Precise connections between race, poverty, and the condition of America's cities are drawn in this collection of seventeen essays. Policymakers and scholars from a variety of disciplines analyze the plight of the urban poor since the riots of the 1960s and the resulting 1968 Kerner Commission Report on the status of African Americans. In essays addressing health care, education, welfare, and housing policies, the contributors reassess the findings of the report in light of developments over the last thirty years, including the Los Angeles riots of 1992. Some argue that the long-standing obstacles faced by the urban poor cannot be removed without revitalizing inner-city neighborhoods; others emphasize strategies to break down racial and economic isolation and promote residential desegregation throughout metropolitan areas. Guided by a historical perspective, the contributors propose a new combination of economic and social policies to transform cities while at the same time improving opportunities and outcomes for inner-city residents. This approach highlights the close links between progress for racial minorities and the overall health of cities and the nation as a whole. The volume, which began as a special issue of the North Carolina Law Review, has been significantly revised and expanded for publication as a book. The contributors are John Charles Boger, Alison Brett, John O. Calmore, Peter Dreier, Susan F. Fainstein, Walter C. Farrell Jr., Nancy Fishman, George C. Galster, Chester Hartman, James H. Johnson Jr., Ann Markusen, Patricia Meaden, James E. Rosenbaum, Peter W. Salsich Jr., Michael A. Stegman, David Stoesz, Charles Sumner Stone Jr., William L. Taylor, Sidney D. Watson, and Judith Welch Wegner.

In the United States, some populations suffer from far greater disparities in health than others. Those disparities are caused not only by fundamental differences in health status across segments of the population, but also because of inequities in factors that impact health status, so-called determinants of health. Only part of an individual's health status depends on his or her behavior and choice; community-wide problems like poverty, unemployment, poor education, inadequate housing, poor public transportation, interpersonal violence, and decaying neighborhoods also contribute to health inequities, as well as the historic and ongoing interplay of structures, policies, and norms that shape lives. When these factors are not optimal in a community, it does not mean they are intractable: such inequities can be mitigated by social policies that can shape health in powerful ways. Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity seeks to delineate the causes of and the solutions to health inequities in the United States. This report focuses on what communities can do to promote health equity, what actions are needed by the many and varied stakeholders that are part of communities or support them, as well as the root causes and structural barriers that need to be overcome.

Given the increasing diversity of the nation—particularly with respect to its growing Hispanic and Asian populations—why does racial and ethnic difference so often lead to disadvantage? In The Colors of Poverty, a multidisciplinary group of experts provides a breakthrough analysis of the complex mechanisms that connect poverty and race. The Colors of Poverty reframes the debate over the causes of minority poverty by emphasizing the cumulative effects of disadvantage in perpetuating poverty across generations. The contributors consider a kaleidoscope of factors that contribute to widening racial gaps, including education, racial discrimination, social capital, immigration, and incarceration. Michèle Lamont and Mario Small grapple with the theoretical ambiguities of existing cultural explanations for poverty disparities. They argue that culture and structure are not competing explanations for poverty, but rather collaborate to produce disparities. Looking at how attitudes and beliefs exacerbate racial stratification, social psychologist Heather Bullock links the rise of inequality in the United States to an increase in public tolerance for disparity. She suggests that the American ethos of rugged individualism and meritocracy erodes support for antipoverty programs and reinforces the belief that people are responsible for their own poverty. Sociologists Darren Wheelock and Christopher Uggen focus on the collateral consequences of incarceration in exacerbating racial disparities and are the first to propose a link between legislation that blocks former drug felons from obtaining federal aid for higher education and the black/white educational attainment gap. Joe Soss and Sanford Schram argue that the increasingly decentralized and discretionary nature of state welfare programs allows for different treatment of racial groups, even when such policies are touted as "race-neutral." They find that states with more blacks and Hispanics on welfare rolls are consistently more likely to impose lifetime limits, caps on benefits for mothers with children, and stricter sanctions. The Colors of Poverty is a comprehensive and evocative introduction to the dynamics of race and inequality. The research in this landmark volume moves scholarship on inequality beyond a simple black-white paradigm, beyond the search for a single cause of poverty, and beyond the promise of one "magic bullet" solution. A Volume in the National Poverty Center Series on Poverty and Public Policy

President Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty did more than offer aid to needy Americans; in some cities, it also sparked both racial conflict and cooperation. Race and the War on Poverty examines the African American and Mexican American community organizations in Los Angeles that emerged to implement War on Poverty programs. It explores how organizers applied democratic vision and political savvy to community action, and how the ongoing African American, Chicano, and feminist movements in turn shaped the contours of the War on Poverty’s goals, programs, and cultural identity. Robert Bauman describes how the Watts riots of 1965 accelerated the creation of a black community-controlled agency, the Watts Labor Community Action Committee. The example of the WLCAC, combined with a burgeoning Chicano movement, inspired Mexican Americans to create The East Los Angeles Community Union (TELACU) and the Chicana Service Action Center. Bauman explores the connections that wove together the War on Poverty, the Watts revolt, and local movements in ways that empowered the participants economically, culturally, and politically. Although heated battles over race and other cultural issues sometimes derailed the programs, these organizations produced lasting positive effects for the communities they touched. Despite Nixon-era budget cuts and the nation’s turn toward conservatism, the War on Poverty continues to be fought today as these agencies embrace the changing politics, economics, and demographics of Los Angeles. Race and the War on Poverty shows how the struggle to end poverty evolved in ways that would have surprised its planners, supporters, and detractors—and that what began as a grand vision at the national level continues to thrive on the streets of the community.

Leading thinkers and activists discuss the intersection of race and poverty. The essays are organized around seven key topics including: affirmative action; the permanence of racism thesis; the use and utility of racial and ethnic categories; multiculturalism; and the underclass debate.

Collected in this volume are the best articles and symposia from Poverty & Race, the bimonthly newsletter journal of The Poverty & Race Research Action Council (PRRAC), a Washington, DC-based national public interest organization founded in 1990. Poverty & Race in America includes over six-dozen works originally published between mid-2001 and 2005, many of which have been updated and revised. The contributors represent the best of progressive thought and activism on America's two most salient, and seemingly intractable, domestic problems-race and poverty. Divided into topical sections, this volume considers the issues of race, poverty, housing, education, health, and democracy. Poverty & Race in America is especially concerned with the links between and among these areas, both for purposes of analysis and policy prescriptions. Featuring a foreword by Congressman Jesse L. Jackson, Jr., this edited collection will be of great interest to policy makers and human rights activists and hopefully stimulate creative thought and action to bring an end to racism and poverty.

div What explains the continuing hardship of so many black Americans? A distinguished group of scholars analyzes the long, complex structural and environmental causes of discrimination and their effects on African-Americans. The authors examine the impact of poverty, poor health, poor schools, poor housing, poor neighborhoods, and few job opportunities—and demonstrate how multiple causes reinforce each other and condemn African-Americans to positions of inferiority and poverty. Some of the contributors examine policies designed to correct problems, while others look at the changing racial and ethnic composition in America and its implications for African-Americans, as other minorities surpass them in numbers and claim political, economic, and social attention. The late James Tobin has contributed a foreword to this important collection. /DIV

Artioles and symposia on major controversial social issues: integration and civil rights; President Clinton's recent race initiative; poverty; education; the environment; democratic participation; disability rights; corporate welfare; and others. The range of contributors is wide, and includes Julian Bond, Herbert Gans, James Loewen, Jonathan Kozol, Manning Marable, Howard Zinn, Benjamin DeMott, Frances Fox Piven, and Marian Wright Edelman.

This volume explores multiple examples of how to connect classrooms to communities through service learning and participatory research to teach issues of social justice. The various chapters provide examples of how collaborations between students, faculty, and community partners are creating models of democratic spaces (on campus and off campus) where the students are teachers and the teachers are students. The purpose of this volume is to provide examples of how service learning can be integrated into courses addressing social justice issues. At the same time, it is about demonstrating the power of service learning in advancing a course content that is community-based and socially engaged.To stimulate the adaptation of the approaches described in these books, each volume includes an Activity / Methodology table that summarizes key elements of each example, such as class size, pedagogy, and other disciplinary applications. Click here for the table to this title.

In the 1960s, policymakers and mental health experts joined forces to participate in President Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty. In her insightful interdisciplinary history, physician and historian Mical Raz examines the interplay between psychiatric theory and social policy throughout that decade, ending with President Richard Nixon's 1971 veto of a bill that would have provided universal day care. She shows that this cooperation between mental health professionals and policymakers was based on an understanding of what poor men, women, and children lacked. This perception was rooted in psychiatric theories of deprivation focused on two overlapping sections of American society: the poor had less, and African Americans, disproportionately represented among America's poor, were seen as having practically nothing. Raz analyzes the political and cultural context that led child mental health experts, educators, and policymakers to embrace this deprivation-based theory and its translation into liberal social policy. Deprivation theory, she shows, continues to haunt social policy today, profoundly shaping how both health professionals and educators view children from low-income and culturally and linguistically diverse homes.