Mainstream Values, the Perpetuation of Poverty, and Poor and Blacks Women in the USA

• In Event: 125 - Regular Session. Poverty and the Modern American Welfare State

Abstract

Political and academic constituencies in the US have historically and contemporarily thought of poverty as resulting from the dysfunctional values of poor and black single mothers with children. On the contrary other historical and interview based studies have demonstrated that poor and single mothers with children share values that are more aligned with the mainstream middle class of the US than has been popularly believed. The following article uses historical and other secondary sources to demonstrate the relationships between the “values” of black women and the reproduction of poverty in the US from the early 20th to the 21st century. This article has found that the reproduction of poverty in the US has much less to do with the actual values of poor and black women than it does with the racialized and gendered discourses that influence state policies and practices in ways that reproduce and perpetuate poverty among blacks and women. The results of this study are pertinent for understanding how misconceptions about race and gender in politics, academia, and society obscure how public policy might address the actual structural causes of poverty in the US.

Author

• Patrick Aaron Levine, Florida Atlantic University