Specific Causes

Causes of poverty are always multiple, interrelated, and mutually reinforcing. As we examine some of the other forces that have shaped the black, inner-city ghetto, it is important to remember that a written description cannot adequately convey the full impact of the multiple forces, for each affects the other, increases the complexity, multiplies the difficulty, pulls the web tighter, adds to the surround of force. It is the combined, intertwined effect of these various factors that is so intractable.

Racial Discrimination
Discrimination based on skin color is still widespread in the United States. While there has undoubtedly been progress in the last half century, discrimination against African Americans remains a persistent cause of inner-city poverty.

Until relatively recently in our history there has been little effort to treat African Americans equally. Well into the middle of this century, federal government policies made social security, FHA loans, and unemployment insurance virtually impossible for most blacks to obtain. Job and housing discrimination have been both legal and overt. Educational opportunities have been restricted. Some of these conditions have improved, but the history of discrimination helped to create the ghetto environment. Even past discrimination, therefore, remains a potent cause of contemporary inner-city poverty.

And discrimination itself persists, most notably in housing and employment. In study after study, when paired couples, similar to one another in every respect except color, are sent out to purchase homes or rent housing, white couples will be shown housing that black couples were told was unavailable, black couples will be steered to black neighborhoods. It is still more difficult for African Americans—especially those living in the city—to obtain mortgage loans.

William Julius Wilson has studied the attitudes of employers toward young, black men in the city of Chicago.8 It is quite clear that employers are more reluctant to hire young, black men9 from the inner city. It is hard to determine, however, whether this results from racial bias or an objective assessment of worker qualifications, a point underscored by the fact that black employers viewed young men from the ghetto just as harshly as white employers, tending to view them as uneducated, unstable, uncooperative, and dishonest.


Footnotes
⁸ Wilson, William Julius, When Work Disappears
⁹ Black women do not seem to be perceived so negatively.