Miller Scholars - Poverty and the Black Community - Tammy Holley

     The group, The Miller Scholars, presented a very interesting topic about how poverty affects the African-american community and what are the factors that have led a great number of blacks to be impoverished in America. The five factors they concluded to be the main reason why blacks live in poverty were: reproduction, substance abuse, unemployment, lack of education and lack of pride in our culture. At first I thought all of these factors are not just subject to the black community but all communities because these are widespread American problems. Coming from Baltimore City, I've seen the various ghettos in which, the respective races inhabit. The aforementioned five factors seem to be problem in all those ghettos so I was immediately interested in why this group decided that these problems were integral to why many blacks live in poverty. Immediately after I thought about this group's thesis statement, they told us that 20.7% of black families are in poverty in the United States while other races only have an average of 9.7%. I was shocked to see our statistics so high. In addition, the group said that the black unemployment rate was about 25% which is more than double that of other races. This statistics shocked me the most because I only a couple years ago I had done research on a similar topic and found that the black unemployment hovered around approximately 10%. When I heard that in 2010 the number is 25%, I almost couldn't believe it and I wondered from which source this group got their numbers. Then again, it might be possible that due to the recent recession and rise in unemployment that the black unemployment rate might have drastically increased. However, this group did offer a very viable solution to this problem. Instead of blacks spending a lot of their money into commercial, retail and chain stores, blacks should begin to put their paychecks into their own communities in order because clearly the government will put the necessary money into black communities. 
      The most importance factor that the group presented was a lack of pride in our own culture. This to me, is a core reason why black people today are facing so many issues because we no longer value our race like we used to. Black women are now referred to as bitches, black men are referred to as niggas and black children are feared as violent and uneducated. Our race is far from the prestige that we once were and we are slowly digressing into a race of self-hate. As one of the group's presenters pointed out, "when did black stop being beautiful?"One point that I thought might have needed some more work however was reproduction. The group said that blacks are the #1 reproducer in the U.S; however, it is a fact that Hispanic people are the #1 reproducing minority in the U.S as of the mid-2000s. I think a better point about reproduction to focus on should have been the fact that black women are getting pregnant too young or without any economic means to support a child and unfortunately aborting too many black children. I think as a community we should stress safe sex or abstinence so every child has a chance to survive and less black children have to be aborted by their mothers.