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With the unthinking swiftness of a movement performed countless times before, she slashes a naked razor blade into a square-cut leaf to trim off the veins. She drops in flakes of tobacco, packs them with her thumbs, rolls the leaf tightly between her fingers and ties it off with two twists of a red thread.

For eight hours a day, Sagira makes bidis – thin brown cigarettes that are as central to Indian life as chai and flat bread.

She is 11 years old.

Sagira is among hundreds of thousands of children toiling in the hidden corners of rural India. Many work in hazardous industries crucial to the economy: the fiery brick kilns that underpin the building industry, the pesticide-laden fields that produce its food.

Most of the children in Sagira’s town of Dhuliyan in West Bengal state work in the tobacco dust to feed India’s near limitless demand for bidis.

Under Indian law, this is legal.

Sagira, who has deep brown eyes and a wide smile, joined her family’s bidi work when she was seven. At first she just rolled out thread for her older sisters and brother, then she helped finish off the cigarettes, pushing down the open ends. Last year, she graduated to full-scale rolling.

She is not alone. Her best friend, Amira, also rolls bidis. So do Wasima and Jaminoor and the rest of the girls in a neighborhood that is, at its heart, a giant, open-air bidi factory.

Parents and children roll cigarettes on rooftops, in the alleyways, by the roads. One woman draped in a red shawl in the yard behind Sagira’s house breast feeds her baby while rolling. Of the roughly 20,000 families in Dhuliyan, an estimated 95 percent roll bidis to survive.

Sagira is expert enough that even when distracted, her fingers continue to flit blindly through the tobacco shavings in front of her.

She says the work can make her ill, with a cold, a cough, a fever. Her head often aches. So do her fingers.

Sometimes, she takes her woven basket of tendu leaves and tobacco to the banks of the Ganges to roll in a circle with her friends. She stops every so often to splash in the river for a few moments. Then she gets back to work.

“I can’t play around,” she laments.

—

Manu Seikh, the bidi king of Sagira’s neighborhood, sits on a roadside bench. In front of him lie orderly stacks of rupee bills – tens, fifties, hundreds – large bags filled with one- and two-rupee coins and a small box holding his asthma inhaler.

He and thousands of middlemen like him are the linchpins that provide the veneer of legality to the bidi industry, insulating the powerful companies selling bidis from the families and children rolling them.

Seikh, 66, got his start in a bidi factory when he was 16, back when bidis were rolled on the factory floor.

A 1986 law barred children under 14 from working with bidis and other hazardous industries, but left a huge loophole that allowed children to assist their families with work performed at home.

So now, while the tobacco is threshed, cut and blended in factories, it is then given to Seikh and other middlemen to distribute to families for rolling. The bidis are then brought back to the factory for roasting, packaging and shipping. A pack of 10 to 12 will retail for 6 rupees, or 12 cents.

The informal nature of the work makes it nearly impossible to count how many of India’s 7 million bidi rollers are children, but estimates range from 250,000 to 1 million.

Every noon, adults and children carry baskets and tubs filled with bundles of bidis to Seikh’s corner stall, where his men scan them for quality, reject those deemed substandard and stack the others in shallow wooden boxes. A bookkeeper makes a note in a ledger and hands over a chit for payment.

Then the rollers receive more tobacco and tendu leaves for another day’s work.

Seikh blames poverty for forcing the children to work, and the government for failing to stop it.

“I am very concerned about children not going to school and losing their futures. But we are helpless,” Seikh says.

In his nearby factory, Ranjan Choudhary, 37, also distances himself from blame, even as boys aged about 7 or 8 slide bidis into plastic pouches and seal them on a small stove.

Whatever the child labor laws say, he sees the industry as “a lifeline” for the people.

“It affects children, but for them to survive, this is the only industry here. There is no other source of income,” he said.

The industry’s chief trade group also brushed off responsibility.

“The child has every right to help the mother. As long as we don’t recruit the children to roll bidis, I don’t think we violate any act,” said Umesh Parekh, chief executive of the All India Bidi Industry Federation.

Bidi rollers should “themselves exercise restraint” in using children, he said, adding that his trade group had no plans to fight against child labor.

“The industry is not doing anything for that. It is for the government to do,” he said.

The government is reevaluating its child labor policy, said Mrutyunjay Sarangi, India’s labor secretary, but had yet to decide on any concrete action.

“We are having discussions,” he said.

India has tacitly recognized this Dickensian nightmare with a recent law making education compulsory up to age 14, said Bhavna Mukhopadhya of the Voluntary Health Association of India, an aid group. “Everything has a time, and I think this is the right time to do it … you have to ban child labor across the board, strictly,” she said.

But efforts to change the labor laws are complicated by the bidi industry’s clout in government. One company owner even sits in the national Cabinet.

—

Sagira’s town was once a textile center where her family for generations wove scarves and sarongs on hand looms.

Mired in poverty, they lived in a mud and thatch hut and could afford only a single meal a day for their 12 children. “We were starving,” said Sagira’s father, Mahmood Ansari.

Then the Ganges caused flooding that destroyed the family’s house – and its loom.

Meanwhile, merchants from other states realized the cheap labor here would be ideal for bidi work.

Sagira’s grandfather turned to bidi rolling, then her father when he turned 12.

Now, every day at 8 a.m., Sagira, her 17-year-old brother and sisters aged 18 and 14 begin a four-hour rolling session. They stop to bathe and have lunch, spend a few hours cutting the tendu leaves into neat squares and then roll for a few more hours.

Because of bidis, his seven children are far better off than he was, Ansari said.

The family gets 75 rupees ($1.50) for every 1,000 bidis rolled, totaling about $150 a month. That’s enough for three meals a day, with a little fish or egg once a week. A few months ago, Ansari used loans to replace the home of tarps and sticks his family had lived in for two decades with an unfinished two-room house of brick and plaster with dirt floors.

But there is not much hope for Sagira’s future.

She’s only been to school twice in the past month; she’s too busy, her mother, Alea Bibi, said. She only goes when there’s a reason, when new books are being handed out or to register for the aid the government gives to bidi rollers as an incentive to educate their children.

When she does show up, she is humiliated for her absences, made to hold her ears with her elbows outstretched and repeatedly sit down and stand up. It doesn’t work, yet each year she graduates to the next grade, regardless of her attendance.

She barely knows math, but can at least count to 25, the number of bidis in a finished bundle.

But at night, after the work is done, her brother, who rarely attends school himself, uses her schoolbooks to teach her to read.

She dreams of being a schoolteacher.

Far more likely, she will get faster at rolling bidis, which will improve her marriage prospects. Then, as so often happens here, her husband might stop working, and she – and eventually her own children – will become the bidi-rolling breadwinners.

Her father sees no way to break the cycle.

“We are destined to roll bidis,” he said.

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Dr. Cornel West is sounding the alarm, and joined Roland Martin on Washington Watch to talk about it.

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As expected, Cornel West joined Tavis as one of the panelists for the event.  West is a long-time political partner in crime with Smiley, and in spite of any criticism they might have received for their challenges to the Obama Administration, you must give them both credit for being lone voices in the woods on the important issue of poverty.  With 40 percent of Black children living below the poverty line, African Americans cannot allow the political elite of Washington to fool us into forgetting about those who are suffering the most.

One thing that seems to keep Tavis in power is that even when Black people are tired of hearing from him, there’s always a group of powerful white folks who love him to death.  Joining Dr. West on the panel were financial guru Suze Orman and filmmaker Michael Moore, both of whom had something to say about the issue.

Orman is certainly a well-branded financial expert, but not an expert on poverty.  Ryan Mack’s objection to Orman’s seemingly exploitative debit card serves as additional evidence that Orman was only on the panel because she’s famous.  There’s not much in Suze’s track record to confirm, on any level, that she cares one bit about Black people or poverty. She should have been replaced by someone who has a history of actually giving a damn.

Tavis’ efforts on poverty are being applauded by some, including Dr. Julianne Malveaux, President of Bennett College for Women:

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. hated poverty. He described it as ‘an abomination greater than cannibalism.’ Tavis stands on the shoulders of Dr. King in his fight against poverty, and I commend him for his efforts.

Over the last two months, the Obama Administration has received credit for the fact that the unemployment data for the entire nation has improved.  During the same time period, Black unemployment has actually gotten worse.  This is the headline that the Obama Administration does not want you to see, but it’s the only headline that any of us need to see as it pertains to our people.

One of the challenges that Tavis and Cornel are set to face in their fight against poverty is that America is not a country that is wired to take care of the poor.  Capitalist societies are structured to focus almost exclusively on maximizing shareholder wealth, even if it is at the expense of workers, customers, and the environment.  Also, the distorted values of our society have led us to a place where we seem to believe that greed is good and that there’s no reason to care about our fellow man.

Washington has given up on its fight against poverty, and I’m not optimistic that they will ever escape the grasp of corporate greed.  Now that the Supreme Court has told political leaders that corporations can feed their coffers in excess, we’re going to see our society crippled by economic inequality unlike anything we’ve ever seen before.  Income inequality could ultimately come to destroy America as we know it, and no one in Washington seems to care.

Dr. Boyce Watkins is a Finance Professor at Syracuse University and founder of the Your Black World Coalition.  To have Dr. Boyce commentary delivered to your email, please click here.

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TheRoot published an article recently that says the national conversation around poverty has been discussed as if its just a black issue. White people have poverty issues, too.

If white America would come face-to-face with white poverty, it would realize that these anti-poverty programs are needed in their communities, too. And we would move beyond a view of poverty as the pathology of a specific racial or ethnic group. Would white people casually accept Newt Gingrich telling them that their children have no work ethic and need to start cleaning school bathrooms?

Most likely, no. Moreover, the piece highlights some unfortunate realities of what it takes for human beings to make responsible moral decisions.

For sure, poverty is not experienced equally across racial lines. With poverty rates in black and brown communities twice that of whites, we need to look at race-specific solutions that take into account how racially discriminatory practices have exacerbated poverty and its effects in black and brown communities. A rising tide may lift all boats, but not all boats are equal in their structural reinforcements to respond favorably to that tide.

Indeed, a poor white poster child is not going to solve all our problems. But for a nation that still thinks so tribally and racially, it opens the way for collective empathy. Ideally, the sight of any person in need should inspire our better selves; but conditioned as we are to think as racial families and ethnic blocs, seeing one of “our own” (however we define that) may be the little nudge we need.

Read the article in its entirety here and share your comments below.

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The latest census data depict a middle class that’s shrinking as unemployment stays high and the government’s safety net frays. The new numbers follow years of stagnating wages for the middle class that have hurt millions of workers and families.

“Safety net programs such as food stamps and tax credits kept poverty from rising even higher in 2010, but for many low-income families with work-related and medical expenses, they are considered too `rich’ to qualify,” said Sheldon Danziger, a University of Michigan public policy professor who specializes in poverty.

“The reality is that prospects for the poor and the near poor are dismal,” he said. “If Congress and the states make further cuts, we can expect the number of poor and low-income families to rise for the next several years.”

Congressional Republicans and Democrats are sparring over legislation that would renew a Social Security payroll tax cut, part of a year-end political showdown over economic priorities that could also trim unemployment benefits, freeze federal pay and reduce entitlement spending.

Robert Rector, a senior research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, questioned whether some people classified as poor or low-income actually suffer material hardship. He said that while safety-net programs have helped many Americans, they have gone too far, citing poor people who live in decent-size homes, drive cars and own wide-screen TVs.

“There’s no doubt the recession has thrown a lot of people out of work and incomes have fallen,” Rector said. “As we come out of recession, it will be important that these programs promote self-sufficiency rather than dependence and encourage people to look for work.”

Mayors in 29 cities say more than 1 in 4 people needing emergency food assistance did not receive it. Many middle-class Americans are dropping below the low-income threshold – roughly $45,000 for a family of four – because of pay cuts, a forced reduction of work hours or a spouse losing a job. Housing and child-care costs are consuming up to half of a family’s income.

States in the South and West had the highest shares of low-income families, including Arizona, New Mexico and South Carolina, which have scaled back or eliminated aid programs for the needy. By raw numbers, such families were most numerous in California and Texas, each with more than 1 million.

The struggling Americans include Zenobia Bechtol, 18, in Austin, Texas, who earns minimum wage as a part-time pizza delivery driver. Bechtol and her 7-month-old baby were recently evicted from their bedbug-infested apartment after her boyfriend, an electrician, lost his job in the sluggish economy.

After an 18-month job search, Bechtol’s boyfriend now works as a waiter and the family of three is temporarily living with her mother.

“We’re paying my mom $200 a month for rent, and after diapers and formula and gas for work, we barely have enough money to spend,” said Bechtol, a high school graduate who wants to go to college. “If it weren’t for food stamps and other government money for families who need help, we wouldn’t have been able to survive.”

About 97.3 million Americans fall into a low-income category, commonly defined as those earning between 100 and 199 percent of the poverty level, based on a new supplemental measure by the Census Bureau that is designed to provide a fuller picture of poverty. Together with the 49.1 million who fall below the poverty line and are counted as poor, they number 146.4 million, or 48 percent of the U.S. population. That’s up by 4 million from 2009, the earliest numbers for the newly developed poverty measure.

The new measure of poverty takes into account medical, commuting and other living costs. Doing that helped push the number of people below 200 percent of the poverty level up from 104 million, or 1 in 3 Americans, that was officially reported in September.

Broken down by age, children were most likely to be poor or low-income – about 57 percent – followed by seniors over 65. By race and ethnicity, Hispanics topped the list at 73 percent, followed by blacks, Asians and non-Hispanic whites.

Even by traditional measures, many working families are hurting.

Following the recession that began in late 2007, the share of working families who are low income has risen for three straight years to 31.2 percent, or 10.2 million. That proportion is the highest in at least a decade, up from 27 percent in 2002, according to a new analysis by the Working Poor Families Project and the Population Reference Bureau, a nonprofit research group based in Washington.

Among low-income families, about one-third were considered poor while the remainder – 6.9 million – earned income just above the poverty line. Many states phase out eligibility for food stamps, Medicaid, tax credit and other government aid programs for low-income Americans as they approach 200 percent of the poverty level.

The majority of low-income families – 62 percent – spent more than one-third of their earnings on housing, surpassing a common guideline for what is considered affordable. By some census surveys, child-care costs consume close to another one-fifth.

Paychecks for low-income families are shrinking. The inflation-adjusted average earnings for the bottom 20 percent of families have fallen from $16,788 in 1979 to just under $15,000, and earnings for the next 20 percent have remained flat at $37,000. In contrast, higher-income brackets had significant wage growth since 1979, with earnings for the top 5 percent of families climbing 64 percent to more than $313,000.

A survey of 29 cities conducted by the U.S. Conference of Mayors being released Thursday points to a gloomy outlook for those on the lower end of the income scale.

Many mayors cited the challenges of meeting increased demands for food assistance, expressing particular concern about possible cuts to federal programs such as food stamps and WIC, which assists low-income pregnant women and mothers. Unemployment led the list of causes of hunger in cities, followed by poverty, low wages and high housing costs.

Across the 29 cities, about 27 percent of people needing emergency food aid did not receive it. Kansas City, Mo., Nashville, Tenn., Sacramento, Calif., and Trenton, N.J., were among the cities that pointed to increases in the cost of food and declining food donations, while Mayor Michael McGinn in Seattle cited an unexpected spike in food requests from immigrants and refugees, particularly from Somalia, Burma and Bhutan.

Among those requesting emergency food assistance, 51 percent were in families, 26 percent were employed, 19 percent were elderly and 11 percent were homeless.

“People who never thought they would need food are in need of help,” said Mayor Sly James of Kansas City, Mo., who co-chairs a mayors’ task force on hunger and homelessness.

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The Census Bureau estimates that last year a record 46 million people lived below the poverty line, and revised figures released this week suggest that the number may in fact be more than that.

But without government programs aimed at helping citizens most in need, the poverty rate would be almost twice that, with more than a quarter of all Americans being classified as poor, according to a new study.

Read more at TheRoot.com

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New census data paint a stark portrait of the nation’s haves and have-nots at a time when unemployment remains persistently high. It comes a week before the government releases first-ever economic data that will show more Hispanics, elderly and working-age poor have fallen into poverty.

In all, the numbers underscore the breadth and scope by which the downturn has reached further into mainstream America.

“There now really is no unaffected group, except maybe the very top income earners,” said Robert Moffitt, a professor of economics at Johns Hopkins University. “Recessions are supposed to be temporary, and when it’s over, everything returns to where it was before. But the worry now is that the downturn – which will end eventually – will have long-lasting effects on families who lose jobs, become worse off and can’t recover.”

Traditional inner-city black ghettos are thinning out and changing, drawing in impoverished Hispanics who have low-wage jobs or are unemployed. Neighborhoods with poverty rates of at least 40 percent are stretching over broader areas, increasing in suburbs at twice the rate of cities.

Once-booming Sun Belt metro areas are now seeing some of the biggest jumps in concentrated poverty.

Signs of a growing divide between rich and poor can be seen in places such as the upscale Miami suburb of Miami Shores, where nannies gather with their charges at a playground nestled between the township’s sprawling golf course and soccer fields. The locale is a far cry from where many of them live.

One is Mariana Gripaldi, 36, an Argentinian who came to the U.S. about 10 years ago to escape her own country’s economic crisis. She and her husband rent a two-bedroom apartment near Biscayne Bay in a middle-class neighborhood at the north end of Miami Beach, far from the chic hotels and stores.

But Gripaldi said in the past two years, the neighborhood has seen an increase in crime.

“The police come sometimes once or twice a night,” she said in Spanish. “We are looking for a new place, but it’s so expensive. My husband went to look at a place, and it was $1,500 for a two-bedroom, one bath. I don’t like the changes, but I don’t know if we can move.”

About 20.5 million Americans, or 6.7 percent of the U.S. population, make up the poorest poor, defined as those at 50 percent or less of the official poverty level. Those living in deep poverty represent nearly half of the 46.2 million people scraping by below the poverty line. In 2010, the poorest poor meant an income of $5,570 or less for an individual and $11,157 for a family of four.

That 6.7 percent share is the highest in the 35 years that the Census Bureau has maintained such records, surpassing previous highs in 2009 and 1993 of just over 6 percent.

Broken down by states, 40 states and the District of Columbia had increases in the poorest poor since 2007, and none saw decreases. The District of Columbia ranked highest at 10.7 percent, followed by Mississippi and New Mexico. Nevada had the biggest jump, rising from 4.6 percent to 7 percent.

Concentrated poverty also spread wider.

After declining during the 1990s economic boom, the proportion of poor people in large metropolitan areas who lived in high-poverty neighborhoods jumped from 11.2 percent in 2000 to 15.1 percent last year, according to a Brookings Institution analysis released Thursday. Such geographically concentrated poverty in the U.S. is now at the highest since 1990, following a decade of high unemployment and rising energy costs.

Extreme poverty today continues to be prevalent in the industrial Midwest, including Detroit, Grand Rapids, Mich., and Akron, Ohio, due to a renewed decline in manufacturing. But the biggest growth in high-poverty areas is occurring in newer Sun Belt metro areas such as Las Vegas, Riverside, Calif., and Cape Coral, Fla., after the plummeting housing market wiped out home values and dried up construction jobs.

As a whole, the number of poor in the suburbs who lived in high-poverty neighborhoods rose by 41 percent since 2000, more than double the growth of such city neighborhoods.

Elizabeth Kneebone, a senior research associate at Brookings, described a demographic shift in people living in high-poverty neighborhoods, which have less access to good schools, hospitals and government services. As concentrated poverty spreads to new areas, including suburbs, the residents are now more likely to be white, native-born and high school or college graduates – not the conventional image of high-school dropouts or single mothers in inner-city ghettos.

The more recent broader migration of the U.S. population, including working- and middle-class blacks, to the South and to suburbs helps explain some of the shifts in poverty.

A study by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies found that the population of 133 historically black ghettos had dropped 36 percent since 1970, as the U.S. black population growth slowed and many blacks moved to new areas. The newest residents in these ghettos are now more likely to be Hispanic, who have more than tripled their share in the neighborhoods, to 21 percent.

Just over 7 percent of all African-Americans nationwide now live in traditional ghettos, down from 33 percent in 1970.

“As extreme-poverty neighborhoods emerge in more places, that is shifting the general makeup of those populations,” said Kneebone, the lead author of the Brookings analysis.

New 2010 poverty data to be released next week by the Census Bureau will show additional demographic changes.

The new supplemental poverty measure for the first time will take into account non-cash aid such as tax credits and food stamps, but also additional everyday costs such as commuting and medical care. Official poverty figures released in September only take into account income before tax deductions.

Based on newly released estimates for 2009, the new measure will show a significant jump in overall poverty. Poverty for Americans 65 and older is on track to nearly double after factoring in rising out-of-pocket medical expenses, from 9 percent to over 15 percent. Poverty increases are also anticipated for the working-age population because of commuting and child-care costs, while child poverty will dip partly due to the positive effect of food stamps.

For the first time, the share of Hispanics living in poverty is expected to surpass that of African-Americans based on the new measure, reflecting in part the lower participation of immigrants and non-English speakers in government aid programs such as housing and food stamps. The 2009 census estimates show 27.6 percent of all Hispanics living in poverty, compared with 23.4 percent for blacks.

Alba Alvarez, 52, a nanny who chatted recently in Miami, said she is lucky because her employer rents an apartment to her and her husband at a low rate in a comfortable neighborhood on the bay. But her adult children, who followed her to the U.S. from Honduras, are having a tougher time.

They initially found work in a regional wholesale fruit and vegetable market that supplies many local supermarkets. But her youngest son recently lost his job, and since he has no legal status, he cannot get any help from the government.

“As a mother, I feel so horrible. There’s this sense of powerlessness. I wanted things to be better for them in this country,” Alvarez said. “I (recently) suggested my youngest go back to Honduras. It’s easier for me to help him there than here, where rent and everything is so expensive.”

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Going To College

While it may be true that a college degree is the best predictor of wealth in America, college as an economic investment and a way out is becoming increasingly overrated. A combination of tuition hikes and cuts to federal grants are making college more expensive and leaving students with few options other than loans to pay for their educations. As a result, Americans owe a record $833 billion in student loan debt, a number that trumps America’s credit card debt ($826 billion). So while large numbers of poor and working class students are receiving their degrees, they’re leaving with a mountain of debt and essentially more poor than when they started college. Not to mention, in these tough economic times, finding a job is a monumental task, especially for many poor and working class students who go through college never being taught the value of building a network. Consequently, a majority of poor and working class students graduate never having forged the relationships that will help them land a job, while their more well-to-do classmates graduate with a Rolodex of wealthy friends, family and colleagues ready to slot them in well paying positions.

Making It In Professional Sports

Of course some will argue that sports are not a misguided way out, as they provide opportunities for many young, poor, and working class kids to travel, see new things, and in a host of cases even get their college tuition paid for. Still, sports rank among the top misguided ways out because way too many young people, disillusioned by the prospects of making it pro, spend more time perfecting their killer crossover than perfecting the skills they’ll need to land a well paying job. And yet the statistics speak for themselves with less than 1% of high school athletes ever making it into professional sports.

Joining The Military

For previous generations joining the military was a good way for young men who for whatever reason did not go to college to start a career. Sold to these mostly poor and working class youth was the chance to travel the world, acquire new skills and eventually get a college education. Fast forward to today, when taking care of our veterans — with high incidents of PTSD and other mental illness— seems like a chore everyone wants to forget. Sadly, we find way too many of our veterans on the streets drug addicted and mentally incapable of holding down a steady job.

Having A Lot Of Children

In the past, having a lot of children was a logical economic decision in that more kids amounted to more people that could work and contribute to the family’s earnings. Having a lot children was also thought to increase a families chances in the genetics lottery, where a poor family might strike gold if one or more of their children just so happened to luck up on some lucrative talent or by sheer hard work might overcome their poverty to become rich. But according to modern economics the benefits of having a lot of kids seems to have faded away. In a paper titled “An Economic History of Fertility in the U.S.: 1826-1960,” economists Larry Jones and Michele Tertilt illustrate that as the U.S. got richer over time, fertility fell.

Winning The Lottery

The lottery plays heavily on the get rich quick dreams that so many Americans have, especially poor Americans, who, according to a study published in the Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, spend about 9% of all their income on lottery tickets. Despite stats that state lotteries, on average, return just 53 cents for every dollar spent on a ticket, poor Americans, with their dollar and a dream mantra, continue to pour money into them. A Carnegie Mellon study even found that participants made to feel subjectively poor bought nearly twice as many lottery tickets that a comparison group made to feel subjectively more affluent. And yet, the probabilities are so skewed that most will play for their whole lives and never win.

Receiving Welfare

Many have placed their faith in the belief that social welfare programs are a viable means of delivering poor families from poverty. A noble idea of modern liberalism, the belief that a poor family can use government assistance to support itself while working to obtain more stable means has fallen short for many seeking a way out. Way too often we’ve witnessed families use social welfare only to perpetuate poverty over generations. And while certain forms of government assistance have certainly helped to subsidize achievements of certain individuals, for others it has created a culture of dependency and non-employment that has exacerbated conditions of poverty.

Marrying Rich

Marrying rich is one of the oldest ideas of social mobility with origins that go back to the beginning of civil society when marriage functioned as a way to handle the granting of property rights and the protection of bloodlines. Passed down through generations, it’s an idea many poor people looking for a way out still subscribe to. In its modern form, young women looking for a way out work to court the attention of high paid professional athletes and entertainers, as well as doctors and lawyers. Still, few realize the misguided perception in marrying rich, one being that there are simply not enough rich people to marry, not to mention rich people, like poor people normally congregate among others in their socio-economic group and therefore usually marry rich themselves.

Sign A Record Deal

Entertainment, especially music, has been a source of work for generations of poor Americans. In fact, most American music has come from its poorest communities. And as a result, the sing and dance exploits of America’s poorest communities has transformed into a lucrative music economy, which, for some individuals, has amounted to fame and riches. Still, exploitation and a lack of access to distribution channels and venues have kept many artists in the pockets of large corporate conglomerates. Over time, technology has lowered the barriers of entry and placed some of the control back into the hands of artists. At the same time, it has decreased profits and therefore the chances of striking gold with a record deal.

Selling Drugs

Investing in the drug game as a means of making it out is an idea that is rather pervasive among many poor people. Sadly, the result is one that more often leaves individuals and communities further in poverty. For one, selling drugs ravages a community’s well-being, stripping it of the human capital that it takes for individuals in said community to become financially stout. In addition, serving the drug economy very frequently leads to serving time in prison, which for a poor person, exacerbates his or her own poverty, making it harder to secure employment for being a convicted felon. So rather than lifting an individual out of poverty, working the drug trade more often leads to a person getting stuck in this high-stakes way of life.

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Lily, the newest muppet on Sesame Street, comes from an impoverished family and will make her debut in a primetime special on Oct. 9.

“We are honored that Sesame Street, with its long history of tackling difficult issues with sensitivity, caring and warmth, asked us to be a part of this important project,” the couple said in a statement.

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Reflecting on former President Lyndon B. Johnson’s efforts, Jackon commended the nations’ introduction of Medicare, Medicaid, and the Trial Nutrition Act.

“If we can bailout banks if we can reconstruct Iran and Afghanistan then we can do a war on poverty that works,” Jackson told MSNBC.

He talks about de-racializing poverty, to not focus on certain races or nationalities but poverty as a whole.

Read more at the Grio.

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The report, “Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2010,” showed that close to 15.1 percent of all Americans now live below the poverty line. Though the most shocking statistic of the study  is the percentage of African Americans living below the poverty line, which currently sits at a whopping 27.4 percent.

The Huffington Post reports:

The number of blacks living under the poverty line — which is $11,139 for an individual in 2010 — rose to 10.7 million, up 1.6 percent. In all, 27.4 percent of blacks were living in poverty.

Median household income in 2010 was $49,445, a dip of 2.3 percent from the previous year. The median income for black households in 2010 was $32,068, down 3.2 percent from $33,122. The median income for white households also dropped, to a lesser degree, from $52,717 to $51,846, a decline of 1.7 percent. (Median income for Asian and Hispanic households was not statistically different.)

Read More At The Huffington Post

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Washington, an undergraduate student, earns less than $11,000 a year from a part-time university job. The salary must cover food, rent, health care, child care and the occasional splurge on a Blue’s Clues item for her only child.

“My biggest fear is not providing my daughter with everything that she needs to be a balanced child, to be independent, to be safe, to feel like she is of value,” said Washington, 41.

Washington’s economic woes are seen throughout Nevada, where the nation’s highest unemployment and foreclosure rates have combined to devastate families and empty neighborhoods and construction yards.

A national study on child well-being to be published Wednesday found that child poverty increased in 38 states from 2000 to 2009. As a result, 14.7 million children, 20 percent, were poor in 2009. That represents a 2.5 million increase from 2000, when 17 percent of the nation’s youth lived in low-income homes.

In the foundation’s first examination of the impact of the recession on the nation’s children, the researchers concluded that low-income children will likely suffer academically, economically and socially long after their parents have recovered.

The research by the Annie E. Casey Foundation found that Nevada had the highest rate of children whose parents are unemployed and underemployed. The state is also home to the most children affected by foreclosures — 13 percent of all Silver State babies, toddlers and teenagers have been kicked out of their homes because of an unpaid mortgage, the study found.

“People who grew up in a financially secure situation find it easier to succeed in life, they are more likely to graduate from high school, more likely to graduate from college and these are things that will lead to greater success in life,” said Stephen Brown, director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. “What we are looking at is a cohort of kids who as they become adults may be less able to contribute to the growth of the economy. It could go on for multiple generations.”

The annual survey monitored by policy makers across the nation concludes that children from low-income families are more likely to be raised in unstable environments and change schools than their wealthier peers. As a result, they are less likely to be gainfully employed as adults.

There are other social costs. Economically disadvantaged children can result in reduced economic output, higher health expenditures and increased criminal justice costs for society, the survey concludes. The research is based on data from many sources, including the Mortgage Bankers Association, National Delinquency Survey and U.S. Census Bureau.

“Even if you don’t care about kids and all you care about is your own well-being, then you ought to be concerned,” said Patrick McCarthy, president of the Baltimore, Md.-based charity. “… We’ve got to think about what kind of state, what kind of country we can expect to have if we are not investing in the success of our children.”

The report found some bright spots.

In the two decades since researchers began compiling the annual report, infant mortalities, child and teen deaths and high school dropout rates have declined. But the number of unhealthy babies have increased, and there were far more children living in low-income families.

Programs such as food stamps, unemployment insurance and foreclosure meditation have acted like a dam against the flood of poverty, McCarthy said, but that assistance has been threatened by federal and state government budget cuts.

Mississippi kept its overall last place ranking in child welfare for the 10th consecutive year, according to the survey. It was closely trailed by neighboring Louisiana and Alabama, a nod to the poverty that plagues southern states. Nevada ranked 40th overall, its worst ranking in 10 years, largely because of its economic decline.

The rankings are determined by a state’s achievement in 10 indicators that reflect child poverty, such as undernourished infants, infant mortalities, teen births and children in single-parent families. The top state for children was New Hampshire, ahead of Minnesota, Massachusetts and Vermont.

Mississippi had the most children living in poverty, with 31 percent of its youth getting by on meager family budgets. New Hampshire had the smallest population of low-income children at 11 percent. The federal poverty level this year is $22,350 a year for a family of four, but child advocates claim that figure should be higher.

Nevada, Florida, Arizona and California and other states grappling with high foreclosures rates also were home to the largest populations of children affected by the mortgage crisis. North Dakota had the fewest, followed by South Dakota, Vermont, Wyoming and Alaska. In all, more than 5.3 million children have been affected by foreclosure, the study found.

Mississippi’s rankings were least affected by the recession, only because it long ago secured its worst-case standing. Overall, Mississippi ranked last in seven of the survey’s child well-being indicators.

“We are really tired of being in 50th place,” said Linda Southward, a social science research professor at Mississippi State University. She said state policy makers have closely followed the rankings and have strived to promote early education as part of its strategy to reduce overall poverty.

“We are just extremely challenged given the economic hardships that we have,” she said.

Nevada, meanwhile, has long had a challenging record on child issues because of its historically low-performing schools. The Kids Count survey found 11 percent of Nevada teens were not in school and had not graduated from high school in 2009, the worst rate in the nation. New Hampshire was best at 3 percent.

At least 34 percent of Nevada’s children were living in families with both parents not working full-time in 2009, the largest increase in the nation, according to the survey. Nevada also saw the largest rates of children living with at least one unemployed parent, followed by Rhode Island, Oregon and Kentucky. North Dakota, Nebraska and South Dakota had the best rates.

Overall, the percent of children living in families in which no parent had full-time employment increased from 27 percent in 2008 to 31 percent in 2009. Black children were nearly twice as likely as white children to have an unemployed parent.

Washington, the Las Vegas mother, is poised to graduate from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas next year and hopes to pursue a career in human resources. She tries not to fret over the challenges of securing full-time employment in this job market.

She dreams of stashing away a small savings nest for her daughter, in case of an emergency.

“I want to be able to say that she is OK, because right now I can’t say that,” Washington said.

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House Republicans zeroed out all three parts of the president’s Neighborhood Revitalization Initiatives: the school-centered Promise Neighborhoods, the housing-focused Choice Neighborhoods and the law enforcement-oriented Byrne Criminal Justice Initiative.

City Limits Reports:

All three programs reflect the administration’s belief in place-based strategies that coordinate multiple agencies and programs to improve a particular neighborhood, city or region. This approach undergirds not only anti-poverty funding but also Obama’s urban-planning strategy, where the Partnership for Sustainable Communities is pooling funding from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Transportation to address interlinked housing, transit and environmental challenges that particular places face. In 2009, the White House ordered all federal agencies to conduct a place-based review of their policies to see where arbitrary borders between departments might be adjusted to make programs work better and cheaper.

Read More At CityLimits.org

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According to the National Women’s Law Center’s analysis of Current Population Survey data shows that if chained CPI, a Social Security COLA is cut, the median benefit for African-American single women seniors will dip below the poverty line.

Currently, the median Social Security benefit for a 65-year-old single Black woman is $10, 680, while the median for all single women is $13, 200.

The poverty line for individual seniors is $ 10, 458.

The Huffington Post Reports:

This in itself does not mean that the chained CPI would push many senior African American women into poverty. But according to SSA (Social Security Administration) data nearly half–45.6 percent–of non-married African Americans aged 65 older rely on Social Security for all of their income; 54.1 percent rely on it for 90 percent of their income or more.

Taken together, these two pieces of information–that the median benefit would go below the poverty level for non-married African American women, and that a near-majority of non-married elderly African Americans rely on Social Security for all of their income–lead to the conclusion that the chained CPI would lead to an increase in poverty among elderly African Americans.

Read More At HuffingtonPost.com

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Georgia — CNN is reporting on a recent trend of people who are considered “middle class” turning to food banks and other government agencies to feed their families.

It is perhaps around the holidays, a period of celebration often centered on food, when there is no clearer reminder for many once middle-class families of what life used to taste like. McCarty, who is college educated and served in the Air Force for four years, describes herself as “an independent person,” who earned $38,000 a year before the economy took a turn.

But McCarty, along with millions of others, represents a growing group of middle- and working-class individuals who are “food insecure,” which means they have difficulty feeding one or more of their household members at some point last year because of a lack of money.

Read The Whole Story

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Any time I see some white homeless person begging on a street corner, I’m tempted to beat him worse than Andre Johnson beat Cortland Finnegan on Sunday.

Little is as repulsive as a begging white American. And the only time and way that things can get worse is when they beg of Blacks.

I once kicked a white bum right in the chest. I was at an outdoor cash machine on 54th and 6th Avenue in Manhattan and he asked me for some loot. I told him I didn’t have any—which was true; for him, I didn’t—and he called me a “devil”.

Now, I’m not actually bragging about having kicked a man, in retrospect, I’m really quite ashamed, but you gotta understand what kind of head I was on at the time.

I had just finished reading Message to the Black Man in America and whether or not you choose to believe it, all intake has affect.

Just like your diet affects your internal organs, your reading affects your psyche.

So that white bum called me the one thing that was, at that time, exactly and specifically the wrong thing to call me and my reaction, though regrettable, was certainly not random.

Now, back to my point: a lot of work has gone in towards ensuring that Black people are and remain eternally America’s second-class citizens.

One of the tenets of this work makes it imperative that we remain poor.

The flip side, of course, is that white people should, at all times be, comparatively at least, rich.

So when I see a white bum, I see a fundamental breakdown in the American Way.

And that makes me sad.

Then, of course, I become outraged whenever one of these white bums upturns an outstretched begging hand toward me.

I wanna scream You got 400 years of free labor outta my ancestors now you wanna hit me up for my N-Word pennies? You’ve got some nerve!

But I don’t.

Sometimes, I even give them a dollar or two.

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If you were to liken Brazil, the country, to an individual, she would the bronzed body you saw leading a float at Rio Carnaval, flawless from afar, shaking her body with a rhythm akin to the feet of an international soccer star like Ronaldihno.

She would be the unquestionable soul of the party, and the ultimate representative of a country whose glamour, style and rigour is not that unlike the impressive image you just conjured up about a Samba Queen at Carnaval.

Indeed, since the end of the world financial crisis, Brazil’s economy has left foreign investors drooling at the mouth and Western governors scratching their bald patches in awe. The mammoth South American superpower has also begun preparations for the world’s two largest sporting events, the FIFA World Cup and the Olympic Games.

To add to its impressive list of recent achievements, the Brazilian people have decided for the first time in history, and at this time in history, that a woman should lead their country.

Dilma Rousseff, a former left wing guerrilla fighter and public official, will become President of Brazil on January 1, taking over from her colleague President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. She has indicated her intention to continue his socially inclusive policies in education, health and infrastructure, and as a woman is well positioned to present Brazil to the world as a land of opportunity, fairness and social progress.

However, while having taken giant moves to eliminate poverty in recent years, Brazil continues to be a land of contrasts. Around 30 percent of the country’s population lives in poverty, with the richest two per cent possessing 13 per cent of the Brazil’s household income.

Simple demographic data also reflect some unmistakeable racial contrasts. Two thirds of the 30 per cent of Brazilians living in poverty are black, and in regions with high concentrations of black voters, such as in the Northeast, political representation is strikingly disproportionate to the number of black voters.

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Rousseff’s symbolic rise to power and her message of equality in Brazil, enhanced by her being female, are not necessarily reflective of gender in Brazilian politics either. Women continue to be underrepresented in public office like black and other minority communities such as indigenous groups.

The president-elect has promised to continue most, if not all, of the socially inclusive policies of her internationally recognized predecessor, Lula da Silva. Lula, as he is known in the region, is enjoyed widespread international support for his model.

What he leaves Rousseff, however, is far from a Brazil whose domestic conditions reflect the country’s growing GDP, and thus a marked end to the Lula era is likely to provoke some harsh analysis about the depth of social policies and the distribution of Brazil’s prosperity through education, health and infrastructure.

Brazilian economist, Edma Bachar, once referred to Brazil as ‘Belindia’ – an enormous, impoverished India living alongside a small, prosperous Belgium.

With this in mind, and come the arrival of thousands of foreign tourists and media teams for the 2014 FIFA World Cup and the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games, the country’s Belgium is set to be on full display.

However, Brazil is also likely to find itself in the precarious situation of having to deal with its own domestic demons in front of a global audience – the 30 per cent of the population considered poor, in which half are unable to read and write and two thirds of whom are black. In other words, Brazil’s internal India.

What remains to be seen is, under the leadership of a beacon of equality such as Rousseff, whether Brazil’s extensive domestic problems will leave a mark on a country that has so successfully sold its lucrative, Queen of Samba image to the rest of the world and thus had the privacy to improve particular social issues from within.

Alas, only time will tell just how well Dilma Rousseff can move her feet and whether or not equality in Brazil is a dance move we’ll also be watching.

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So, let us pop open a bottle of champagne and celebrate.

I suppose that if you are one of those billion-dollar hedge fund managers, this piece of information could actually mean something to you. However, if you are one of those struggling souls in that Dickens novel known as twenty-first century America, it means little or nothing to you.

That anyone can actually utter the words “the recession is over” at a time of mass unemployment, foreclosures, homelessness and general despair tells you all you need to know about America. The nation actually exists as two nations: the few that have, and the many who don’t. The former group does not depend on the well-being of the latter in order to thrive, and arguably thrives on its misfortunes. Ultimately, the American dream is exactly that — a dream. And as millions of people are waking up to stark realities, they long to resume their slumber.

Currently, as the Census Bureau reported, 43.6 million people, or 14.3 percent of the U.S. population live in poverty. For people of color it is even worse. While 9.4 percent of whites are in poverty, 25.3 percent of Latinos and 25.8 percent of blacks are poor. And childhood poverty has risen to an alarming 20.7 percent. To be sure, it hasn’t been this bad since the 1960s. Some people say that all we need to do to alleviate poverty is to grow the economy. But what good will creating a larger pie do for us, with the top 1 percent still taking the lion’s share of the pie?

Establishment conservatives are so transparent in their greed that their only solution is to keep the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans making over $250,000. Meanwhile, the Tea Party gangsters are so heartless that their extremist solutions — to abolish unemployment insurance and reduce dependence on government — would amount to pouring salt in an open wound.

Amidst all of the suffering we’re witnessing during this recent crisis in the world’s largest economy, this awkwardly named land of opportunity, the number of billionaires has soared. The gap between the top 1 percent and everyone else hasn’t been this large since the 1920s. The top 1 percent claim 33.8 percent of the wealth, and the bottom half of Americans own a negligible 2.5 percent of the economic pie. Real average earnings have not increased in half a century, and the last two decades were great, if you were a CEO, that is.

The fact is that Republican tax policies have widened the gulf between rich and poor, with the rich paying less and less in taxes. Despite the longstanding, folkloric national rhetoric regarding opportunity — or perhaps even because of it — the fact is that it is harder to make it in America than anywhere else in the industrialized world. Upward economic mobility is far more elusive in the U.S. than in those so-called evil socialist nations of Scandinavia and the rest of Western Europe. If you are poor in the “land of the free,” chances are that you will stay that way. But unlike those Europeans, at least you’ll have your guns to protect you, right? Yeah, right.

The Obama administration is at a crossroads with the selection of Elizabeth Warren to get the consumer protection agency up and running. Even some of the most diehard fans of this president were losing faith, with the daily parade of white male Wall Street front men advising Obama into the abyss of one-term presidential status. They have served him poorly, and would do for the U.S. economy what they already have done for the U.S. economy, which is to wreck it further and collect their spoils.

But perhaps now, there is a chance that the people might win for a change. The middle class has been hollowed out and wiped out, while the poor is even more entrenched than ever. And yet one gets the sense that it cannot remain like this. Something’s gotta give, one way or another. The question is how we will let this all play out as a country — with widespread destitution, social unrest and uprisings, or with responsive government action that seeks to bring about equity and justice to the many. Call it a new New Deal, call it socialism, call it democracy, call it what you will. But one thing is clear: American-style capitalism is eating the people alive, and now is the time to put it in check.

BlackCommentator.com Executive Editor David A. Love, JD is a writer based in Philadelphia, and a contributor to the Huffington Post, theGrio, the Progressive Media Project and McClatchy-Tribune News Service, among others. He contributed to the book, States of Confinement: Policing, Detention, and Prisons (St. Martin’s Press, 2000). Love is a former Amnesty International UK spokesperson. His blog is davidalove.com.

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If we want to lower the black poverty rate we need (1) strong job creation like we had in the late 1990s, and (2) we need to make certain that blacks truly have equal employment opportunity. It is necessary to do more to ensure equal opportunity because researchers still find that employers show a strong preference in favor of white job applicants. When white and black “testers” apply to the same jobs presenting equivalent qualifications, the white testers receive more interviews and more job offers.

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When people think of hunger, they think of starving third world children and days of old. Still hunger is a major problem in the U.S. Despite the fact that America can invest hundreds of billions of dollars into wars overseas, we still can’t feed the people at home.

The USDA keeps statistics on hunger. They use a term called “very low food security”, which was formerly called “food insecure with hunger”. According to the USDA, 17 million people are living with low food security that is up 100% from 2000, when only 8.5 million people were living in food insecurity. Also according to the USDA, 25.7 percent of African Americans live in food insecurity, which we can say is code for
hunger.

Southern states such as Texas, Mississippi and Arkansas are hit worst by hunger. Many people do not think that hunger is a problem in the U.S.
because of the large amount of obese people and small amount of skinny ones you see in America. Still while cheap unhealthy food is available
to poor people, this food is not enough to sustain human beings. Malnutrition not only affects the health of children but also their
behavior, according to studies.

Food Stamps is also an indicator of how many people in this county struggle to keep their families fed. According to Cornell University, 4
out of 10 Americans will use Food Stamps in their lives including 85% of all African-Americans.

Hunger is not simply limited to the homeless and the unemployed. Millions of working families still struggle to keep food on the table.
Often time urban neighborhoods have no stores to buy healthy food, which leads to malnutrition and bad diets and bad diets.

Kraft has a new program called Kraft Huddle to Fight Hunger. During this football season they are offering a coupon program where customers will
not only save up to $5 on Kraft products, but they will also donate up to five meals to feed America. Check out their promotional video here.

If more food companies would take initiatives like this, we could fight hunger and malnutrition and help, the homeless, unemployed and working
poor to feed themselves and their family.

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“Why? Why?” shouted Nokuthula Masango, 25, after the authorities carted away bolts of gaily colored fabric.

She made just $36 a week, $21 less than the minimum wage, but needed the meager pay to help support a large extended family that includes her five unemployed siblings and their children.

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On Monday, socialite Paris Hilton pleaded guilty to two misdemeanors after being busted in Las Vegas with cocaine.

Ms. Hilton was put on probation and also got a suspended sentence on a one-year jail term.

In 2006, Ms. Hilton had a DUI and was arrested 3 times in the following months for driving with a suspended license. For this, she eventually served a total of 20 days in jail.

Ms. Hilton is also heir to the Hilton Hotels chain and worth, by some estimates, as much as 30 million dollars.

Dig this:

• The likelihood of a Black male going to jail for life is 16%, compared to 2% for white males and 9% for Hispanic males.
• Of the 682 inmates put on death row between 1995-2000, 48% were Black, 20% were white, and 29% were Hispanic.
• Blacks make up 12% of the U.S. population, yet we make up 44% of the prison population.
• A Black can expect to be imprisoned 41% longer than a white convicted for committing the same crime.

Also, as we’ve already covered in another post, Blacks families earn only 58% of what whites families earn and white families are $95,000 richer than Black families.

One of the things that amaze me are that the seemingly mutual arguments that Blacks are inherently criminal and that Blacks are poor are used to justify the great percentage of Blacks in prison.

One would think that if we were inherently criminal, we should be expected to commit crimes. And if we can be expected to commit crimes, then what we’re doing isn’t even criminal anymore. It becomes like an affliction or a condition; a disease almost but one that affects the sufferer from birth and which shouldn’t be penalized but treated; and treated with the same care and concern with which one treats cancer.

Also, one would rightly imagine that the poor would be more likely to commit crimes. And I’m not gonna suggest that every poor person is Hugo’s Jean Valjean—stealing a loaf of bread to prevent his nieces and nephews from dying from hunger—but sheer need would provide a greater logic for the crimes of the poor.

All this said, shouldn’t rich white people who are not inherently criminal nor have the requisite need that we’ve associated with the poor, receive even stiffer prison sentences for any crimes that they commit?

I mean, after all, being both white and rich, what excuse do they have for being criminal?

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The number of people living in poverty has climbed to 14.3 percent of Americans, the highest rate since 1994.

The Census Bureau said in a statement on its website that about 43.6 million people, or 1 in 7, were in poverty last year.

That’s up from 39.8 million, or 13.2 percent, in 2008, in the third consecutive annual increase.

The bureau added that there were 8.8 million families living in poverty in 2009.

• The poverty rate for African Americans, Asian Americans, and Hispanic Americans increased in 2009.
• One in four African Americans and one in four Hispanic Americans are now living below the federal poverty line.
• One in five children (20.7 percent) under the age of 18 are living below the federal poverty line.

Read more at MSNBC News

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A crowd of people hoping to get federal housing assistance became unruly Wednesday morning with reports of fights breaking out in the crowd.

Thousands of people were lined up at the Tri-Cities Plaza shopping center, hoping to apply for a voucher from the East Point Housing Authority that will give them a discount on their rent.

The Housing Choice Voucher Program, called Section 8, subsidized the rents of low-income families living in apartments and houses that are privately owned. The federal program makes up the difference in rent that the poor can afford and the fair market value for each area.

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In an interview with NPR, Cornel West criticized Barack Obama for his handling of the war in Afghanistan and treatment of poor people in comparison to Martin Luther King.

Well, I think in the past, we have. I mean, we look at the legacy of Frederick Douglass and Ida B. Wells and Ella Baker, Malcolm X and Martin King. We have, and part of the struggle now in the age of Obama is how do we keep alive the legacy of Martin King?

I know my dear brother, President Obama, has a bust of Martin King right there in the Oval Office, but the question is are is he going to be true to who that Martin Luther King, Jr., actually is? King was concerned about what? The poor. He was concerned about working people. He was concerned about quality jobs. He was concerned about quality housing. He was concerned about precious babies in Vietnam, the way we ought to be concerned about precious babies in Afghanistan and precious babies in Tel Aviv and precious babies in Gaza.

Martin King was fundamentally committed to the least of these. Of course, he was a Christian soldier for justice from the 25th chapter of Matthew.

And so more and more black folk tend to be well-adjusted to Obama’s presidency, but does that mean they’re well-adjusted to injustice? Because we don’t hear our president talking about the new Jim Crow, the prison-industrial complex.

West also accused Obama of treating him like a “cub scout.”

Well, I’ll tell you, I had not talked to my dear brother since the Martin Luther King gathering in South Carolina, and very briefly Super Tuesday. But he did come and make a beeline to me after his speech on I think it was Thursday morning in Washington, D.C. I hadn’t seen him for two and a half weeks, and he made a beeline to me, though, brother, and he was deeply upset. He talked to me like I was a Cub Scout, and he was a pack master, you know what I mean?

I said, well, my mother and father raised me right. I respect my dear brother, but I don’t like to be demeaned and humiliated in that way, and I didn’t get a chance to respond to him. And I hope maybe at some time we can. But it was very, it was a very ugly kind of moment, it seems to me, and that disturbs me because then it raises the question for me: Does he have a double standard for black critics as opposed to white critics?

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From BostonGlobe.com:

Every night at bedtime, former Celtic Ray Williams locks the doors of his home: a broken-down 1992 Buick, rusting on a back street where he ran out of everything.

The 10-year NBA veteran formerly known as “Sugar Ray’’ leans back in the driver’s seat, drapes his legs over the center console, and rests his head on a pillow of tattered towels. He tunes his boom box to gospel music, closes his eyes, and wonders.

Williams, a generation removed from staying in first-class hotels with Larry Bird and Co. in their drive to the 1985 NBA Finals, mostly wonders how much more he can bear. He is not new to poverty, illness, homelessness. Or quiet desperation.

In recent weeks, he has lived on bread and water.

“They say God won’t give you more than you can handle,’’ Williams said in his roadside sedan. “But this is wearing me out.’’

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From The Urban Institute

WASHINGTON, D.C., June 30, 2010 — Already off to a tough start in life, 49 percent of American babies born into poor families will be poor for at least half their childhoods, a new Urban Institute study finds. Among children who are not poor at birth, only 4 percent will be “persistently” poor as children.

Fallout from persistent childhood poverty is evident during young adulthood, say Caroline Ratcliffe and Signe-Mary McKernan, the authors of “Childhood Poverty Persistence: Facts and Consequences,” the first study connecting poverty status at birth, poverty persistence, and adult outcomes. Those poor at birth are more likely to be poor between ages 25 and 30, drop out of high school, have a teen nonmarital birth, and have patchy employment records than those not poor at birth.

For instance, while 4 percent of individuals in nonpoor families at birth go on to spend at least half their early adult years in poverty, the share jumps to 21 percent for individuals born poor. The difference for blacks is 24 percentage points; for whites, it is almost zero.

In general, the longer a child is poor, the worse his or her adult outcomes. Only 1 percent of never-poor children spend half their early adult years living in poverty, compared with 32 percent of persistently poor children. The likelihood that an individual drops out of high school, has a teen nonmarital birth, or has a spotty work record generally increases with the number of years poor as a child.

An estimated 14.1 million Americans under age 18 are poor. Approximately 4.2 million children are born annually.
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“Because poverty status at birth is linked to worse adult outcomes, targeting resources to children born into poverty and their families would help particularly vulnerable people,” Ratcliffe and McKernan observe. They say education, training, and work supports (such as child care subsidies) for parents could brighten children’s prospects by providing needy families with economic security and stability. Other supports for parents, such as home-visiting programs, could help children by improving family functioning and the home environment.

Other Findings
*13 percent of all children (40 percent of black children and 8 percent of white children) are born poor.
*37 percent of children live in poverty for at least a year before reaching age 18.
*10 percent of children spend at least half their childhood years (9 years or longer) in poverty.
*Black children are 9 times more likely than white children to be poor for at least three-quarters of their childhoods — 18 percent versus 2 percent.
*69 percent of black children and 31 percent of white children who are poor at birth stay poor for least half their childhoods.

Childhood poverty rates, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, have ranged between 15 and 23 percent over the past four decades. In 2009, a family with two adults and two children was considered poor if its income was below $21,756.

About the Study
Ratcliffe and McKernan’s research on the circumstances of children from birth through age 30 uses 1968-2005 data from the University of Michigan’s Panel Study of Income Dynamics. The PSID sample includes people born between 1967 and 1974.

“Childhood Poverty Persistence: Facts and Consequences” is the latest publication from the Urban Institute’s Low-Income Working Families project, which is supported by The Annie E. Casey Foundation and The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

The Urban Institute is a nonprofit, nonpartisan policy research and educational organization that examines the social, economic, and governance challenges facing the nation. It provides information, analyses, and perspectives to public and private decisionmakers to help them address these problems and strives to deepen citizens’ understanding of the issues and trade-offs that policymakers face.

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From CNN:

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia — The sight of a baby girl suckling on the breast of her dead mother changed the course of Abebech Gobena’s life forever.

The year was 1980 and Ethiopia lay in the grip of what would become one of the most devastating famines in its history.

Gobena, a devout Christian, was on a pilgrimage to a holy site in the north-east region of the country when she came across the dead mother and her baby, lying amid a sea of people who were starving to death.

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“When I was returning, there were so many of these hungry people sprawled all over, you could not even walk,” Gobena told CNN.

“I had some bread on me, so I tried to feed them. I fed two men. When I reached this woman, she was dead, but the child was still suckling at her breast,” she continued.

“One of the chauffeurs charged with picking up the corpses said to me, ‘I am waiting for the child to die so I can pick up both bodies. I just can’t bear to take the child as well while she is still alive,’” Gobena said.

Without a second thought, Gobena bundled the tiny girl into her arms and smuggled her to the country’s capital, Addis Ababa. In that instant, she transformed both the baby’s future and her own.

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When former Republican Presidential candidate Pat Buchanan said “America has been the best country on earth for black folks” and “no people anywhere have done more to lift up blacks than white Americans”, you can be sure that he believed every word.

As recently as 2004, the typical Black family earned only 58% of what the typical white family earned, a full 5% less than the percentage of white income that a Black family earned way back in 1974.

Even if the Blacks and whites are similarly educated, the white male still out earns the Black male by 30%.

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The Black poverty rate, though down considerably since the early 1990s, was at a still astonishing 24.7% in 2008.

Among the myth-based mindsets that even non-virulently racist whites can’t seem to shake is that welfare is a predominantly Black phenomenon.

Meanwhile, most Blacks know by now that purely from a gross numerical standpoint, way more whites are on welfare than Blacks.

Add to that the fact that white America’s awe for white wealth—regardless of its source—doesn’t extend to Black wealth.

Mafia members, bootleggers and stock market fixers are all respected for their ingenuity and only loathed when they get caught.

This is the reason that Bernie Madoff could run his fraudulently-gotten gains up to 65 billion but 5 grams of crack will get a Black kid 5 years mandatory the very first time he gets busted.

So why are so many Black people poor?

Well simply stated, the “Buchanan mentality” becomes a daft exercise in the worst kind of circular logic, allowing whites to feel guiltless  about not hiring even the most qualified Blacks because somewhere in their minds, they think that Blacks always have welfare to fall back on, meanwhile Buchanan “types” simultaneously work to reverse affirmative action and nearly exterminating welfare altogether seemingly, one might think, just because Blacks have been so ungrateful after all that white people have done to help.

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From NPR

Payday lending operations have grown rapidly in the United States since the early 1990s. At the industry’s peak a few years ago, there were more payday lenders in the United States than McDonald’s and Burger King stores — combined.

“The payday lender is kind of the emergency banker for the working poor,” explains journalist Gary Rivlin. “The idea is that you have some bills that you have to pay today — your check isn’t coming for a couple weeks, and you can take a loan out against that upcoming check.”

In return, a person agrees to pay interest on the loan — which can be up to “200 percent interest or more on their money,” Rivlin says. “It’s a bridge loan to cover a gap, but the problem is, the gap keeps getting wider and wider.”

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