The Persistent Poverty of African Americans in the United States

Foreword; Introduction; 1. Poverty Means Different Things to Different People What Is Poverty?; 2. What Are the Scholars Saying About Poverty?; 3. History and Responses to the War on Poverty Anti-Poverty Policies; 4. Policy Analysis and Findings; 5. Conclusion; References; Index

“This book is a good example of a keen analysis of a concrete problem in a solid theoretical context. The authors study a very acute problem of poverty among African Americans from historical and sociopolitical perspectives and arrive at important reasoned conclusions. The most fundamental among these conclusions is that poverty among African Americans is a systemic problem of the American state and society at large rather than an outcome of any ‘specific features’ of Black Americans as personalities or a community. This makes the book an important addition to the growing set of academic literature on systemic racism as the ‘original sin’ of the United States of America.” —Dmitri M. Bondarenko, Russian Academy of Sciences, Russia