges over White and Asian students while having lesser test scores on tests such as the SAT and ACT. During the civil rights era, this was need due to Jim Crow laws and segregation. But in modern times it unnecessary and quite offensive. In our modern times, Jim Crow laws and segregation are illegal, making it so there is no need for such a system. Affirmative action is racist toward both whites and minorities. Affirmative action decimates against White and Asian people, “Affirmative action may be unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment” (NCSL), this is due to it giving an unfair advantage to minorities based on skin color. Not only does affirmative action decimate, it is offensive to minorities. By lowering the standards for minorities basically telling them that they are not able to get the scores that white people while “these students will only strive to meet the lower
requirements.” (NCSL), due to the human nature of wanting to get the best resolute while putting the least amount of work in. Affirmative action is just a small band-aid put over a large wound, “Such programs fail to address the serious underlying causes of pervasive discrimination in American society, which have far more difficult and expensive potential solutions” (Gale). It’s not the white privilege that allows white people on average to get better scores its wealth privilege. The wealthy are the ones who can afford to send their children to good schools and colleges. There are numerous white people in poverty that cannot afford to get a good education, they are not the privileged ones. So to say that because a person is white, they are able to get a good education is ridiculous. To say that white people have some magical privilege that makes everything easier from them discounts all the hard work they have done.
That is why the idea of white privilege is racist. If we want a chance at eliminating racism, we must view the world as if we cannot see color. By belief in such an idea, you are unable to look at the world in this way. The belief in white privilege is just as bad as the belief in white superiority. Both ideologies argue that white people are superior to people of different skin colors. White privilege argues that because a person’s skin color is white they have advantages over others, making them better. A white supremacist would argue that since they are white their genetics are better than that of other races. The difference between one who believes in white privilege and white supremacy is that a person who has white privilege usually feels the need to try and give up their privilege out of a miss guiding feeling of white guilt. A supremacist, on the other hand, feels that they are better than another of a different race. Views like both of this help, not one person. It doesn’t help minority communities, by suggesting that they need the help of white people in order to on the same level as them. It doesn’t help white people because it turns non-racist people into racist. If you call a person who has never been bigoted a racist over and over again you run the risk of turning them into a true racist. The only thing that white privilege manages to do is to divide people by race. White privilege is a blanket term that covers up the big problems that we all as American face. The only way to truly end racism is to accept the fact that we are all humans, we many have different shades of skin, but will are all humans. By saying some of us are better than others all we are doing is dividing each other.
“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” --- Martin Luther King Jr. We as the human race can’t conquer racism by saying one group of people has a duty to serve another group of people. We cannot fight racism against the minority with racism against the majority. Racism can never truly be defeated until we as a people stop judging each other according to your skin color. White, Black, Asian, Hispanic, none of these words should matter, the only way to kill the monstrosity that is racism is to accept the truth: There is only one race, human.