POVERTY..Who is to Blame?

BY: Stephany Bernard
POVERTY

  I came to ask myself and even others on who's to blame for the poverty we see today. What is poverty? Poverty from my readings has two different definitions and terms. There is absolute poverty and relative poverty.  Absolute Poverty is living below what is considered living under satisfactory conditions financially, housing standards, and wages. It is the federal government poverty line which is an income figure that is adjusted yearly to reflect the feeding requirements for families based on their size and composition.  On the other hand Relative poverty is a fluctuating deprivation by which people of the bottom of society are judged on how they are supposed to be living in comparison to the nation in a whole.  Who is to blame? I did a survey with 8 different people ,  4 woman, 4 guys and what I got in respond to that according to my survey was that the government was responsible for the poverty in our country. I had a few responses of people saying that laziness and drug use was a major factor to this and we can end poverty amongst our people by not making the wrong decisions. What’s your judgment?

Dineen Johnson Light Skin vs. Dark Skin in the Black Community

                 

Racism is a belief or principle that inherits differences that exist amongst human races.  These differences are determined by cultural or individual achievement.  African American people are beginning to separate themselves as two different races dark skin and light skin blacks.

  Beginning with slavery it is a fact that lighter skinned African Americans were house slaves and the darker skinned African Americans were field slaves being left outside in unbearable heat left to do the hard work.  In the media today you can see that light skinned black people are favored over dark skinned black people. It is said that Beyoncé and Halle Berry both fair skinned women are two of the best looking women on T.V.  Lil Kim and Trina both who were brown skin when they first entered the music industry are now light skin, due to bleaching their skin.  There are a few dark skin people in the industry such as Lil Wayne who do not like dark skin women and has even written lyrics bashing dark skin women.

                “Beautiful black women bet that bitch look better red.”

Not only is Lil Wayne dark skin but so his daughter.  How can you hate your own complexion?

                From my own personal experience I do believe that the black community believes that light skin blacks are more attractive than dark skin blacks.  A lot of males I know believe that to have a lighter skinned female on their arm is like having a trophy.  They say that they get more respect from their friends and there are viewed as “the boul with the bad ass red bone.” As if it is an accomplishment. The same with females, they believe that having children with a dark skinned male would give them dark skinned children, something looked down on.  They think that dark skin children are ugly.  One of my female friends believes that:

                “If it aint light it aint right.”

so sad and so true.

A black man AND ONCE UPON A TIME a well known rapper Young Berg speaking on his dislike of "Black Butts"

Race and Ethnicity

Submitted by Ryan Laverty

Race and Ethnicity

           I was born in Pyungtaek, South Korea to a mother that never seen America before moving here.  My father is of Irish descent and is the fourth generation to live in America after my great-great-grandfather arrived at Ellis Island to escape the famine in Ireland.  As proud of my heritage it was difficult for me to deal with racism.

Less than 1 year old in Seoul, South Korea

            From an early age my mother wanted me to be “Americanized” and tried to hide any signs that would make me “too Korean”.  This resulted in my mother never teaching me to speak Korean.  Throughout my early years being a mixed race was very common among my friends and neighbors due to living on military bases. Many children had parents of different races.  When I reached third grade I moved to the Frankford section of Philadelphia outside a military base and it was where I first experienced racism. None of the other children wanted to be my friend and many peers would make fun of my mother when she picked me up from school.  There was open discrimination and prejudice from the noon time aids at recess and even the crossing guard.  While walking down the street my father was spit on by someone just because he married a “chink”.

            After these events my family decided to move to the Olney section of the city. At first, everything was great, the neighborhood had people of many races and everyone got along very well.  It was in this neighborhood that I gained friends of Asian descent.  I began to notice that I was never allowed in their homes or when their mothers saw me playing with them I would over hear another language.  One day after school my friend took me to a local Korean Community Center to hang out but I was asked to leave because I was not a full Korean.  This was when I learned that my friend’s parents did not like that I was not a full Korean and they looked down upon my family.

            This discrimination and prejudice shaped how I viewed my family.  This brought me closer to my little sister and other family members because we all had felt our race being used to hurt us.  I could never understand why my family on my father’s side treated me as a loving family member but other people in the neighborhood just saw me as a “half-breed”.

I grew up experience incidents like this in many neighborhoods and in school. Even now some people do not realize I’m half Korean because it should not matter what race I am.   I used to get angry about racism and even tried fighting every bully who used racism towards me but now I just laugh at how ignorant and stupid they sound. 

A few months ago at a bar I was drinking at started talking to me and thought I was white and told me “White Power!” before he went on a racist tirade.  Instead of getting angry I turned his arguments against him and made him feel stupid for talking like that. After speaking up other bar patrons also began saying they were tired of his racist ways.  The guy has not returned to the local bar since.

I feel if I didn’t say anything that guy would still be getting drunk and hurting people with his racist remarks.  It is better to speak out against racism than to ignore that it still exists.  I think if more people stood up for what is right, things will change and maybe all laws and policies that are still discriminating to a person’s skin color will change.

Racial Segregation

Soranis Phal


          If we predated race back to an earlier time in history, race is not determine biologically. There is no type of genetic materials that determines a person belonging to a certain race. Race is more towards a modern time in history to justify the reason why there are slaves in American history. In the film “Power of an illusion”, is a documentary of race in historical time during racial segregation among the blacks and whites. According to demographic studies there is the notion of the red and green line that divides the whites and blacks demographically. The whites would be demographically in one area and isolated from the blacks. The reason why is because the whites would be able to have more power and opportunities verses the blacks. This would also become harder for blacks to build their own adequate because banks would see that blacks would be a financial  risk compare to the white. This also leads to why whites would live together because they are afraid of losing their own wealth by living among the blacks.

           Therefore, racial segregation has been continuing even until this day. Public school are still  racially segregated where you could fine a majority of blacks attending only a specific school with no whites or vice versa there would be a majority of whites and fewer blacks in that one specific school. Although, it is consider illegal to stop a person from attending a school because of the brown vs board of education to stop segragation but it still exist in the segragated house patterns that still base on the race. Schools like the  inner city with public schools that have more blacks and little diversity is because demographically the blacks are the majority that lives in these inner city compare to the whites living in the suburb.  

           These racial segregated school can also impact on the economic wealth that is being funded to certain schools. Schools with majority of whites would have more funding compare to a public school with majority of blacks. Therefore,  this brings inequality in terms of the opportunities given to whites are better than black. Whites would have more opportunity in life compare to the blacks that would have less opportunities.

         Even though we try and stop racial segregation it still exist in our society. Although there are laws stating it is illegal to have a segragated school but the homes and demographics of our race are still segragated and so it leads to kids going to school being segragated with less opportunities.

A story about Race

Elena Lazarova



                           Race is defined by some of the dictionaries as a group of people related by common descent or heredity.  Surprisingly race is a new terminology in our vocabularies.  Years ago people were not divided based on their origin and skin color. However, in a certain period in history race became something that defined us as humans or less then humans. Before the creation of slavery, it was considered that all man were equal. In order to use people as slaves the white man invented the terminology," less than a human being" for the African descent people who were brought to the new land and forced to be slaves. Race then became power for some and misery for others. Race then was a factor that could determine people's life to the point where someone could decide who is human and who is not.
                    Unfortunately, discrimination based on race continued even after the Civil War, when slavery was officially banned. Racism still existed. In the beginning of the 20th century segregation was a huge part of people's everyday life.Blacks and Whites had to go to different restaurants, attend different schools and use different bathrooms. Mainly in the South part of the United States people organized strikes with slogans like, " Stop race mixing ! ".During the 1960's institutional discrimination took the lead. The system was build like that so loans were given mostly to white families.They could purchase houses in the rich Suburbia or the green lining area. While blacks were forced to settle down in the red lining area, where the region was poor, taxes were low and education system was not that developed. Back then race determined who could have the chance to live the American Dream, which during this time period meant living in the Suburbia, and who could not.

                                       Nowadays, race seems to be less meaningful than it used to be. However, the key word  is "seems". Racism is not directly shown but is existing under the radar. Some people are still part of anti-racial organizations that provoke only hatred and anger. Historian Robin Kelley said, " Racism is not about how you look;it is about how people assign meaning to how you look". The story of race is complex and may challenge how we think about race and humans. The main question is,"What is race" ? Are we really so different" ?  Race is just an illusion created by the human kind. People always wanted to be different, that is why people created race.So we can de different and unique. Unfortunately, that provoked moments in our history that we should be ashamed of. Race is something that define us, whether we like it or not. Race is an assigned status that nobody could change. All we could change is our own perception about race. "What is race" ?  Race is just one word that has no power, until the moment we decide to make it powerfull.

Race and inequality

Justin Sharpley

Race is, to say the least, a sensitive subject. I think the only way we are going to solve a lot of the problems we face in the issue of race is to approach them head on and discuss them.  In class we learned about some of the problems in the past, redlining, block busting, laws with segregation built into them, and  the lasting effects of such practices, the inability of a family to buy a home and build equity, the corner stone of building wealth and providing a future for your family and future generations.  This was without a doubt some of the worst things our country has done to its own people. I think for my blog post I’m going to concentrate more on inequalities and segregation.  Learning what we learned about the housing practices, the geographic segregation that we see today makes sense (not saying it’s right but saying, we can see where it came from and why it is the way it is)

 I think another issue this creates is a cultural segregation. I feel that African Americans’  culture is segregated from other cultures in  a lot of ways. One of which is advertising, and media in general. For instance McDonald's has a separate website for African Americans. 365black   there are numerous companies that advertise products that are general use and some of the ads feature strictly white people, then another ad for the same product featuring strictly black people.

Another way this type of thing is perpetuated is through the media most people consume, namely music. I love hip hop, but it seems strange to me that there are so many songs about money, about how you have to get money and get yours. It seems to be drilling this idea into the listener’s head that all they need to do is get money and everything will be great. So instead of trying to pursue a career or earn a savings, the more impressionable listeners are simply trying to get money. Ignoring the larger problems, and if you want to look at it deeper, look up the chain to see the person who ultimately decides which records to play and promote, on the radio or at the record label, you’ll see 90% of the time it’s someone who has wealth, and who has an interest in keeping the less wealth distracted from the real problems in their lives. 

This is pretty crazy considering the corner stone for the civil rights movement was equality for all and a desire to end segregation, yet it’s still happening on a pretty large scale and some of it is even supported by the African American community.  I feel like the different cultures in this country are moving further apart faster than they are coming together. If something isn’t done to change this I feel it may be an insurmountable problem before too long.

Ethnicity: We need a change !

Submitted : Yahne' Coleman


     Ethnicity plays a role in America this very day. Its in our housing , school education , prison system and even who we elect for President. Life for minorities has always been a struggle. Today many people walk around as if racism doesn't exist but it does. In our society people talk politically correct but all the hate and racism is engraved in our laws.

From years ago we as Black people was not allowed to live in certain neighborhoods , the nice ones. Caucasian people felt as though we were a hinder to society. There for when the Fair Housing Act was passed and we moved into those nice neighborhoods we always dreamed about , guess what. . .the Whites quickly ran. Anywhere Blacks were did not have value , consider to Whites. So the nice neighborhoods and houses that we longed for was considered trash within months. The taxes wasn't good which left low funds for our schools and hinder our children education as well.

Now in the present you see bad school systems and not enough resources in every Black community , it never changed or progressed.  We are affected by our past.  The fact that racism is living deep in our laws will only keep us at this low level. The results are bad education , bad jobs and just NO OPPORTUNITIES.Today there is literally millions of African Americans in prison and the numbers are just increasing. We are only repeating slave history.

                 Even though every Caucasian person isn't racist there are still more out there. I feel as though we need not to be ignorant and educate our self and our children. We need to come together and finally get the rights we deserve. On paper we are all the same , in God eyes we are all part of him and equal. Our ethnicity is clearly the reason we don't experience the things a White person that is just like us , same knowledge , same sex and same age experiences. We all need to love one another and teach love to our children because racism and not born its made. The fight for equality isn't over !

http://www.nber.org/digest/nov06/w12078.html