"Poverty is no longer an issue of them, it's an issue of us." ~ Mark Rank, professor at Washington University
Jason Whitlock at the Huffington Post writes, "Hopelessness is at the root of the violence plaguing poor black neighborhoods. Poverty, family dysfunction and cultural decay contribute to the feeling of hopelessness pervasive throughout black inner-city communities."
And that hopelessness that Mister Whitock mentioned has been steadily creeping into the white suburbs as well.
I am a white man subsisting on food stamps in a primarily white middle-class suburban neighborhood. I'm 57 years old and have been unemployed for 5 years after being laid off in 2008. Employers thought I was too old to be hired and I was too young to retire. My unemployment benefits ended in mid-2010 and my life's savings were wiped out by the end of 2011 while I was desperately trying to find a job (and maintaining my status quo). That same year my car was eventually repossessed. I've had $0 for an income ever since then.
For the last two years I didn't have to file a federal tax return --- that was the first time that I didn't have to file a tax return since I was 18 years old, which was back in 1973.
When I'm not sleeping I spend 99.99% of my time in a small bedroom in a friend's house watching TV and browsing the internet. I haven't bought new socks for years. I use the food stamps I get to buy a lot of generic-brand junk food to fill my belly, because good healthy food costs too much, and it wouldn't last me until the end of the month.
Poverty is somewhat like being in jail (or under house arrest) because one has no financial freedom to engage in most "normal" activities...except for maybe a walk around the block (if one weren't disabled). Recently my TV died, so now I just have the internet to occupy all my idle time.
Because I no longer have a car anymore, I can't go anywhere...the nearest bus stop is too far away (my benefactor takes me to the doctor and food shopping when she's not cleaning other people's homes to pay her mortgage). But the good news is, I don't have to buy auto insurance or purchase gasoline anymore.
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I think Jason Whitlock should also consider my "whiteness" as pretty darn hopeless too. But I'm not alone. According to a recent survey/study, more whites are poorer than ever --- not since the days of the Dust Bowl and Great Depression.
A flurry of other studies have already previously confirmed what most of America already knows...the American middle class has been shuntered, destroyed, wiped out --- is no more. Over the past 40 years corruption, corporations and politicians on both sides of the aisle have murdered the American Dream and drove a huge pink slip through the heart of working-class America.
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The Associated Press sponsored a study which shows that 80% of Americans have experienced poverty in their lifetimes.
"Four out of 5 U.S. adults struggle with joblessness, near poverty or reliance on welfare for at least parts of their lives, a sign of deteriorating economic security and an elusive American dream. Survey data exclusive to The Associated Press points to an increasingly globalized U.S. economy, the widening gap between rich and poor and the loss of good-paying manufacturing jobs as reasons for the trend."
It seems the Associated Press gathered their statistics from a variety of sources*, some of which will be unpublished for a year. Other studies back up this shocking news...unless of course one is within the beltway. See the latest data: A 2011 Overview Census on Poverty.
* The numbers below come from Rank's analysis being published by the Oxford University Press. They are supplemented with interviews and figures provided to the AP by Tom Hirschl, a professor at Cornell University; John Iceland, a sociology professor at Penn State University; the University of New Hampshire's Carsey Institute; the Census Bureau; and the Population Reference Bureau. AP Director of Polling Jennifer Agiesta, News Survey Specialist Dennis Junius and AP writer Debra McCown in Buchanan County, Va., contributed to this report.
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In the most recent AP-GfK poll, 63 percent of whites called the economy "poor."
While racial and ethnic minorities are more likely to live in poverty, race disparities in the poverty rate have narrowed substantially since the 1970s, census data show.
Economic insecurity among whites also is more pervasive than is shown in the government's poverty data, engulfing more than 76 percent of white adults by the time they turn 60, according to a new economic gauge being published next year by the Oxford University Press.
Marriage rates are in decline across all races, and the number of white mother-headed households living in poverty has risen to the level of black ones.
Nationwide, the count of America's poor remains stuck at a record number: 46.2 million, or 15 percent of the population, due in part to lingering high unemployment following the recession. While poverty "rates" for blacks and Hispanics are nearly three times higher, by "absolute numbers" the predominant face of the poor is white.
More than 19 million whites fall below the poverty line of $23,021 for a family of four, accounting for more than 41 percent of the nation's destitute, nearly double the number of poor blacks.
Sometimes termed "the invisible poor" by demographers, lower-income whites generally are dispersed in suburbs as well as small rural towns, where more than 60 percent of the poor are white.
4 in 10 adults falls into poverty for at least a year of their lives.
The risks of poverty also have been increasing in recent decades, particularly among people ages 35-55, coinciding with widening income inequality.
Higher recent rates of unemployment mean the lifetime risk of experiencing economic insecurity now runs even higher: 79 percent, or 4 in 5 adults, by the time they turn 60.
Compared with the official poverty rate, some of the biggest jumps under the newer measure are among whites, with more than 76 percent enduring periods of joblessness, life on welfare or near-poverty.
For the first time since 1975, the number of white single-mother households living in poverty with children surpassed or equaled black ones in the past decade
Since 2000, the poverty rate among working-class whites has grown faster than among working-class nonwhites, rising 3 percentage points to 11 percent as the recession took a bigger toll among lower-wage workers.
Going back to the 1980s, never have whites been so pessimistic about their futures, according to the General Social Survey, a biannual survey conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago. Just 45 percent say their family will have a good chance of improving their economic position based on the way things are in America.
"Poverty is no longer an issue of `them', it's an issue of `us'," says Mark Rank, a professor at Washington University in St. Louis who calculated the numbers. "Only when poverty is thought of as a mainstream event, rather than a fringe experience that just affects blacks and Hispanics, can we really begin to build broader support for programs that lift people in need."
So take note Mister Whitock, it won't be race that divides us, but economic class. And most of us will all be in the same boat together.