-------------------------------------------------------------------------- | Add your name to the CLEAN GOA INITIATIVE | | | | by visiting this link and following the instructions therein | | | | http://shire.symonds.net/pipermail/goanet/2005-October/033926.html | -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Victor, If your frame of reference is East Harlem and Bed-Stuy 40 or 50 years ago then you may be right about your experience but also out of touch with what has happened since then. > I will start with the following information about poverty in America in general, which includes many blacks, and let you compare this with middle-income Europeans. If middle-income Europeans come out ahead, then so be it. Further information specifically about blacks will follow in due course. > Source: http://www.heritage.org/Research/Welfare/bg1713.cfm
The following are facts about persons defined as "poor" by the Census Bureau, taken from various government reports: 1. Forty-six percent of all poor households actually own their own homes 2. The average home owned by persons classified as poor by the Census Bureau is a three-bedroom house with one-and-a-half baths, a garage, and a porch or patio. 3. Seventy-six percent of poor households have air conditioning. By contrast, 30 years ago, only 36 percent of the entire U.S. population enjoyed air conditioning. 4. Only 6 percent of poor households are overcrowded. 5. More than two-thirds have more than two rooms per person. 6. The average poor American has more living space than the average individual living in Paris, London, Vienna, Athens, and other cities throughout Europe. (These comparisons are to the average citizens in foreign countries, not to those classified as poor.) 7. Nearly three-quarters of poor households own a car; 30 percent own two or more cars. 8. Ninety-seven percent of poor households have a color television; over half own two or more color televisions. 9. Seventy-eight percent have a VCR or DVD player; 62 percent have cable or satellite TV reception. 10. Seventy-three percent own microwave ovens, more than half have a stereo, and a third have an automatic dishwasher. 11. As a group, America's poor are far from being chronically undernourished. The average consumption of protein, vitamins, and minerals is virtually the same for poor and middle-class children and, in most cases, is well above recommended norms 12. Poor children actually consume more meat than do higher-income children and have average protein intakes 100 percent above recommended levels. 13. Most poor children today are, in fact, supernourished and grow up to be, on average, one inch taller and 10 pounds heavier that the GIs who stormed the beaches of Normandy in World War II. --- Victor Rangel-Ribeiro <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > The United States of America that Mario Goveia lives > in must be another > country, and not the United States of America that I > know from having lived > here since 1956. For one of those decades, I taught > in East Harlem and also in > the Bedford-Stuyvesant district of Brooklyn. My > students ranged from teenagers > to men and women in their fifties, and through their > families I came to know > black poverty and disillusionment at first hand. >
