Ladies and Gentleman,
I am happy to announce that the Brother 2 Brother Literary Symposium (B2BLS) will be held this year at TSU University . The event is November 21-22, 2008 . We are excited with this great opportunity and are moving forward with great purpose and direction to help the youth of the City of Houston . With your help we can make this event spectacular. We already have the commitment of four major publishing houses to put a book in every person's hand that attends our event. Remember the event is free and open to the public.
That's why we need your assistance. Your tax deductible contribution in the amount of $40.00 will sponsor 4 children. It costs $11.00 per day for our two day event for a child to attend. It costs $52.00 a day to incarcerate a person. Please make your donation by 11-10-2008 . Save a youth from Dropping out of school. The drop-Out rate in Houston is 50% for young men and 37% for young women. Please go to www.b2bls.com and make your donation on the Paypal button or you can send it in to:
B2BLS
PO BOX 752481
Houston , TX 77275
You will get no return on your tax dollars from a person incarcerated. The 2400 youth attending our event, just working part-time at $7.00 per hour can bring into the Houston economy over $16 million dollars.
You can inspire faith, hope, education, and dreams by lending your support. Please give and show you care about our youth and Houston. I am here and dedicated to the Houston Community and to TSU University to shed a positive educational light that beacons our youth to opportunities and possibilities of a great future and productive life.
Don't just talk about it, be about it! Help us help our youth. Help us help Texas . Together we can make a positive difference and spread learning and literacy across this great state. Please feel free to forward to friend and other business owners that can help make this a remarkable event. Please help Houston youth. We are a 501C-3 Organization.
Thanks and I can be reached at 816-914-1560.
Vincent Alexandria
Chairman B2BLS
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Thank you from Arnold Wolf
Hi,
First off I'd like to thank Duchessdon for inviting me to contribute to this blog, I consider it an honor. I guess I should also introduce myself. My name is Arnold Wolf, I am a 49 year old man living in Queens, NY. I was born in Brooklyn, but by the time I could afford to buy a house I actually couldn't afford to buy one in my neighborhood anymore because it was undergoing gentrification and all of the real estate prices had gone up tremendously. So I wound up buying a house in Queens and I haven't regretted it since. I've been married for almost 30 years to my high school sweetheart, I have three wonderful kids, and I have a really good job; I'm a manager for the MTA (Metropolitan Transportation Authority). My first novel is Chickenhawk, which has gotten good reviews. I've also written several magazine articles, as well as short stories. Two of my short stories can be viewed on my page at authorsden.com, and I plan on adding an excerpt of another story, "The Toll", the entire story which can be read in AAMBC's new anthology, "A Reflection of Me". I am currently working on several new stories, as well as two other novels and a non-fiction book.
Anyway, I hope to be a regular contributor to this blog and I hope that my future posts won't be as boring as this one!
First off I'd like to thank Duchessdon for inviting me to contribute to this blog, I consider it an honor. I guess I should also introduce myself. My name is Arnold Wolf, I am a 49 year old man living in Queens, NY. I was born in Brooklyn, but by the time I could afford to buy a house I actually couldn't afford to buy one in my neighborhood anymore because it was undergoing gentrification and all of the real estate prices had gone up tremendously. So I wound up buying a house in Queens and I haven't regretted it since. I've been married for almost 30 years to my high school sweetheart, I have three wonderful kids, and I have a really good job; I'm a manager for the MTA (Metropolitan Transportation Authority). My first novel is Chickenhawk, which has gotten good reviews. I've also written several magazine articles, as well as short stories. Two of my short stories can be viewed on my page at authorsden.com, and I plan on adding an excerpt of another story, "The Toll", the entire story which can be read in AAMBC's new anthology, "A Reflection of Me". I am currently working on several new stories, as well as two other novels and a non-fiction book.
Anyway, I hope to be a regular contributor to this blog and I hope that my future posts won't be as boring as this one!
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Meet Linda R. Herman
Who am I? I am a native of South Georgia. My grandparents raised me and from them as well as my parents, aunts and uncles, I learned the value of hard work. Nothing in life is given; you must earn everything-respect first and foremost. I spent most of my childhood working in watermelons with my grandfather during the summer, and in the pecan orchard alongside my grandmother in the fall and winter months. I hated it but as an adult, that hard work has made me appreciate my blessings today. Now I sit at a console in a building with air conditioning, answering phone lines and dispatching public safety units to citizens in distress. Yes, I am a 911 dispatcher-one of many unsung heroes who strive for excellence day in and day out. But me, I don't want to be praised for doing my job-I just want to do my job well.
I have been married for almost ten years and through the ups and downs, I must say that my husband is now my best friend. He understands those days when I do nothing but sit at the computer, quietly typing to complete my next book. He travels with me, always the one behind the wheel, supporting me in this literary journey. Together we're raising three kids; two teens and a two year-old. It's tough but God has his arms of love and protection around us.
In 2006, I lost my grandmother, mother, and best friend--all in one. Ollie Mae West, my maternal grandmother, died at the young age of 64 and I'd be lying if I said I was over it. I take this journey without her, the only way I can, day by day. Most mornings I wake up with thoughts of her on my mind; and when I doze off at night, I see her smiling face. I know she's in a better place where she is no longer suffering with agonizing pain but it doesn't make me stop wanting her here with me. I've learned to embrace the rest of my family more; I had to realize that I was still amongst the living even though a big part of me died with my grandmother. The bond between a grandmother and her oldest grandchild is unexplainable, but I must say it's a love like no other. (RIP Nanny)
Now that you know a little about me, the woman behind the pen, please stop by often and leave me comments or email me at sunshineroyal75@yahoo.com. Let's keep in touch!
I have been married for almost ten years and through the ups and downs, I must say that my husband is now my best friend. He understands those days when I do nothing but sit at the computer, quietly typing to complete my next book. He travels with me, always the one behind the wheel, supporting me in this literary journey. Together we're raising three kids; two teens and a two year-old. It's tough but God has his arms of love and protection around us.
In 2006, I lost my grandmother, mother, and best friend--all in one. Ollie Mae West, my maternal grandmother, died at the young age of 64 and I'd be lying if I said I was over it. I take this journey without her, the only way I can, day by day. Most mornings I wake up with thoughts of her on my mind; and when I doze off at night, I see her smiling face. I know she's in a better place where she is no longer suffering with agonizing pain but it doesn't make me stop wanting her here with me. I've learned to embrace the rest of my family more; I had to realize that I was still amongst the living even though a big part of me died with my grandmother. The bond between a grandmother and her oldest grandchild is unexplainable, but I must say it's a love like no other. (RIP Nanny)
Now that you know a little about me, the woman behind the pen, please stop by often and leave me comments or email me at sunshineroyal75@yahoo.com. Let's keep in touch!
Please reach out to a domestic violence SURVIVOR!
I am Linda R. Herman and at age seventeen, my younger cousin was raped by the father of her then one year old son. The rape occurred in the child's presence where the father held a knife to my cousin's throat and forced himself on her. He also banged her head into the floor leaving her physically, emotionally, and mentally scarred for life. The physical bruising is gone but the emotional and mental live on.
My cousin, a brave young woman, is now in her second year of college. She is nineteen years old and the mother of one. Even though she does hold down a part-time job she is having financial difficulties.
How can you help? Please purchase an autographed copy (signed by me) of Somebody Prayed for Me (release date December 2, 2008) through my cousin's website, www.ShakestaWest.webs.com. All profits from sales go to her toward her education and her son's well-being.
Please visit her site and be sure to sign the guestbook!
P.S. The short story, "Silent Cries" is loosely based on what my cousin went through as a victim of teen abuse. It is the first story in the anthology Somebody Prayed for Me.
Linda R. Herman
www.LindaRHerman.com
Somebody Prayed For Me
Broken, bruised, and even betrayed, but not forgotten.
Have your burdens ever been so heavy that you didn't have the strength to pray for yourself? Your spirit is broken, your body is bruised, and you have been betrayed by those who you've trust to love and protect you. Or maybe you just feel alone and cold in this world feeling like no one understands what you're going through.
Even when you can’t find the strength to pray for yourself, someone in this world is praying for you.
The inspirational pieces in Somebody Prayed For Me only reminds us of the power of prayer.
When God’s children bend their knees and bow their heads in prayer, it’s not about knowing the person they’re praying for. It’s all about knowing and believing in God. Do you believe? Do you feel in your heart that prayer changes things?
We believe. Even in this some times violent world, there is hope if only we believe. If only we pray for each other and hold tight to our faith in God. Pray for someone because somebody already prayed for you.
Have your burdens ever been so heavy that you didn't have the strength to pray for yourself? Your spirit is broken, your body is bruised, and you have been betrayed by those who you've trust to love and protect you. Or maybe you just feel alone and cold in this world feeling like no one understands what you're going through.
Even when you can’t find the strength to pray for yourself, someone in this world is praying for you.
The inspirational pieces in Somebody Prayed For Me only reminds us of the power of prayer.
When God’s children bend their knees and bow their heads in prayer, it’s not about knowing the person they’re praying for. It’s all about knowing and believing in God. Do you believe? Do you feel in your heart that prayer changes things?
We believe. Even in this some times violent world, there is hope if only we believe. If only we pray for each other and hold tight to our faith in God. Pray for someone because somebody already prayed for you.
Meet Author Tinisha Nicole Johnson
Humble, down-to-earth, reserved at times, and a cheerful giver, are just a few words to describe Tinisha Nicole Johnson. She was born in the suburbs of Chicago, Illinois and grew up and still resides in Denver, Colorado. Tinisha is an entrepreneur, an only child, a wife and mother of two. When she's not writing she also hosts political teleconferences.
Her deepest passion for writing started at the early age of eleven, with poetry. One of her earliest poems written at the age of fifteen, can be read at Poets Haven, entitled, "Prisoners of Life." Since poetry, she began writing short stories, then novels and also articles.
Tinisha has written various articles for 'The Black Corner' section of a local urban magazine entitled, Denver's Finest Underground. In 2004, her short story, "Mother and Son Moment," was published in the Chicken Soup for the African American Soul (2004). Her poetry can be seen on various sites, including her own poetry website. She contributed poetry to a collaborated anthology, entitled Step Up To The Mic: A Poetic Explosion, edited by Michael J. Burt. (September 2007) It features some of HBO's Def Poets, and many more.
Tinisha's debut novel, Searchable Whereabouts, was published and released in February 2008 by Xpress Yourself Publishing. Tinisha recently collaborated with two authors in the inspiring book, Somebody Prayed For Me with a release date of December 2008. She is currently working on her next novel.
In addition to Tinisha's literary passions, she is co-founder of a non-profit organization Authors Supporting Authors (ASA). The group was created by founder, Linda R. Herman, in September 2007 and promotes avid reading and supports authors, while providing resources. It's a great network of talented authors, artists, poets, professionals and publishers. Tinisha also publishes a quarterly newsletter for the group.
Some of her influences are Maya Angelou, Stephen King, Zane, James Patterson and Oprah. She also says that she's influenced by new and old authors alike who are passionate about what they do.
Lastly, Tinisha has an Associates Degree, a Paralegal Certificate and a Bachelors Degree in Business Management. And she has successfully completed Long Ridges Writers Group, which is an 18-month program entitled, Breaking Into Print. Tinisha would love to hear from you. Click on 'Contact' or sign her guestbook which she reads frequently.
Her deepest passion for writing started at the early age of eleven, with poetry. One of her earliest poems written at the age of fifteen, can be read at Poets Haven, entitled, "Prisoners of Life." Since poetry, she began writing short stories, then novels and also articles.
Tinisha has written various articles for 'The Black Corner' section of a local urban magazine entitled, Denver's Finest Underground. In 2004, her short story, "Mother and Son Moment," was published in the Chicken Soup for the African American Soul (2004). Her poetry can be seen on various sites, including her own poetry website. She contributed poetry to a collaborated anthology, entitled Step Up To The Mic: A Poetic Explosion, edited by Michael J. Burt. (September 2007) It features some of HBO's Def Poets, and many more.
Tinisha's debut novel, Searchable Whereabouts, was published and released in February 2008 by Xpress Yourself Publishing. Tinisha recently collaborated with two authors in the inspiring book, Somebody Prayed For Me with a release date of December 2008. She is currently working on her next novel.
In addition to Tinisha's literary passions, she is co-founder of a non-profit organization Authors Supporting Authors (ASA). The group was created by founder, Linda R. Herman, in September 2007 and promotes avid reading and supports authors, while providing resources. It's a great network of talented authors, artists, poets, professionals and publishers. Tinisha also publishes a quarterly newsletter for the group.
Some of her influences are Maya Angelou, Stephen King, Zane, James Patterson and Oprah. She also says that she's influenced by new and old authors alike who are passionate about what they do.
Lastly, Tinisha has an Associates Degree, a Paralegal Certificate and a Bachelors Degree in Business Management. And she has successfully completed Long Ridges Writers Group, which is an 18-month program entitled, Breaking Into Print. Tinisha would love to hear from you. Click on 'Contact' or sign her guestbook which she reads frequently.
Meet Author Allyson M. Deese
Allyson Deese is an author and a poet as well as a student majoring in Medical Office Administration. She resides in North Carolina. Although only in her twenties, she has been writing poetry for most of her life and has now began penning her poetry into the pages of her fictional stories of multiple genres. "Discovering the Joy Within" is the author's first work of fiction to be published. You can find “Discovering the Joy Within” featured in Elissa Gabrielle’s upcoming anthology “The Triumph Of My Soul” www.thetriumphofmysoul.com available now and Ms. Deese is currently working on the novel version for a 2010 release with Xpress Yourself Publishing www.xpressyourselfpublishing.org
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Get out the Vote 2008
We are in the midst of one of the most historical elections of our time. For the first time we've had two potential nominees from backgrounds that are not the status quo.
We are dealing with an astronomical economic crisis and our status in the world has been severely compromised.
It is important that each of us take our ability to vote seriously. Take time to review the presidentail debates again on this blogspot. Go to each candidates website and view their plans for the issues that are of interest to you. Get past the rhetoric and look at the big picture and base your decision on issues.
Reagardless of how you vote, please vote.
We are dealing with an astronomical economic crisis and our status in the world has been severely compromised.
It is important that each of us take our ability to vote seriously. Take time to review the presidentail debates again on this blogspot. Go to each candidates website and view their plans for the issues that are of interest to you. Get past the rhetoric and look at the big picture and base your decision on issues.
Reagardless of how you vote, please vote.
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Did you know that it is NOT GOD'S WILL that you be physically, sexually, or emotionally abused?
Award Winning Author Cheryl Lacey Donovan Speaks out about Faith Communities about Domestic Violence
In Texas alone, statistics indicated in 2005 that there were 30, 995 reported incidents of domestic violence? Just imagine the "silent" unreported incidents who are living in silent fear!
Each year, an estimated 3.3 million children are exposed to violence by family members against their mothers or female caretakers. In a national survey of more than 2,000 American families, approximately 50% of the men who frequently assaulted their wives also frequently abused their children!
Of children who witness their mothers being abused by their fathers, 40% suffer anxiety, 48% suffer depression, 53% act out with their parents and 60% act out with siblings. Statistics further indicate that victims of domestic violence are everywhere-- even in your faith community. Seventy-four percent of all Texans have either been a victim of domestic violence or know someone who has (according to a quantitative study conducted for Texas Council on Family Violence, Saurage, 2002.)
Because there is a need for outreach and education in faith communities, the faith family can be a critical resource for spiritual renewal and guidance. Texas Council on Family Violence. The problem is communities of faith can inadvertently make the situation worse. Misguided attempts at counseling can, in some cases, endanger rather than help the victim.
In addition, religious values may pressure the victim to keep the family together at all costs. Some batterers may even use scriptures and faith as a way to control their partner. "I grew up in a ministerial family. My parents were divorced when I was very young, but the religious impact was always there.
Therefore, when I was initially thrust into an abusive situation, I found it difficult to come to a conclusion about my future because I didn't want to do anything that would be seen as contradictory to God's teachings on marriage," said Donovan. "Dissolving the marital relationship was one of the hardest things I had ever done because I wanted to be right in God's sight. Yet, there were no programs within the church setting to provide guidance in this respect."
The bottom line is, love should never hurt. Domestic violence is never acceptable. It goes contrary to any religious teachings. Expecting a victim of domestic violence to simply pray about a situation and expect it to go away is ludacris. Encouraging a victim to keep the family together because it is what God would want is not scriptural or moral. Communities of faith need to open their eyes and understand the important role that they play in the fight against domestic violence. Training programs and outreach can assist congregants who may be experiencing physical or psychological abuse.
Information regarding training and outreach programs can be obtained from the Texas Council on Family violence www.tcfv.org.
In Texas alone, statistics indicated in 2005 that there were 30, 995 reported incidents of domestic violence? Just imagine the "silent" unreported incidents who are living in silent fear!
Each year, an estimated 3.3 million children are exposed to violence by family members against their mothers or female caretakers. In a national survey of more than 2,000 American families, approximately 50% of the men who frequently assaulted their wives also frequently abused their children!
Of children who witness their mothers being abused by their fathers, 40% suffer anxiety, 48% suffer depression, 53% act out with their parents and 60% act out with siblings. Statistics further indicate that victims of domestic violence are everywhere-- even in your faith community. Seventy-four percent of all Texans have either been a victim of domestic violence or know someone who has (according to a quantitative study conducted for Texas Council on Family Violence, Saurage, 2002.)
Because there is a need for outreach and education in faith communities, the faith family can be a critical resource for spiritual renewal and guidance. Texas Council on Family Violence. The problem is communities of faith can inadvertently make the situation worse. Misguided attempts at counseling can, in some cases, endanger rather than help the victim.
In addition, religious values may pressure the victim to keep the family together at all costs. Some batterers may even use scriptures and faith as a way to control their partner. "I grew up in a ministerial family. My parents were divorced when I was very young, but the religious impact was always there.
Therefore, when I was initially thrust into an abusive situation, I found it difficult to come to a conclusion about my future because I didn't want to do anything that would be seen as contradictory to God's teachings on marriage," said Donovan. "Dissolving the marital relationship was one of the hardest things I had ever done because I wanted to be right in God's sight. Yet, there were no programs within the church setting to provide guidance in this respect."
The bottom line is, love should never hurt. Domestic violence is never acceptable. It goes contrary to any religious teachings. Expecting a victim of domestic violence to simply pray about a situation and expect it to go away is ludacris. Encouraging a victim to keep the family together because it is what God would want is not scriptural or moral. Communities of faith need to open their eyes and understand the important role that they play in the fight against domestic violence. Training programs and outreach can assist congregants who may be experiencing physical or psychological abuse.
Information regarding training and outreach programs can be obtained from the Texas Council on Family violence www.tcfv.org.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
The Economic Crisis in Black and White
Narrowing America's racial divides and expanding opportunity for all
William E. Spriggs | September 22, 2008
Today, the U.S. economy is facing one of its greatest challenges in decades. The recent seven-year economic expansion netted a record for producing the fewest jobs since Herbert Hoover was president. The median income for American households has not kept up with inflation. So as the economy slows, households are in a weaker position than they were when the expansion began in 2001. Further, prompted by a housing bubble that inflated home prices to unsustainable levels, Americans facing declining incomes took on record debts secured by those now-shaky home values. From January through August, the economy has been shedding jobs, throwing more workers into the labor market. Polls show that Americans understand the economy is going in the wrong direction. Rightly, they score President Bush, who has overseen the economy skid off course, with the lowest marks on record for a president. But Americans are not expressing much empathy for those who are suffering the most. People have been upset at bailouts for Wall Street companies like Bear Stearns, but they have not been vocal enough in demanding help for Americans who have lost their jobs, incomes, and homes.
This Prospect special report focuses on one of the great cleavages in America that prevents the empathy needed for American workers to bond together to demand a better course -- race. It may seem odd to dedicate an issue to a call for solidarity in understanding how growing inequality affects Americans while the nation celebrates its breakthrough in having an African American nominee of the Democratic Party -- the major political party associated with working Americans.
As Barack Obama's nomination suggests, America has come a long way, from largely symbolic breakthroughs in sports and entertainment to greater political maturity on race. But what have not caught up are either necessary policy changes or the necessary coalition politics to bring them about.
As long ago as the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, the triumphant black sprinter Jesse Owens, who won four gold medals, was America's answer to Hitler's "Master Race" of Aryans. At the time, America itself was still segregated. Forty-eight years ago, at the 1960 Olympics in Rome, America did its best to respond to Soviet taunts about its treatment of African Americans by highlighting Rafer Johnson, the decathlete, as captain of the U.S. Olympic team and flag bearer as the team entered the stadium in Rome. Television broadcasted home the images of Wilma Rudolph and a young Cassius Clay, later Mohammed Ali, winning medals for America. Since then, Americans have grown more comfortable with such black "exceptionalism" -- whether it is Oprah Winfrey, Bill Cosby, Tiger Woods, or Michael Jordan. With our black media stars, we congratulate ourselves that America has fulfilled Dr. Martin Luther King's speech delivered 45 years ago in August, calling for an American dream where people would be judged by the content of their characters and not the color of their skins.
Yet, while the economy has failed American workers -- generating more inequality than growth, more debt than income -- discussing solutions to America's economic woes rekindles America's racial cleavage. White voters are asked to weigh issues such as trade and its effects on wages and jobs, or the complications of providing health care and its effects on take-home pay and retirement benefits, or the rising costs of college tuitions on their children's futures. But black voters are too often given a lecture on presumed black pathologies -- a lack of interest in education and the skills needed to compete, a weak sense of family, and high criminal proclivities. One could easily assume that white America was doing fine, and if black America would only get its act together, black Americans would be doing just as well. You might almost believe that the hundreds of thousands of jobs America has lost in manufacturing in the last seven years were only lost by lazy, poorly educated African Americans too busy having babies to get the skills to keep their jobs. You might almost believe that gas and food prices were rising only for black Americans, preventing only their wages from keeping up with the rising costs of living.
***
This bifurcation in the discussion of America's economic woes blocks identification of the true similarities and differences among workers of different races. The usual frame leads African Americans to experience white views as insensitive to their plight -- while for whites it dangerously masks the broader rise in economic inequality. Whites too easily see the black economic condition as the result of failing lifestyles, not a failing economy. Blacks too easily put the blame on either their own shortcomings or on discrimination.
Properly understood, what has befallen the black community should be viewed as water coming into the steerage section of an ocean liner -- special problems for those getting wet but a clear sign the entire ship is in trouble. The current debate on black pathologies is delaying a call for getting out the lifeboats and ensuring a fair distribution of those lifeboats -- and building a more sea-worthy ship for the next voyage. So far, the result has been, as with the Titanic, lifeboats for the rich in first class.
At the same time, we need to be candid with the depth of persistent racial disparities in the economy. Life remains bleak in the steerage section.
The U.S. set about a grand journey in the post?World War II era to ensure that economic depression was defeated and that renewed economic growth would be widely shared. The broad set of government policies that were pursued through the GI Bill to expand access to higher education and homeownership to a broad swath of America helped create a path to shared prosperity. Until the 1960s, many of those benefits were strictly segregated. Even so, the postwar boom produced unprecedented prosperity, and decent distribution required deliberate policies.
Today's rising inequality is widely blamed on globalization. But the current global forces have not stopped America's growth, and in the 1990s we briefly saw growth and productivity return to its postwar trend after stalling in the 1970s and 1980s. However, with weaker distributive policies, growth has benefited a smaller set of Americans. In fact, since 1980, the incomes of those at the top have doubled, while those in the middle and at the bottom have remained flat.
White men, especially those without college degrees, are not doing very well in today's economy. But they continue to do better than similarly situated blacks. What's needed is a careful disentangling of three factors: lingering racial discrimination; the true role of education in determining income; and the labor-market factors that have depressed earnings for blacks and whites alike -- and their true common interests in an economy of greater opportunity and broader prosperity.
The median earnings for white men with only a high school education were $36,539 in 2006, according to the latest U.S. Census Bureau data, and that figure has declined over time. But the median earnings for blacks (men and women) with only a high school education were $24,669, almost $12,000 a year less or about one-third less than the earnings of white men. To fully understand the depth of that difference, consider that about 70 percent of white men with a high school education made more than the median for blacks (and conversely, only about 25 percent of blacks earn more than the median of whites)! In July, the unemployment rate for black high school graduates was 9.4 percent, while for white male high school graduates the rate was 5.4 percent. Similar disparities exist for those with college educations.
So it would appear natural for whites to believe that blacks must not value education or simply are not willing to work, since absent information on these gaps, the lower earnings and higher unemployment experience of blacks are consistent with those of less-educated whites. But the reality for white men and blacks is that both are being denied the fruits of their production. However, given the superficiality of the usual discussion of differences and similarities, it is often hard for moderate-income whites to see blacks as being part of their same working class.
center>***
The article in this special report by William Rodgers draws attention to this reality. Because the median income for blacks places them in the bottom third of the white income distribution, blacks and the bottom third of the white income distribution have similar experiences in the economy. As the bottom third of the income distribution -- black and white -- loses earning shares, working-class white men should recognize that they and blacks are both below the waterline, rather than think of blacks as being on a different boat.
By the same token, if many whites are overly inclined to blame the black condition on poor education, skills, and work habits, many blacks are too inclined to pin all their problems on racial discrimination or lack of education. With a $12,000 gap in income between white and black high school?educated male workers, it would take a 50 percent increase for black earnings to reach comparable white earnings. So it would appear to blacks that racial inequality alone is the big problem. And because more-highly educated blacks have higher earnings, and because whites have a higher rate of college graduation than blacks, it is easy to see why, for many in the black community, the same story of black pathologies about education are an easy sell. From a policy perspective it is easier to discuss closing gaps in education than to have the more difficult discussion on the persistence of gaps in earnings and unemployment among comparably educated black Americans. And by focusing on education and discrimination, blacks and whites politely excuse blacks from the conversation about the bigger topics of trade deficits, oil speculation, and financial-market misbehavior as not relevant to the larger shortcomings of the economy.
The cold hard facts are that education (and even the use of standardized test scores) fails to explain the racial gap in unemployment. In 2000 when black family income reached a record high, blacks had reached the high school completion rate reached by whites in 1991, and the college completion rate reached by whites in 1977, but only the income of white families from 1963! Only about one-third of the over 20 percent gap in wages between black and white men can be explained by differences in education; region (blacks are more likely to live in the South where incomes are lower); months of work experience (lower for blacks because of higher unemployment rates); firm size (slightly higher for blacks because they tend to be hired more by large firms that use formal hiring practices than by small firms that tend to use word-of-mouth practices and job referrals from friends and relatives, and large firms pay higher wages than smaller firms do); unionization (blacks are more likely than whites to belong to unions, and unionized workers get paid higher wages); job training (blacks tend to get less on-the-job training, and training helps boost earnings); and marital status (black men are less likely than whites to be married, and married men are paid more than single men).
So, for all the fuss about black pathologies, a large residual of racial inequality remains. Politely, one would consider that the discussions of the shortcomings of the black community are a discussion about the obvious and therefore the easy-to-address policy solutions. A more cynical view would be that the discussions are based on racial stereotypes and that creating distance between black and white workers on that basis avoids deeper discussions about how inequalities are generated and tolerated -- along both racial and class lines.
***
This special report addresses many of the distinct ways in which the growth in inequality plays out differently in the black community, so that a dialogue can be started about how to create paths to equality that will not exacerbate the racial gap by ignoring those differences. For instance, the piece by Cecilia Conrad and its companion piece by Marlene Kim look at the interplay of race and gender inequality, and the fact that the black work force is more female than male, a unique characteristic among racial and ethnic groups in the U.S. If gender inequality is ignored, it is not possible to address the gap in earnings faced by black America.
These several issues overlap with the problems of how immigration reform is debated and with the barriers to an open and fair listing of jobs in the low-wage labor market, as discussed in the pieces by Maria Echaveste and Carmen Martino and David Bensman. And while blacks are more likely to be members of unions than whites are, so the drop in unionization rates takes on a more ominous meaning for blacks, as the piece by Steven Pitts highlights.
Though most of the report looks at problems of income and labor-market disparities, the long-run legacy of failing to address disparities in income has resulted in the gaps in wealth (the accumulated store of savings and income), which are even more extreme than the gap in income for blacks and whites. This means that white families have a deeper cushion of savings to fall back on than black families have, as well as a legacy to help their children with a head start. As the recent gains in homeownership for blacks are ravaged by the sub-prime catastrophe, the almost 25 percentage-point gap in homeownership returns to a permanent fixture of the racial landscape in America, as Melvin Oliver and Thomas Shapiro discuss in their piece.
Racial redlining relegated middle-class black homeowners to the tender mercies of unregulated and predatory mortgage lenders to seek the refinancing that American homeowners used to weather the storm of poor job growth and flat earnings of the Bush years. This discrimination in turn led directly to the current debacle of the sub-prime market collapse. Here is truly a case where tolerating racial disparities produced a disastrous outcome for everyone.
Finally, while this issue primarily addresses the African American work force, there are parallel issues facing Hispanic and Asian American workers. We need a more honest and searching discussion of the rights of immigrants to the American dream. However, it is the African American community that bears the brunt of a distorted view of inequality -- one rooted in stereotypes of black inferiority, a past that Dr. King dreamed of transcending. And in the general dialogue about inequality, Hispanic and Asian families are not singled out for failing to encourage education and lacking a sense of family.
***
If we are to live up to Dr. King' speech of 45 years ago, then we must judge communities the same way. In 1969, a year after Dr. King's murder, the birth rate to unmarried black women stood at 90.6 children to every 1,000 unmarried black woman, and today it has fallen to 67.8 children. Today, 82 percent of black men over 25 are high school graduates, compared to 31.9 percent in 1969. Dr. King could only be disappointed that the nation would still rather discuss issues of character and race than economic justice. We need a discussion about inequality that will ensure that our political leaders will build the life boats they failed to deliver to New Orleans, as nothing changed when the levees broke in Iowa this year. We must understand that while flood waters destroy all homes, some folks lack the resources to flee on their own, some folks live on lower-lying land than others, some folks live in houses with more stories than others, but we had better understand that a flood endangers all of us. Anything that will take away our ability to empathize will eventually leave us all in the water with no help.
America faces an economic challenge today that is greater than any it has faced since the Great Depression. At that time, Franklin Roosevelt corrected the faults in the economy and created the Social Security Act to build lifeboats for Americans drowned by the failure of the marketplace. He had to create that out of whole cloth. Today, Americans have endured a withering 30-year-old campaign against the nation's safety net, convinced that we could all go it alone. That attack was, in part, predicated on the manipulation of racial stereotypes with the use of "welfare queens."
Yet, more broadly, as the piece by john powell highlights, states with higher shares of African Americans and Hispanics have devised safety nets that are wholly inadequate -- ranging from state minimum-wage laws, access to health insurance, and unemployment benefits to the right to join unions. The result is that blacks are more likely than whites to live in states where the safety net is already weakened, as we saw in New Orleans, causing poverty to be an American phenomenon disproportionately in the South and Southwest. The economic downturn of 2001 showed how porous the safety net was, as poverty began to rise throughout this "economic recovery."
However, there has never been a more urgent need as there is now for all Americans to see themselves in the same boat. Now is not the time for those who did not make the decisions that put the U.S. economy in this position to blame one another. Rather, now is the time for those who have entrusted the economy to others to speak as one and to right the ship.
William E. Spriggs chairs the department of economics at Howard University. He is a senior fellow at the Economic Policy Institute and former executive director of the National Urban League Institute for Opportunity and Equality.
William E. Spriggs | September 22, 2008
Today, the U.S. economy is facing one of its greatest challenges in decades. The recent seven-year economic expansion netted a record for producing the fewest jobs since Herbert Hoover was president. The median income for American households has not kept up with inflation. So as the economy slows, households are in a weaker position than they were when the expansion began in 2001. Further, prompted by a housing bubble that inflated home prices to unsustainable levels, Americans facing declining incomes took on record debts secured by those now-shaky home values. From January through August, the economy has been shedding jobs, throwing more workers into the labor market. Polls show that Americans understand the economy is going in the wrong direction. Rightly, they score President Bush, who has overseen the economy skid off course, with the lowest marks on record for a president. But Americans are not expressing much empathy for those who are suffering the most. People have been upset at bailouts for Wall Street companies like Bear Stearns, but they have not been vocal enough in demanding help for Americans who have lost their jobs, incomes, and homes.
This Prospect special report focuses on one of the great cleavages in America that prevents the empathy needed for American workers to bond together to demand a better course -- race. It may seem odd to dedicate an issue to a call for solidarity in understanding how growing inequality affects Americans while the nation celebrates its breakthrough in having an African American nominee of the Democratic Party -- the major political party associated with working Americans.
As Barack Obama's nomination suggests, America has come a long way, from largely symbolic breakthroughs in sports and entertainment to greater political maturity on race. But what have not caught up are either necessary policy changes or the necessary coalition politics to bring them about.
As long ago as the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, the triumphant black sprinter Jesse Owens, who won four gold medals, was America's answer to Hitler's "Master Race" of Aryans. At the time, America itself was still segregated. Forty-eight years ago, at the 1960 Olympics in Rome, America did its best to respond to Soviet taunts about its treatment of African Americans by highlighting Rafer Johnson, the decathlete, as captain of the U.S. Olympic team and flag bearer as the team entered the stadium in Rome. Television broadcasted home the images of Wilma Rudolph and a young Cassius Clay, later Mohammed Ali, winning medals for America. Since then, Americans have grown more comfortable with such black "exceptionalism" -- whether it is Oprah Winfrey, Bill Cosby, Tiger Woods, or Michael Jordan. With our black media stars, we congratulate ourselves that America has fulfilled Dr. Martin Luther King's speech delivered 45 years ago in August, calling for an American dream where people would be judged by the content of their characters and not the color of their skins.
Yet, while the economy has failed American workers -- generating more inequality than growth, more debt than income -- discussing solutions to America's economic woes rekindles America's racial cleavage. White voters are asked to weigh issues such as trade and its effects on wages and jobs, or the complications of providing health care and its effects on take-home pay and retirement benefits, or the rising costs of college tuitions on their children's futures. But black voters are too often given a lecture on presumed black pathologies -- a lack of interest in education and the skills needed to compete, a weak sense of family, and high criminal proclivities. One could easily assume that white America was doing fine, and if black America would only get its act together, black Americans would be doing just as well. You might almost believe that the hundreds of thousands of jobs America has lost in manufacturing in the last seven years were only lost by lazy, poorly educated African Americans too busy having babies to get the skills to keep their jobs. You might almost believe that gas and food prices were rising only for black Americans, preventing only their wages from keeping up with the rising costs of living.
***
This bifurcation in the discussion of America's economic woes blocks identification of the true similarities and differences among workers of different races. The usual frame leads African Americans to experience white views as insensitive to their plight -- while for whites it dangerously masks the broader rise in economic inequality. Whites too easily see the black economic condition as the result of failing lifestyles, not a failing economy. Blacks too easily put the blame on either their own shortcomings or on discrimination.
Properly understood, what has befallen the black community should be viewed as water coming into the steerage section of an ocean liner -- special problems for those getting wet but a clear sign the entire ship is in trouble. The current debate on black pathologies is delaying a call for getting out the lifeboats and ensuring a fair distribution of those lifeboats -- and building a more sea-worthy ship for the next voyage. So far, the result has been, as with the Titanic, lifeboats for the rich in first class.
At the same time, we need to be candid with the depth of persistent racial disparities in the economy. Life remains bleak in the steerage section.
The U.S. set about a grand journey in the post?World War II era to ensure that economic depression was defeated and that renewed economic growth would be widely shared. The broad set of government policies that were pursued through the GI Bill to expand access to higher education and homeownership to a broad swath of America helped create a path to shared prosperity. Until the 1960s, many of those benefits were strictly segregated. Even so, the postwar boom produced unprecedented prosperity, and decent distribution required deliberate policies.
Today's rising inequality is widely blamed on globalization. But the current global forces have not stopped America's growth, and in the 1990s we briefly saw growth and productivity return to its postwar trend after stalling in the 1970s and 1980s. However, with weaker distributive policies, growth has benefited a smaller set of Americans. In fact, since 1980, the incomes of those at the top have doubled, while those in the middle and at the bottom have remained flat.
White men, especially those without college degrees, are not doing very well in today's economy. But they continue to do better than similarly situated blacks. What's needed is a careful disentangling of three factors: lingering racial discrimination; the true role of education in determining income; and the labor-market factors that have depressed earnings for blacks and whites alike -- and their true common interests in an economy of greater opportunity and broader prosperity.
The median earnings for white men with only a high school education were $36,539 in 2006, according to the latest U.S. Census Bureau data, and that figure has declined over time. But the median earnings for blacks (men and women) with only a high school education were $24,669, almost $12,000 a year less or about one-third less than the earnings of white men. To fully understand the depth of that difference, consider that about 70 percent of white men with a high school education made more than the median for blacks (and conversely, only about 25 percent of blacks earn more than the median of whites)! In July, the unemployment rate for black high school graduates was 9.4 percent, while for white male high school graduates the rate was 5.4 percent. Similar disparities exist for those with college educations.
So it would appear natural for whites to believe that blacks must not value education or simply are not willing to work, since absent information on these gaps, the lower earnings and higher unemployment experience of blacks are consistent with those of less-educated whites. But the reality for white men and blacks is that both are being denied the fruits of their production. However, given the superficiality of the usual discussion of differences and similarities, it is often hard for moderate-income whites to see blacks as being part of their same working class.
center>***
The article in this special report by William Rodgers draws attention to this reality. Because the median income for blacks places them in the bottom third of the white income distribution, blacks and the bottom third of the white income distribution have similar experiences in the economy. As the bottom third of the income distribution -- black and white -- loses earning shares, working-class white men should recognize that they and blacks are both below the waterline, rather than think of blacks as being on a different boat.
By the same token, if many whites are overly inclined to blame the black condition on poor education, skills, and work habits, many blacks are too inclined to pin all their problems on racial discrimination or lack of education. With a $12,000 gap in income between white and black high school?educated male workers, it would take a 50 percent increase for black earnings to reach comparable white earnings. So it would appear to blacks that racial inequality alone is the big problem. And because more-highly educated blacks have higher earnings, and because whites have a higher rate of college graduation than blacks, it is easy to see why, for many in the black community, the same story of black pathologies about education are an easy sell. From a policy perspective it is easier to discuss closing gaps in education than to have the more difficult discussion on the persistence of gaps in earnings and unemployment among comparably educated black Americans. And by focusing on education and discrimination, blacks and whites politely excuse blacks from the conversation about the bigger topics of trade deficits, oil speculation, and financial-market misbehavior as not relevant to the larger shortcomings of the economy.
The cold hard facts are that education (and even the use of standardized test scores) fails to explain the racial gap in unemployment. In 2000 when black family income reached a record high, blacks had reached the high school completion rate reached by whites in 1991, and the college completion rate reached by whites in 1977, but only the income of white families from 1963! Only about one-third of the over 20 percent gap in wages between black and white men can be explained by differences in education; region (blacks are more likely to live in the South where incomes are lower); months of work experience (lower for blacks because of higher unemployment rates); firm size (slightly higher for blacks because they tend to be hired more by large firms that use formal hiring practices than by small firms that tend to use word-of-mouth practices and job referrals from friends and relatives, and large firms pay higher wages than smaller firms do); unionization (blacks are more likely than whites to belong to unions, and unionized workers get paid higher wages); job training (blacks tend to get less on-the-job training, and training helps boost earnings); and marital status (black men are less likely than whites to be married, and married men are paid more than single men).
So, for all the fuss about black pathologies, a large residual of racial inequality remains. Politely, one would consider that the discussions of the shortcomings of the black community are a discussion about the obvious and therefore the easy-to-address policy solutions. A more cynical view would be that the discussions are based on racial stereotypes and that creating distance between black and white workers on that basis avoids deeper discussions about how inequalities are generated and tolerated -- along both racial and class lines.
***
This special report addresses many of the distinct ways in which the growth in inequality plays out differently in the black community, so that a dialogue can be started about how to create paths to equality that will not exacerbate the racial gap by ignoring those differences. For instance, the piece by Cecilia Conrad and its companion piece by Marlene Kim look at the interplay of race and gender inequality, and the fact that the black work force is more female than male, a unique characteristic among racial and ethnic groups in the U.S. If gender inequality is ignored, it is not possible to address the gap in earnings faced by black America.
These several issues overlap with the problems of how immigration reform is debated and with the barriers to an open and fair listing of jobs in the low-wage labor market, as discussed in the pieces by Maria Echaveste and Carmen Martino and David Bensman. And while blacks are more likely to be members of unions than whites are, so the drop in unionization rates takes on a more ominous meaning for blacks, as the piece by Steven Pitts highlights.
Though most of the report looks at problems of income and labor-market disparities, the long-run legacy of failing to address disparities in income has resulted in the gaps in wealth (the accumulated store of savings and income), which are even more extreme than the gap in income for blacks and whites. This means that white families have a deeper cushion of savings to fall back on than black families have, as well as a legacy to help their children with a head start. As the recent gains in homeownership for blacks are ravaged by the sub-prime catastrophe, the almost 25 percentage-point gap in homeownership returns to a permanent fixture of the racial landscape in America, as Melvin Oliver and Thomas Shapiro discuss in their piece.
Racial redlining relegated middle-class black homeowners to the tender mercies of unregulated and predatory mortgage lenders to seek the refinancing that American homeowners used to weather the storm of poor job growth and flat earnings of the Bush years. This discrimination in turn led directly to the current debacle of the sub-prime market collapse. Here is truly a case where tolerating racial disparities produced a disastrous outcome for everyone.
Finally, while this issue primarily addresses the African American work force, there are parallel issues facing Hispanic and Asian American workers. We need a more honest and searching discussion of the rights of immigrants to the American dream. However, it is the African American community that bears the brunt of a distorted view of inequality -- one rooted in stereotypes of black inferiority, a past that Dr. King dreamed of transcending. And in the general dialogue about inequality, Hispanic and Asian families are not singled out for failing to encourage education and lacking a sense of family.
***
If we are to live up to Dr. King' speech of 45 years ago, then we must judge communities the same way. In 1969, a year after Dr. King's murder, the birth rate to unmarried black women stood at 90.6 children to every 1,000 unmarried black woman, and today it has fallen to 67.8 children. Today, 82 percent of black men over 25 are high school graduates, compared to 31.9 percent in 1969. Dr. King could only be disappointed that the nation would still rather discuss issues of character and race than economic justice. We need a discussion about inequality that will ensure that our political leaders will build the life boats they failed to deliver to New Orleans, as nothing changed when the levees broke in Iowa this year. We must understand that while flood waters destroy all homes, some folks lack the resources to flee on their own, some folks live on lower-lying land than others, some folks live in houses with more stories than others, but we had better understand that a flood endangers all of us. Anything that will take away our ability to empathize will eventually leave us all in the water with no help.
America faces an economic challenge today that is greater than any it has faced since the Great Depression. At that time, Franklin Roosevelt corrected the faults in the economy and created the Social Security Act to build lifeboats for Americans drowned by the failure of the marketplace. He had to create that out of whole cloth. Today, Americans have endured a withering 30-year-old campaign against the nation's safety net, convinced that we could all go it alone. That attack was, in part, predicated on the manipulation of racial stereotypes with the use of "welfare queens."
Yet, more broadly, as the piece by john powell highlights, states with higher shares of African Americans and Hispanics have devised safety nets that are wholly inadequate -- ranging from state minimum-wage laws, access to health insurance, and unemployment benefits to the right to join unions. The result is that blacks are more likely than whites to live in states where the safety net is already weakened, as we saw in New Orleans, causing poverty to be an American phenomenon disproportionately in the South and Southwest. The economic downturn of 2001 showed how porous the safety net was, as poverty began to rise throughout this "economic recovery."
However, there has never been a more urgent need as there is now for all Americans to see themselves in the same boat. Now is not the time for those who did not make the decisions that put the U.S. economy in this position to blame one another. Rather, now is the time for those who have entrusted the economy to others to speak as one and to right the ship.
William E. Spriggs chairs the department of economics at Howard University. He is a senior fellow at the Economic Policy Institute and former executive director of the National Urban League Institute for Opportunity and Equality.
The Changing Face of Poverty in America
Why are so many women, children, and racial and cultural minorities still poor?
William E. Spriggs | April 22, 2007
"Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink."
-- Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
in 1960 american workers produced a gross domestic Product of $13,847 (in year 2000 dollars) for every man, woman, and child in the country. By 1969, GDP per capita rose to $18,578. In that period, the poverty rate for American children dropped almost by half, from 26.5 percent to 13.8 percent. The most recent data, for 2005, show child poverty has risen again, to 17.1 percent, while the GDP per capita stood at $37,246, roughly double the value in 1969. How did the nation become twice as wealthy but its children become poorer?
In 2000, the number of poor Americans reached an 11-year low at 31.6 million, and the poverty rate stood at a 26-year low at 11.3 percent. While the nation again became richer after the post-2001 recovery, more than 5 million Americans fell into poverty, and the latest figures put the number of poor Americans at 36.9 million people.
To put a face on American poverty, it is important to first put that poverty in context -- to understand not just who is poor today but to examine how poverty changes over time. With that perspective, we can appreciate that in a nation as wealthy as the United States, poverty is not intractable.
"The federal government declared war on poverty, and poverty won."
-- Ronald Reagan
that line from president reagan's 1988 state of the Union address, was used to ridicule Lyndon Johnson's efforts to fight poverty. President Johnson launched that fight in March 1964, submitting the Economic Opportunity Act to Congress and saying these words: "Because it is right, because it is wise, and because, for the first time in our history, it is possible to conquer poverty &"
Johnson believed that a wealthy nation produces enough for each individual citizen to live above poverty. This was a question of political and moral will, not an economic constraint. So, he differentiated between the day's global struggle to end poverty in countries like Mali and Haiti, where there was a real economic constraint to be overcome, and the situation in America, a land that was not poor in resources but that lacked moral conviction. The Johnson legacy chart on the following page shows the path of poverty for black children, a primary beneficiary of LBJ's programs. In 1965, almost 66 percent of black children lived below the poverty line. In four short years, that share was cut to 39.6 percent, a tremendous accomplishment. By contrast, the Reagan legacy chart shows the path of poverty for black children from 1981 to 1989, the era of Reagan and George Bush Senior. In 1980, 42.1 percent of black children lived below the poverty line; and by 1988 that share had risen to 42.8 percent. Yes, poverty won.
How Policy Influences Poverty
The face of poverty in America is the result of policy choices, of political will, and of moral conviction -- or its absence. The incidence of poverty is heavily concentrated in the United States across the South and the Southwest. The legacy of slavery is part of that story. Forty percent of America's poor live in the South. Four of today's five poorest states were ones that existed in the old Confederacy. Of the onetime Confederate states, only two -- Florida and Virginia -- do not rank in the current 20 states with highest poverty levels.
Why do some people lack the income to rise above poverty? For many, the reason is that they do not work; for others, the reason is that they work but do not earn enough money. Nonworkers include the elderly, the disabled, and children, as well as the unemployed. And public policy treats different groups differently.
The Social Security old-age program insures virtually all retired workers against the risk of outliving their savings. The old-age benefit formula is tied to the rising productivity of current workers, indexing the benefits to the average national wage. The shared risk, and the insured shared prosperity, explain why the poverty rate for those over 65 has declined from more than 28 percent in 1966 (nearly double the national poverty rate of 14.7 percent) to 10.1 percent today (below the national rate of 12.6 percent). In 1974, the poverty rate for the Census category of white non-Hispanic seniors, at 12.5 percent, was double the poverty rate for working-age (1864) white non-Hispanics, at 5.9 percent. Today, the poverty rate for the two age groups is virtually equal, at 7.9 percent for seniors and 7.8 percent for working-age white non-Hispanics.
Another group of people who do not work, by law, are children. But their income is derived mostly from their parents. The rise in child poverty, therefore, reflects the rise in the inequality of their parents' earnings. So, while 9.8 percent of the poor are seniors, 33.5 percent of the poor are children. Children make up a much higher share of the poor among blacks (41.9 percent of poor blacks) and Hispanics (42.6 percent of poor Hispanics) than among whites (24.5 percent of poor whites). And while the poverty rate of seniors has shown a steady trend downward as national income has risen, child poverty rates are as intractable as the growing inequality in working families' earnings.
The wide divergence in how public policy treats different groups was not Congress' original intent. The Social Security Act of 1935 sought to protect the incomes of those who did not work because of age or a poor economy by establishing a federal framework for unemployment insurance, old-age benefits, and assistance to women with dependent children. In 1939, the old-age benefit structure was fully federalized to produce consistent benefits. But, Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) and the unemployment-insurance system were put in state hands. And in the 1990s, AFDC was transformed from its Social Security Act roots into a state block grant. The mostly state-run unemployment-insurance system, meanwhile, is strained by the transformation of the economy from one in which workers could expect to be laid off in recessions and then rehired into one based on the structural creation and destruction of whole industries and occupations.
Children in our antipoverty system are oddly split. Today, more children receive a check from the Old Age, Survivors and Disability Insurance (OASDI) Program than are helped by the new Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program that replaced AFDC. Some children, therefore, enjoy their parents' protection against the loss of income from disability, untimely death, or old age, and receive benefits that are based on the same formula used for the old-age benefit. Low-income black children are especially helped by the disability benefits their parents receive, or by the survivor benefits that the child receives -- because the benefit formula is national and intended to alleviate poverty.
By contrast, children receiving TANF aid are subject to the whim of their state. In 2004, a widowed mother and two children, on average, received a monthly OASDI survivors' benefit of $1,952. Those two children would live above the federal poverty line. The TANF benefit for the same family, however, could range from $170 a month in Mississippi to $215 in Alabama to $240 in Louisiana to $625 in New Hampshire, leaving children in all of those states far below the poverty line. Adjusting for inflation, the survivors' benefit has been increasing since 1970, while the average benefit under AFDC (and now TANF) has been falling. While the OASDI benefit level is set by a federal formula, policy-makers in states with higher shares of black TANF recipients choose lower benefit levels.
Like TANF recipients, unemployed workers are also at the mercy of their state; the average weekly benefit can range from $179 a week in Mississippi to $320 in New Jersey. In the 1950s, close to half of the nation's unemployed workers received benefits; today, only about 35 percent do. This varies widely by state, from 21 percent in Wyoming to 24 percent in Texas to 58 percent in Pennsylvania to 71 percent in New Jersey. And the percentage of earned income replaced by unemployment benefits has steadily fallen as well.
Diligent and Still Poor
An ongoing topic of debate is the relationship of child poverty and parents' income to the increase in single-parent households. Other things being equal, two parents in a household usually earn more than one, but they are not assured of earning their family's way out of poverty. Hispanic and black children have roughly similar levels of poverty -- 33.2 percent for black children, and 27.7 percent for Hispanic children. Yet 41 percent of black families with children are married, whereas 68 percent of Hispanic families with children are married. In 1974, when the poverty rate among black children was at 39.6 percent, 56 percent of black families with children were married. Two-income families today are less likely to be poor, but much is at work besides family structure.
To be poor is to lack income, so the core issue is earnings. In 1962, on the eve of the March on Washington for Jobs and Justice in 1963, the median income of black men was below the poverty threshold for a family of three, but by 1967 it was above that level (not until 1995 did it get above the poverty level for a family of four). Because of the rise in the earnings of black women, poverty among black children fell in the 1990s, just as the rise in the earnings of black men helped lower black children's poverty level in the 1960s. By 1997, the median income of black women rose above the poverty level for a family of three.
Among the poor, 11.4 percent work full time, year-round. These 2.9 million Americans are directly hurt by minimum-wage laws that have lagged behind costs of living. This problem is especially acute for Asians and Hispanics, where 18 percent of the working poor worked full time, year-round.
Recent immigrants who are not citizens have a poverty rate of 20.4 percent. Like all groups, noncitizen immigrants had falling poverty rates in the 1990s as the labor market expanded: Their poverty rate fell from 28.7 percent in 1993 to a low of 19.2 percent in 2000. Then, following the national trend, their poverty rate started to climb. During the Reagan administration, the United States suffered its highest national unemployment rates since the Great Depression. In the black community, the effects were devastating: The unemployment rate for adult (over age 20) black men peaked at more than 20 percent in December 1982; during the entire Reagan presidency, the unemployment rate for adult black men remained in double digits. The highest recorded unemployment rate for adult white men was 9 percent in November and December 1982. But for black men, the unemployment rate remained above that mark for 182 straight months (15 years), from October 1979 to November 1994. Because children do not work and need working adults to support them, it is hardly surprising that during that period, black child poverty rates remained intractable above 40 percent.
Poverty for women is disproportionately higher than for men, 14.1 percent compared to 11.1 (in 2005), primarily because of higher rates of poverty among female-headed households, gaps in poverty for the elderly (7.3 percent for men over age 65 compared to 12.3 percent for women in 2005), and for single women (24.1 percent) compared to single men (17.9 percent) living alone. The gap reflects persistent gaps in earnings between men and women, though that gap is falling. White non-Hispanic men, age 25 and over, with a high-school diploma have a median income of $35,679, while women, age 25 and over, need a college degree to have a similar median income ($36,532 in 2005). And, while the median income of white males has been above the poverty line for a family of five since 1959, the median income for women only broke above the poverty line for a family of three in 1990. The persistent gap is best reflected in differences in poverty among the elderly, where the life-long earnings of women mean they have lower assets in Social Security benefits than do men, despite the progressive structure of the benefit formula. The gap among the elderly also reflects issues of access to jobs with pensions for women.
Women who are the single head of household face the extra burden of earning enough to raise dependent children out of poverty. This risk a woman faces of helping non-working dependents is not shared by society, as would be a woman's efforts to care for her elderly parents. The result is that female-headed households, harmed by the significant earnings gap between men and women, have a poverty rate of 31.1 percent compared to male-headed households (with no wife present) of 13.4 percent, while the overall poverty rate for families is 10.8 percent.
Full Employment and its Limits
It took the presidency of Bill Clinton, with its expansive labor market and increases in the minimum wage and the Earned Income Tax Credit, to dramatically improve the incomes of poor and minority families. As job creation reached a record pace, the unemployment rate for black men plummeted, reaching a recorded low of 6 percent in March 1999. With work comes income, and poverty for black families fell. This history suggests something about the proper way to view responsibility and poor people as agents in their own fate: Usually they are not victims of themselves, but of bad economic policies and barriers to opportunity.
Under Reagan, who ridiculed antipoverty efforts, the number of black children living below the poverty line increased by 200,000, from 3.9 million in 1980 to 4.1 million in 1988. During the Clinton years, the black child poverty rate fell steadily, from 46.3 percent to a record-low 30 percent, lifting about 1.6 million black children out of poverty. For all children, the poverty rate fell annually during the Clinton's presidency, reaching a 30-year low of 15.6 percent when he left office. But those reduced poverty rates may be the best we can achieve simply by getting jobs for parents. While lower than during the Reagan years, they do not equal the lows America has achieved for its senior citizens, or the general population. And those gains reversed course when George W. Bush became president.
Because of record job creation in the 1990s, the number of people who worked and were poor declined from 10.1 million in 1993 to 8.5 million by 2000; greatly increased working hours and higher wages meant higher incomes. But during the current expansion, a record 48 months was required to get payroll employment back to the level preceding the employment downturn that began in late 2000, a lag not matched since Herbert Hoover. So while full employment is necessary to alleviate poverty, it is far from sufficient.
In short, America knows how to address poverty. Its great success in lowering the poverty level of those over 65 has changed the face of poverty. But for those subject to the whims of state differences and the correlation of race with state policies to address poverty, there have been great intractable issues that have left the face of poverty disproportionately young, black, Hispanic, and female. Growing inequality in the labor market, moreover, has increased the share of the poor who are of working age, and stagnant federal minimum-wage laws have increased the oxymoron of full-time, year-round working poor people.
In a nation with a per capita GDP above the poverty line for a family of four, it is appalling that almost 3 million people work full time, year-round and are poor, and that more than 12 million American children are living in poverty. Lyndon Johnson proposed to fight poverty "because it is right, because it is wise." In a land of vast wealth, twice as rich as America in the 1960s, can today's leaders to rise to the occasion?
William E. Spriggs chairs the department of economics at Howard University. He is a senior fellow at the Economic Policy Institute and former executive director of the National Urban League Institute for Opportunity and Equality.
William E. Spriggs | April 22, 2007
"Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink."
-- Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
in 1960 american workers produced a gross domestic Product of $13,847 (in year 2000 dollars) for every man, woman, and child in the country. By 1969, GDP per capita rose to $18,578. In that period, the poverty rate for American children dropped almost by half, from 26.5 percent to 13.8 percent. The most recent data, for 2005, show child poverty has risen again, to 17.1 percent, while the GDP per capita stood at $37,246, roughly double the value in 1969. How did the nation become twice as wealthy but its children become poorer?
In 2000, the number of poor Americans reached an 11-year low at 31.6 million, and the poverty rate stood at a 26-year low at 11.3 percent. While the nation again became richer after the post-2001 recovery, more than 5 million Americans fell into poverty, and the latest figures put the number of poor Americans at 36.9 million people.
To put a face on American poverty, it is important to first put that poverty in context -- to understand not just who is poor today but to examine how poverty changes over time. With that perspective, we can appreciate that in a nation as wealthy as the United States, poverty is not intractable.
"The federal government declared war on poverty, and poverty won."
-- Ronald Reagan
that line from president reagan's 1988 state of the Union address, was used to ridicule Lyndon Johnson's efforts to fight poverty. President Johnson launched that fight in March 1964, submitting the Economic Opportunity Act to Congress and saying these words: "Because it is right, because it is wise, and because, for the first time in our history, it is possible to conquer poverty &"
Johnson believed that a wealthy nation produces enough for each individual citizen to live above poverty. This was a question of political and moral will, not an economic constraint. So, he differentiated between the day's global struggle to end poverty in countries like Mali and Haiti, where there was a real economic constraint to be overcome, and the situation in America, a land that was not poor in resources but that lacked moral conviction. The Johnson legacy chart on the following page shows the path of poverty for black children, a primary beneficiary of LBJ's programs. In 1965, almost 66 percent of black children lived below the poverty line. In four short years, that share was cut to 39.6 percent, a tremendous accomplishment. By contrast, the Reagan legacy chart shows the path of poverty for black children from 1981 to 1989, the era of Reagan and George Bush Senior. In 1980, 42.1 percent of black children lived below the poverty line; and by 1988 that share had risen to 42.8 percent. Yes, poverty won.
How Policy Influences Poverty
The face of poverty in America is the result of policy choices, of political will, and of moral conviction -- or its absence. The incidence of poverty is heavily concentrated in the United States across the South and the Southwest. The legacy of slavery is part of that story. Forty percent of America's poor live in the South. Four of today's five poorest states were ones that existed in the old Confederacy. Of the onetime Confederate states, only two -- Florida and Virginia -- do not rank in the current 20 states with highest poverty levels.
Why do some people lack the income to rise above poverty? For many, the reason is that they do not work; for others, the reason is that they work but do not earn enough money. Nonworkers include the elderly, the disabled, and children, as well as the unemployed. And public policy treats different groups differently.
The Social Security old-age program insures virtually all retired workers against the risk of outliving their savings. The old-age benefit formula is tied to the rising productivity of current workers, indexing the benefits to the average national wage. The shared risk, and the insured shared prosperity, explain why the poverty rate for those over 65 has declined from more than 28 percent in 1966 (nearly double the national poverty rate of 14.7 percent) to 10.1 percent today (below the national rate of 12.6 percent). In 1974, the poverty rate for the Census category of white non-Hispanic seniors, at 12.5 percent, was double the poverty rate for working-age (1864) white non-Hispanics, at 5.9 percent. Today, the poverty rate for the two age groups is virtually equal, at 7.9 percent for seniors and 7.8 percent for working-age white non-Hispanics.
Another group of people who do not work, by law, are children. But their income is derived mostly from their parents. The rise in child poverty, therefore, reflects the rise in the inequality of their parents' earnings. So, while 9.8 percent of the poor are seniors, 33.5 percent of the poor are children. Children make up a much higher share of the poor among blacks (41.9 percent of poor blacks) and Hispanics (42.6 percent of poor Hispanics) than among whites (24.5 percent of poor whites). And while the poverty rate of seniors has shown a steady trend downward as national income has risen, child poverty rates are as intractable as the growing inequality in working families' earnings.
The wide divergence in how public policy treats different groups was not Congress' original intent. The Social Security Act of 1935 sought to protect the incomes of those who did not work because of age or a poor economy by establishing a federal framework for unemployment insurance, old-age benefits, and assistance to women with dependent children. In 1939, the old-age benefit structure was fully federalized to produce consistent benefits. But, Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) and the unemployment-insurance system were put in state hands. And in the 1990s, AFDC was transformed from its Social Security Act roots into a state block grant. The mostly state-run unemployment-insurance system, meanwhile, is strained by the transformation of the economy from one in which workers could expect to be laid off in recessions and then rehired into one based on the structural creation and destruction of whole industries and occupations.
Children in our antipoverty system are oddly split. Today, more children receive a check from the Old Age, Survivors and Disability Insurance (OASDI) Program than are helped by the new Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program that replaced AFDC. Some children, therefore, enjoy their parents' protection against the loss of income from disability, untimely death, or old age, and receive benefits that are based on the same formula used for the old-age benefit. Low-income black children are especially helped by the disability benefits their parents receive, or by the survivor benefits that the child receives -- because the benefit formula is national and intended to alleviate poverty.
By contrast, children receiving TANF aid are subject to the whim of their state. In 2004, a widowed mother and two children, on average, received a monthly OASDI survivors' benefit of $1,952. Those two children would live above the federal poverty line. The TANF benefit for the same family, however, could range from $170 a month in Mississippi to $215 in Alabama to $240 in Louisiana to $625 in New Hampshire, leaving children in all of those states far below the poverty line. Adjusting for inflation, the survivors' benefit has been increasing since 1970, while the average benefit under AFDC (and now TANF) has been falling. While the OASDI benefit level is set by a federal formula, policy-makers in states with higher shares of black TANF recipients choose lower benefit levels.
Like TANF recipients, unemployed workers are also at the mercy of their state; the average weekly benefit can range from $179 a week in Mississippi to $320 in New Jersey. In the 1950s, close to half of the nation's unemployed workers received benefits; today, only about 35 percent do. This varies widely by state, from 21 percent in Wyoming to 24 percent in Texas to 58 percent in Pennsylvania to 71 percent in New Jersey. And the percentage of earned income replaced by unemployment benefits has steadily fallen as well.
Diligent and Still Poor
An ongoing topic of debate is the relationship of child poverty and parents' income to the increase in single-parent households. Other things being equal, two parents in a household usually earn more than one, but they are not assured of earning their family's way out of poverty. Hispanic and black children have roughly similar levels of poverty -- 33.2 percent for black children, and 27.7 percent for Hispanic children. Yet 41 percent of black families with children are married, whereas 68 percent of Hispanic families with children are married. In 1974, when the poverty rate among black children was at 39.6 percent, 56 percent of black families with children were married. Two-income families today are less likely to be poor, but much is at work besides family structure.
To be poor is to lack income, so the core issue is earnings. In 1962, on the eve of the March on Washington for Jobs and Justice in 1963, the median income of black men was below the poverty threshold for a family of three, but by 1967 it was above that level (not until 1995 did it get above the poverty level for a family of four). Because of the rise in the earnings of black women, poverty among black children fell in the 1990s, just as the rise in the earnings of black men helped lower black children's poverty level in the 1960s. By 1997, the median income of black women rose above the poverty level for a family of three.
Among the poor, 11.4 percent work full time, year-round. These 2.9 million Americans are directly hurt by minimum-wage laws that have lagged behind costs of living. This problem is especially acute for Asians and Hispanics, where 18 percent of the working poor worked full time, year-round.
Recent immigrants who are not citizens have a poverty rate of 20.4 percent. Like all groups, noncitizen immigrants had falling poverty rates in the 1990s as the labor market expanded: Their poverty rate fell from 28.7 percent in 1993 to a low of 19.2 percent in 2000. Then, following the national trend, their poverty rate started to climb. During the Reagan administration, the United States suffered its highest national unemployment rates since the Great Depression. In the black community, the effects were devastating: The unemployment rate for adult (over age 20) black men peaked at more than 20 percent in December 1982; during the entire Reagan presidency, the unemployment rate for adult black men remained in double digits. The highest recorded unemployment rate for adult white men was 9 percent in November and December 1982. But for black men, the unemployment rate remained above that mark for 182 straight months (15 years), from October 1979 to November 1994. Because children do not work and need working adults to support them, it is hardly surprising that during that period, black child poverty rates remained intractable above 40 percent.
Poverty for women is disproportionately higher than for men, 14.1 percent compared to 11.1 (in 2005), primarily because of higher rates of poverty among female-headed households, gaps in poverty for the elderly (7.3 percent for men over age 65 compared to 12.3 percent for women in 2005), and for single women (24.1 percent) compared to single men (17.9 percent) living alone. The gap reflects persistent gaps in earnings between men and women, though that gap is falling. White non-Hispanic men, age 25 and over, with a high-school diploma have a median income of $35,679, while women, age 25 and over, need a college degree to have a similar median income ($36,532 in 2005). And, while the median income of white males has been above the poverty line for a family of five since 1959, the median income for women only broke above the poverty line for a family of three in 1990. The persistent gap is best reflected in differences in poverty among the elderly, where the life-long earnings of women mean they have lower assets in Social Security benefits than do men, despite the progressive structure of the benefit formula. The gap among the elderly also reflects issues of access to jobs with pensions for women.
Women who are the single head of household face the extra burden of earning enough to raise dependent children out of poverty. This risk a woman faces of helping non-working dependents is not shared by society, as would be a woman's efforts to care for her elderly parents. The result is that female-headed households, harmed by the significant earnings gap between men and women, have a poverty rate of 31.1 percent compared to male-headed households (with no wife present) of 13.4 percent, while the overall poverty rate for families is 10.8 percent.
Full Employment and its Limits
It took the presidency of Bill Clinton, with its expansive labor market and increases in the minimum wage and the Earned Income Tax Credit, to dramatically improve the incomes of poor and minority families. As job creation reached a record pace, the unemployment rate for black men plummeted, reaching a recorded low of 6 percent in March 1999. With work comes income, and poverty for black families fell. This history suggests something about the proper way to view responsibility and poor people as agents in their own fate: Usually they are not victims of themselves, but of bad economic policies and barriers to opportunity.
Under Reagan, who ridiculed antipoverty efforts, the number of black children living below the poverty line increased by 200,000, from 3.9 million in 1980 to 4.1 million in 1988. During the Clinton years, the black child poverty rate fell steadily, from 46.3 percent to a record-low 30 percent, lifting about 1.6 million black children out of poverty. For all children, the poverty rate fell annually during the Clinton's presidency, reaching a 30-year low of 15.6 percent when he left office. But those reduced poverty rates may be the best we can achieve simply by getting jobs for parents. While lower than during the Reagan years, they do not equal the lows America has achieved for its senior citizens, or the general population. And those gains reversed course when George W. Bush became president.
Because of record job creation in the 1990s, the number of people who worked and were poor declined from 10.1 million in 1993 to 8.5 million by 2000; greatly increased working hours and higher wages meant higher incomes. But during the current expansion, a record 48 months was required to get payroll employment back to the level preceding the employment downturn that began in late 2000, a lag not matched since Herbert Hoover. So while full employment is necessary to alleviate poverty, it is far from sufficient.
In short, America knows how to address poverty. Its great success in lowering the poverty level of those over 65 has changed the face of poverty. But for those subject to the whims of state differences and the correlation of race with state policies to address poverty, there have been great intractable issues that have left the face of poverty disproportionately young, black, Hispanic, and female. Growing inequality in the labor market, moreover, has increased the share of the poor who are of working age, and stagnant federal minimum-wage laws have increased the oxymoron of full-time, year-round working poor people.
In a nation with a per capita GDP above the poverty line for a family of four, it is appalling that almost 3 million people work full time, year-round and are poor, and that more than 12 million American children are living in poverty. Lyndon Johnson proposed to fight poverty "because it is right, because it is wise." In a land of vast wealth, twice as rich as America in the 1960s, can today's leaders to rise to the occasion?
William E. Spriggs chairs the department of economics at Howard University. He is a senior fellow at the Economic Policy Institute and former executive director of the National Urban League Institute for Opportunity and Equality.
Saturday, October 11, 2008
Meet Guest Blogger Author Kimberly McLemore
Davenport, IA native, who currently resides in Alexandria, VA, and is a single parent to a wonderful 20 year old son, who is going to college as a pre-med student.
I served my country for fourteen years in the Military, owned and operated two private companies for approximately 10 years, and was a member for several business associations; featured in the Quad City Business Journal for Young Professionals under 40 years old and received numerous recognitions for outstanding performances from the Davenport, Iowa community.
I wrote my first self-help business book in the late 1990's and had my first inspirational and personal growth book published June 2008.
I served my country for fourteen years in the Military, owned and operated two private companies for approximately 10 years, and was a member for several business associations; featured in the Quad City Business Journal for Young Professionals under 40 years old and received numerous recognitions for outstanding performances from the Davenport, Iowa community.
I wrote my first self-help business book in the late 1990's and had my first inspirational and personal growth book published June 2008.
Support Breast Cancer Awareness
Breast Cancer Awareness Month: Businesses Supporting the Cause
By Maria Romain
Currently, the month of October is designated as the official National Breast Cancer Awareness Month (NBCAM). For over two decades, NBCAM has successfully educated women of all ages about early detection, treatment, and diagnosis of breast cancer. Non-profit organizations such as Karmanos Cancer Institute, American Cancer Society, Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation and the National Breast Cancer Foundation are devoted to raising money for breast cancer research and educating women (and men) about the disease, supporting those with breast cancer, and celebrating the individuals who have survived it.
Companies such as Macy’s and Target are inviting their consumers to join them in the fight against breast cancer. The “Pink Ribbon Items” are sold to help support breast cancer research. These companies have agreed to donate a portion of the proceeds to breast cancer charities. Most items related to breast cancer awareness can be identified with a pink label or a pink ribbon. Ford Motor Company has supported breast cancer research for over 10 years by donating money and selling pink silk scarves specifically for breast cancer charities. All businesses are invited to invest in unique corporate gifts that help support breast cancer research. There are corporate gifts available that are embellished with the breast cancer awareness “pink ribbon”. Some of the other gifts are manufactured in pink and can be personalized with a monogram. These href=http://www.corporatesnobs.com/professional-in-pink.htm>breast cancer awareness business gifts range any where from heart-shaped luggage tags to pink leather totes.
Breast cancer awareness is not limited to woman only. Men are encouraged to support the cause as well. According to the National Breast Cancer Foundation, 1600 men will be diagnosed with breast cancer this year. Even the most masculine man should rethink wearing pink when it comes to supporting a great cause.
Although, October is designated as National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, supporting the cause can be a year-round commitment. Those who are unaffected by breast cancer should help join the fight against breast cancer for their loved ones. Whether you decide to participate in an American Cancer Society sponsored walk, donate money to breast cancer charities, or invest in business gifts that help support breast cancer research, you will certainly contribute to saving someone’s life.
Maria Romain, President and Founder of href=http://www.academicsuccessmanagement.com>Academic Success Management, Inc. is a writer for href=http://www.corporatesnobs.com>Corporate Snobs, a web-based company that offers practical and affordable corporate gifts. Find more articles on wonderful business gift ideas by visiting today.
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Domestic Violence and Child Custody
Domestic Violence and Child Custody
By Steven Carlson
Becoming a witness of domestic violence and growing up in such a volatile and disturbing family environment can have a dreadful impact on the psychological development of a child. Hence, the issue of child custody in situations that involve domestic violence is one of great important.
The US Department of Justice gives great importance towards protecting the rights of children who are exposed to domestic violence. Domestic violence in this context does not necessarily mean the child has actually seen physical abuse or witnessed domestic violence. It may encompass circumstances wherein the child is simply present in the home during an incident of domestic violence. Such type of abuse is commonly referred to as "secondary abuse." In a California case known as In re Heather A., 60 Cal. Rptr. 2d 315, 322 (Ct. App. 1996) the court found that two children were exposed to domestic violence by virtue of being in the same home as their mother ho was physically abused by her boyfriend, even though the children were in another part of the house and did not actually witness the abuse. The two children were removed from the home and made dependents of the court upon a finding that the children were victims of secondary abuse.
Parents experiencing domestic violence within their family home are at risk of losing custody of their children. These children may be declared as dependants of the court, removed from the home, and taken into protective custody of Department of Social services. There are several means by which parents subjected to domestic violence can prevent losing custody of their children. The most important of these is to bring an end to such a violent relationship.
If you are involved in a relationship wherein domestic violence is present and children are involved, you would do well to consult an attorney in your jurisdiction to help you learn where you stand legally on the matter and what options are available to help protect you and your children.
© 2007 Child Custody Coach
Child Custody Coach supplies information, online materials, and coaching services to parents in the field of child custody, namely, divorce, child custody and visitation, child custody evaluations, 730 evaluations, parenting techniques, and all issues related to child custody and divorce. How to Win Child Custody - Proven Strategies that can Win You Custody and Save You Thousands in Attorney Costs! is a unique child custody strategy guide provided as an E-Book for immediate access written by Steven Carlson who is known nationally as The Custody Coach. Custody Match is an online consumer and family law attorney matching service find the right family law attorney, divorce, attorney, or child custody lawyer in your area.
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