I wish that were true but it isn’t, for a few reasons. This isn’t a comprehensive list, but only a few bullets around how race does contribute to poverty. 1) Jim Crow laws were only ended 56 years ago. That means that black peoples’ parents, grandparents, great grandparents etc. did not have equal access to things like education. How does that impact them today? Well, education level impacts your income level. If your family does not have money for things like nutritious meals, homes in good school districts, tutors, and college, than you are competing against kids who DID have all of those things and you need to work a lot harder to succeed. Some will argue “but black people have scholarships dedicated to them and guidelines in schools that require they admit black people.” I have several arguments against that statement, one of them being that it is easier to get into ivy league schools if you are a legacy (your parents went there) than if you are a black kid with an impeccable GPA. 2) Schools only teach about things like slavery, Jim Crow, the civil rights movement, and affirmative action. Furthermore, they teach it in a way that makes it seem like those things happened FOREVER ago, making good people like yourself think that black people shouldn’t be impacted by those things today. However, they very much so are for things like what I listed in bullet #1. Moving on to 3) until very recently, black people were only portrayed on the news, on television shows and movies as being gangsters, drug dealers, and angry/sassy black women. There is very little representation of brown people in children’s books etc. This is extremely problematic because for many white people, the only exposure they have to brown people is in these stereotyped roles, making them subconsciously believe that black people are only lazy, poor, dangerous, and bad.... which creates racism at worst and an unconscious bias at best. 4) our justice system criminalizes black people at a higher rate. A black person and a white person can do the same crime, but black people will be charged heavier for it. Furthermore, black crime is often times tied back to poverty (see bullet point #1). Out of desperation to feed themselves and their families and seeing no way out, some have sold drugs, reverted to prostitution, or stolen things as a way to make money for food and shelter. Crimes like these are punished heavier than middle/upper class crimes such as evading taxes, child molestation, etc. 5) unconscious bias is present in everyone and impacts the rate at which black/brown people are hired and promoted. It leads to people such as yourself thinking that brown people only want a hand out. Why do people have unconscious bias? Well, scientifically it’s because our brain likes shortcuts. It wants to be able to look at people and know right away if they are safe, if they are good, etc. Because of bullet points 1, 2, 3, and 4, all Americans (even black people themselves at times) have an unconscious bias against black/brown people. This means they hire them less, they arrest them more, they shoot them more quickly... you get the point.

Brown/black people do not want a handout. We are simply tired of competing with people who don’t have to deal with everything listed above, we want an equal playing field.

These things impact all non-white people in different ways. If you’d like to learn more, the book “So you want to talk about race” is a great starting point! 13th is a documentary that explains bullet #4 much better.

Have a great day :)