trc@hou5a.UUCP (Tom Craver) (12/21/84)
>Stuart M. Glosser > > % of Families Below the Poverty Line > >Year Total Female White White F. Black Black F. > ..... >1982 12.2 36.3 9.6 27.9 33.0 56.2 > >From the above, issues such as what the poverty incidence >would be without food stamps, horror stories of people >spending all their entitlement money on soft drinks and hard >liquor, etc. detract from what I consider to be one of the main >issue associated with poverty in this country: The incidence >of poverty shows that RACISM and SEXISM is alive and well in >the United States! > >In other words, when: roughly one out of two black female >headed households are below the poverty line; three times >as many female headed households as compared to male headed >households are below the poverty line (this also means three >out of ten female headed households as well); as well as three >tenths of the black population living below the poverty level, >something is seriously wrong! First: Thanks for posting these statistics. Second: They dont prove rampant sexism. To provide evidence of that, you'd need to post the figures for single parent families headed by males. It is only to be expected that single parent families would be worse off than two parent families. In the former, the one must try to support the family plus take care of children. In the latter, one can dedicate full time efforts to supporting the family, plus the other may supplement their income with full or part time work, by sharing the other parental responsibilities. Third: Even if (as in the case of black vs white families) the statistics are comparable and show a great difference, that does not imply that racism or sexism is the determining factor. There are a lot of other factors that stem not from others oppressing blacks or females, but from problems that those that are doing poorly have. For example - women most often become single parents through unmarried pregnancy, while men would most often become single parents by death of the mother. This would mean that such women will typically start their families without a job, while such men would already have a career and assets when they become widowers. Racism and sexism are tough to separate out from other causes of poverty. We know they have *some* influence - the question is whether they are a dominant influence, or just a low hurdle in escaping poverty. Tom Craver