Urban Injustice: How Ghettos Happen

Urban Injustice: How Ghettos Happen

It is author David Hilfiker's considered, well-researched and respected opinion that most Americans do not have a good understanding of the primary causes of poverty. The author / doctor suggests that the primary causes of poverty are not to be found within the behaviors of individuals necessarily, but within the "social and historical structures" that are beyond one's control. A few of those structures / barriers will be addressed in this paper along with specific reference to a few of the roadblocks and stumbling points that tend to keep poor people poor: zero tolerance and mandatory minimum sentencing; "deserving" vs. "undeserving" poor people; definitions of poverty; TANF; the war on poverty, the war on welfare; educational shortcomings and "ghetto prisons."

Thesis:

The mass media in America -- wittingly or not -- have created an unkind, unfair image of Blacks -- especially with respect to poverty and the African-American community. This paper points to the fact that Blacks -- and to some degree other low income citizens -- are locked into a system of institutional catch-22's that denies them a good education, jobs, healthcare and also denies them fairness vis-a-vis the system of justice. These barriers must be removed lest the cycle of poverty continues for a hundred years or more.

Review of Policies Affecting Blacks and Low Income Citizens

In his Introduction Hilfiker presents what he calls the "essential causes" of poverty in America. Those causes include: a) scarcity of jobs; b) inadequate access to healthcare; c) poor access to quality childcare; d) "meager educational resources"; e) lack of available vocational training; f) government policies that restrict opportunities; and g) a criminal justice system that seems stacked against the poor.

For African-Americans in the low-income strata of society, Hilfiker asserts that while the struggle with the issues mentioned above, they also face "a painful history of slavery, segregation and discrimination" (Hilfiker, 2002, p. XII). But prejudice is not always a valid excuse for what happens to Blacks. And speaking of excuses, those that fall back on the "race card" (justifying situations that don't go their way by saying it happened because "I'm Black") should know that there are nearly always solid reasons for the way things go and though they may happen to be influenced by race, the chances are they are not always based on race.

Jobs & Housing: Any personal war on poverty launched by an African-American starts with a quest for employment. Hilfiker asserts on page 18 that whether it is deliberate or not, employers "screen out black, inner-city applicants." ("Inner city" and "ghetto" are interchangeable in this paper.) He backs this assertion up by referencing William Julius Wilson's research on the attitudes of employers in Chicago. Wilson's study shows very clearly that employers in Chicago are reticent to hire young African-American males from the inner city, Hilfiker explains (p. 18). That said, it is not absolutely certain that the typical employer decision not to hire a Black man from the ghetto is based solely on racial prejudice, or on what Hilfiker calls "geographic profiling" (adhering to a biased policy of not hiring inner city applicants because the decaying inner city supposedly never produces quality employees).

Hilfiker explains that employers also tend to discriminate against a Black candidate when that candidate has been referred to the employer by a welfare or state employment service representative -- or when that candidate attended a notoriously gang-infested inner city high school (p. 18). Moreover, many employers seek recommendations from their current employees when seeking new workers; this is another barrier for a competent, honest, talented job seeker from the ghetto because so many of that job seeker's friends are unemployed, there is no one in a less-skilled position of employment to recommend that competent unemployed person.

Another problem that a Black candidate from the ghetto may struggle with when job-hunting is the dialect spoken in the Black ghetto -- the vernacular that a white employers "may interpret…as a reflection of lack of intelligence or ability" (p. 19). If the candidate happens to speak on the phone with the HR person or boss of a white company, the ghetto vernacular could cancel out any chances that he had, due to the employer's concern that he may not have the ability simply based on a biased response to a voice speaking English a bit differently.

In housing, many studies that Hilfiker reviewed show that "white couples" seeing to buy or rent will be shown houses that "black couples were told was unavailable" (p. 18). There are federal laws against discrimination in employment and in housing, but it is not possible for the government to police every subtle moment of discrimination. Many Black couples are steered to Black neighborhoods by realtors who don't want to rent to them.

Education: On page 26 Hilfiker puts the problem of funding for inner city schools in very simple terms. Because most secondary and elementary schools are financed through property taxes, and since cities that have substantial numbers of poor people that aren't paying property taxes, there are obviously fewer resources for ghetto schools in that regard. Secondly, Hilfiker points to the fact that ghettos are "politically marginalized even within the city" and hence locally elected politicians "can easily neglect education" in the ghetto (p. 26).

Delving deeper into the problem of poor schools in the inner city, Hilfiker adds that because there is more homelessness, gang violence, hunger and other social problems in the ghetto, kids bring these problems to school with them in greater abundance than students in white suburban areas. And because these "non-educational" issues children bring to the school from their homes and neighborhoods require extra resources (that cost money), badly needed funds that should be used for more teachers (to create smaller class sizes), equipment, textbooks and upkeep are necessarily spent on the "non-educational" problems (p. 27). On page 29 the author asserts that notwithstanding Brown v. Board of Education -- the supposed Court-ordered end of "separate but equal" in 1954 -- schools are still "largely separate and unequal."

Healthcare: The process of applying for Medicaid -- insurance coverage for low income citizens that can't afford high-priced commercial coverage -- subsequent to the "Welfare Reform" in 1996 can, "in some states, prove virtually impossible for a person who must go to work each day to complete" (Hilfiker, p. 30). After a poor person does get covered by Medicaid the task of finding a doctor that will accept Medicaid proves to a "sometimes-insurmountable hurdle," the author explains. Why the difficulty in finding a doctor? Because due to the low reimbursement rates from Medicaid doctors resist getting involved. This means African-Americans (and other poor citizens) have to go to hospital emergency rooms, not good venues for routine healthcare maintenance.

The upshot of these "social and economic structures" (Hilfiker's phrase from the Introduction) is that the health of the poor is worse, measurable so, than average white person in the United States (p. 31). Indeed, the infant mortality rate for poor people is "60% greater" for those families with incomes below the poverty level. (According to the HHS 2011 Poverty Guidelines, a family of 3 living in the 48 contiguous states that earns less than $18,530 annually is living in poverty.) Poverty leads directly to poor health, and in the case of poor American families, Hilfiker writes (p. 31), the U.S. ranks "thirty-second" among all nations when it comes to "equality of child survival."