Reviews for Poverty & Race in America: The Emerging Agendas

The average rating for Poverty & Race in America: The Emerging Agendas based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-05-23 00:00:00 Marcy Zerbini 5 stars for it's scholarly impact and importance--not quite a 5 star reading experience for someone like me, whose eyes start to glaze over when confronted with R^2s and tables of statistics. Either way, Black Wealth/White Wealth is an excellent place to start reading for those interested in institutional racism. This book shows that whites have better access to wealth and advantages in accumulating wealth that are the result of inheritance, government policy, and the policies of private banking institutions. Basically, the moral of the story is that whites are significantly advantaged while blacks are consistently and tragically disadvantaged. Although your average white person may think that he or she has "earned" what he or she has--this book shows that there's really more to what's going on with wealth distribution than simple meritocracy. Whites are more likely to be approved for mortgages, receive lower interest rates, and their houses appreciate at a higher rate than similarly incomed blacks. Whites profit from their whiteness, while the price of being black comes to about $43,000 in median net wealth. This book is a landmark publication and extremely important. But it was no real picnic for a theorist like myself to read.

Review # 2 was written on 2012-05-18 00:00:00 Steve Dougherty Amazing book that challenges the way we thinking about earnings and not about wealth. The mixture of interviews to see the role that money plays in people's lives with the quantitative analysis makes the book accessible to a wide audience. I have taught it with students many times. I read the first edition in 1995 and then the second edition.