[Mb-civic] The Other America, 2005 - Editorial - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

The Other America, 2005

Monday, September 19, 2005; Page A16

"Unfortunately, many Americans live on the outskirts of hope -- some 
because of their poverty, and some because of their color, and all too 
many because of both. Our task is to help replace their despair with 
opportunity."

-- President Lyndon B. Johnson,
    State of the Union address, 1964

HURRICANE KATRINA, and the accompanying coverage of the overwhelmingly 
poor and black evacuees hit hardest by the storm, has rekindled the 
national debate about poverty and race, offering a sobering reminder, 
four decades later, that President Lyndon B. Johnson's "unconditional 
war on poverty in America" is far from over. That's valuable: Poverty 
has hardly been a front-burner issue for years, and for President Bush 
to speak, as he has in recent days, of the nation's "legacy of 
inequality" and its "duty to confront this poverty with bold action" is 
a welcome development. But a broad look at poverty in America presents a 
more complex picture than the bleak images of those most devastated by 
Katrina would suggest. It shows significant, and in some cases 
impressive, progress, blended with the disheartening persistence of 
poverty among certain populations.

Indeed, the image of hard-core inner-city poverty evoked by the Katrina 
victims may be misleading. The share of the poor living in neighborhoods 
with high concentrations of poverty (40 percent or more) fell 
dramatically during the 1990s. Though many Americans hover at the edges 
of poverty, the number who are permanently trapped is surprisingly low: 
In the four years between 1996 and 1999, one Census Bureau study found, 
only 2 percent of the population was poor every month for two years or 
more -- but 34 percent of the population experienced poverty for at 
least two months. The overall poverty rate fell from 19 percent in 1964 
to 12.7 percent last year, though most of that decline occurred during 
the first decade. Since 1999, the rate has been edging steadily, and 
disturbingly, upward.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/18/AR2005091800988.html
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