Let’s imagine two young children born in the late 1960s in the United States, one black and one white. In 1974, the official poverty rate for all children under age 18 was 15.4 percent. Behind those numbers, we see that the black child was four times more likely to experience poverty than the white child.
Forty years later, the child poverty rate is higher than it was in 1974 (21.1 percent), and a black child in 2014 is still three times more likely to be in poverty than a white child. In most years over the last four decades, at least one-third of black children were living in poverty. Poverty is not an equal opportunity experience.
Two American experiences: The racial divide of poverty
facts are true regardless if you believe them