Race, Ethnicity, and Poverty

This article presents an overview of the relationship between race, ethnicity, and poverty. Although the number of white Americans living in poverty is twice as high as the number for either African Americans or Hispanics, the poverty rate (the proportion of an ethnic group living below the poverty line) is about three times as high among the latter two groups. Although the overall poverty rate fell from about 22 to 12 percent of the population in the 1960s and has remained relatively stable, some pockets of extreme poverty have actually expanded. Explanations of the issue of poverty tend to emphasize either cultural or structural factors. The more prominent trend among scholars over the past few decades, however, appears to have been to discount cultural factors — the social and psychological effects of poverty — and emphasize structural factors alone. Cultural arguments, however, have been given more scholarly treatment more recently. The central point of many of these studies, particularly those of prominent African American sociologist and public-policy advisor William Julius Wilson, is that the social, cultural, and structural effects of poverty generally result in continued poverty. In other words, both cultural and structural factors tend to render poverty a self-perpetuating condition.

Keywords Accumulation Model; Brown v. Board of Education; Concentration Effects; Consumption Model; Culture of Poverty; Extreme Poverty; Moynihan Report; Oppositional Culture; Poverty Line/Poverty Threshold; Social Isolation; Underclass; Wilson, William Julius

Stratification & Class in the US > Race, Ethnicity, & Poverty

Overview

Explanations of the issue of poverty tend to emphasize either cultural or structural factors. Cultural factors might include the low aspirations and the prominence of an oppositional culture among minority adolescents living below the poverty line, lack of access to positive role models, and the influence of peers who may discourage academic performance and encourage criminal conduct. Structural factors include income, the loss of relatively well-paying manufacturing jobs in inner-city neighborhoods, overt discrimination against minorities, and demographic changes. An extreme version of the "Culture of Poverty" hypothesis asserts that the behavioral patterns associated with poverty, particularly the inability to make long-term plans or sacrifices, will remain even if material poverty is alleviated.

The consumption model of family organization is characterized by more individualistic, autonomous, and income-dependent (or high-cost) behavior. This model is considered the cultural norm for American families. The accumulation model is characterized by delayed or permanently suspended gratification (or self-sacrifice), pooling resources, and the use of family residences as a means of promoting housing and employment efficiency. The consumption model is generally applied to naturalized immigrants or citizens with full social and legal rights, whereas the accumulation model tends to function in a way that compensates for those limitations and limited employment prospects. Both the beneficial and detrimental elements of the consumption model are evident among the US-born African American community, whereas black-skinned immigrants from West Africa and the Caribbean tend to fit into the accumulation model. In short, African American families appear to experience more social instability as the result of economic instability than other families, particularly immigrant families. Contrasting economic data about African Americans and Hispanics seems to reveal that Hispanics also exhibit advantages as measured by structural (or economic) factors (Marcus, 2005).

The Moynihan Report

The 1965 Moynihan Report, an internal federal government study titled, "The Negro Family: The Case for National Action," has often been interpreted as the government-endorsed equivalent of the culture of poverty hypothesis. Although the report places a heavy emphasis on cultural factors, particularly those related to the social instability of African American families, it also illustrates the self-perpetuating nature of poverty.

The Moynihan Report also contrasts the mutually detrimental cultural and structural effects of family instability within the African American community with the relative social and economic stability of immigrant households. This distinction is probably ill-conceived in cultural terms, but it also points to the ways in which cultural factors can be as relevant as structural factors in understanding poverty. This trend, however, is likely complicated by the statistical information that poverty levels are equally as high for Hispanics (at 26.3 percent of the population) as African Americans (at 25.8 percent) (US Census Bureau, 2013, p. 2); yet Hispanics appear to exhibit beneficial cultural traits, particularly the "mutual aid" or accumulation model of marriage and family organization.

The Moynihan Report was written by US senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan in support of the Lyndon Johnson administration's War on Poverty and largely summarized the existing research of African American social scientists (particularly E. Franklin Frazier), but it was also written for government administrators and, as such, used blunt language. It was leaked to the press at a time when the civil rights movement was devoted to concepts such as black pride and black power and when social workers tended to avoid discussions of the cultural elements of poverty or take a highly relativistic stance on the issue. Opponents of welfare entitlements and some conservatives, however, supported a culture of poverty-type argument and found confirmation of those cultural arguments in the Moynihan Report (Curran, 2003).

Martin Luther King Jr. and a few other prominent African American leaders endorsed the Moynihan report, but the controversy it initiated rendered culture-related discussions about poverty generally off-limits for at least a decade. Moynihan traced the contemporary crises in African American households back to the Great Migration when significant numbers of blacks living in the South moved north in pursuit of industrial jobs and to the lingering effects of slavery on domestic stability. He used the term pathology to describe the apparent inability of African American households to socialize children, but also — mildly, in this instance — ascribed the term disorganized to African American families (Gewertz, 2007). Unfortunately, Moynihan's warnings about family instability among African American households and the lack of employment prospects for young African American men are, in retrospect, understated (Marcus, 2005).

William Julius Wilson identified several cultural trends under the theory he termed the "Concentration Effects" of poverty. This theory tends to move away from the issue of race and toward class-related issues.

Concentration Effects & the Self-Perpetuating Effect of Poverty

Wilson's Concentration Effects Theory refers specifically to patterns of high-density poverty in metropolitan areas, particularly in public housing developments. In the 1950s, about 65 percent of the population in those neighborhoods was employed. In the 1990s, that figure fell to between 25 and 40 percent. Increased welfare rolls, out-of-wedlock births, and family dissolution tended to exacerbate dislocation from the labor force. Wilson (2003) argues that unemployment has worse effects than poverty in the sense that unemployment results in family dissolution and crime. Unemployment also appears to diminish other important practices, such the ability to organize time, goals, and planning abilities (Wilson, 2003).

Wilson's related idea of social isolation refers to the lack of access to jobs and "mainstream social networks" that would aid social and economic mobility. He also argued that the absence of strong role models results in both structural deprivations, such as access to the labor force, and "social-psychological" deprivations, which Wilson terms "limited aspirations" and "negative social dispositions" (Wilson, 2003). This trend is sometimes discussed in terms of an oppositional culture; another slight variation is termed an "atypical worldview."

The Moynihan Report predicted an increasing "discouragement" factor over poor employment prospects and that an oppositional culture would become more prominent. In other words, exposure to poor-quality schools and the perceived lack of legitimate opportunity would result in poverty-reinforcing effects in the form of self-defeating behavior. According to a gender-based cultural model used by economists, males of any ethnic background are likely to pursue illegal income when very low-paying jobs are the only option. By the 1960s, African American males had become accustomed to earning more than service-sector or agricultural-level income. In other words, their "reservation wage" (the minimum amount of pay an individual is willing to work for) had increased (Curley, 2005; Holzer, 2007).

Wilson (2003) claims that both white and African American employers view inner-city African Americans as undesirable employees. Overt discrimination, however, need not be evident in the sense that stereotypes might prove to be self-reinforcing: Employees who believe they are judged by unrealistically high standards of reliability or punctuality due to perceived racism might assume they cannot meet expectations and therefore cease attempting to do so (Bane, 2005). Another way to frame this issue is that young inner-city employees suffer both race and class subordination simultaneously (Greenstein, 1987).

All ethnic groups, however, withdrew from the labor market in the 1980s as manufacturing jobs disappeared at fairly high levels. The "double" social and economic effect is also evident in this issue in the sense that employers often use current employees to find new applicants. In other words, labor-force withdrawal results in losses of both social and economic resources (Holzer, 2007).

The "new urban poverty," sometimes referred to by the term "underclass," seems to reflect that the majority of youths in inner-city area have not attempted to enter the workforce or have attempted and failed to do so. Although Wilson is sometimes perceived as a critic of affirmative action, his real point is that the polarization of the labor market into higher and lower-paying jobs resulted in a more severe case of income stratification in the African American population than in the general population (Wilson, 2003).

Further Insights

Structural & Demographic Patterns of Poverty & Race

In 2012, African Americans comprised approximately 13 percent of the population, and Hispanics comprised about 17 percent, and yet the poverty rate among these two groups is almost three times as high as that of the white population: In 2012, approximately 9.7 percent of whites lived in poverty. The African American population living in poverty was 27.1 percent, and Hispanics living in poverty comprised 25.6 percent of the population US Census Bureau, 2012).

Statistics from a 2005 United Nations Economic and Social Council report on extreme poverty (those who earn half the amount designated as the poverty line at that time, or about $5,000 annually for an individual) indicate that the US national rate for individuals living in extreme poverty in 2005 was 5.4 percent. The rate among Hispanics was 7.9 percent, and for African Americans it was 11.4 percent. About 20 percent of both Hispanics and African Americans either lived in substandard housing or spend more than 50 percent of their income on housing(Sengupta, 2007). After the recession of 2000-2001, African Americans continued to experience hardship in relation to both housing and food, whereas Hispanics as a group only struggled to acquire food (Finegold & Wherry, 2004). The accumulation model of family organization among Hispanic households likely informed this circumstance, particularly in terms of economizing housing expenses.

According to 2004 US Census Bureau statistics, Hispanic households earned an average of 71 percent (or about $36,000) of the national median income (which was about $50,800); African American households earned 61 percent (about $30,500) of the median income; and Asian households earned over $61,000 on average. Households comprised of foreign-born families earned about $42,000, and naturalized households earned about $50,000, very close to the national median (Sengupta, 2007). The poverty disparity between whites and non-whites had declined by that year, and yet hardship disparity — regarding housing and food — appeared to have increased. This trend was likely the result of non-minorities falling from a higher standard of living rather than low-earning minorities earning substantially more (Pear, 2002; Finegold & Wherry, 2004).

The number of people living in extreme poverty in 2001 increased from 12.6 million to 13.4 million after the recession of the late 1990s (Pear, 2002). Another million-plus individuals fell into extreme poverty after 2003, bringing the overall total to over 15 million (Sengupta, 2007). More alarmingly, the number of African Americans living in extreme poverty increased by 164 percent in the 1970s. The corresponding figure for the white population was 24 percent (Curley, 2005).

In demographic terms, metropolitan areas in the Northeast have a lower poverty rate than metropolitan areas in the rest of the country, and this trend is not race-specific. The presence of older African Americans in a neighborhood is associated with a relatively low poverty rate and vice versa. Adelman and Jaret (1999) conclude that distance from manufacturing jobs is a more determinative factor in predicting poverty rates among African American communities than discrimination, and that poverty levels in metropolitan areas are usually similar for African Americans and whites; patterns of unemployment and educational achievement are usually similar for both groups; and the presence of a large number of low-paying retail jobs in a neighborhood is indicative of a high poverty rate among all ethnic groups (Adelman & Jaret, 1999).

Other demographic patterns suggest that cultural factors might be more significant than structural factors in terms of measuring and predicting poverty. Having children at a young age corresponds with low levels of educational achievement. Married couples of any ethnic background are, as a group, characterized by the lowest poverty rate among any comparable demographic group. Male parents experience a much lower rate of poverty than single mothers, but the poverty rate among this group is higher than that of married couples (Bane, 2005).

Horton and Allen (1998) find that race or ethnic background is more predictive of poverty than family structure. Although the number of female-headed households in rural areas doubled in the 1980s, racial patterns nevertheless are more pronounced than the urban-rural distinction in terms of identifying poverty. In the 1990s, furthermore, education, occupation, and region all declined significantly as factors that predict poverty (Horton & Allen, 1998).

Segregation & Stratification in the African American Population

The goal of desegregating African American schools provided the backbone of the Supreme Court's landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, and that decision was enforced through legislative (and even military) force. The policy initiatives that underlie that case have been substantial, but the geographic segregation of the African American community has only been partially realized. The Hispanic and Asian populations, by contrast, are not characterized by a high rate of geographical segregation. Less than 10 percent of African American households live in ethnically-integrated neighborhoods, and the average African American household lives in a neighborhood that is inhabited by more than 50 percent African Americans.

The welfare reforms of 1996 — in combination with a robust economy — resulted in an overall fall in the level of African American unemployment, but that level had been declining since the early 1990s. Before the 1950s, about half the male African American population worked in the agriculture industry in the South, and a large migration to the Northeast, in particular, followed the mechanization of that sector. African American men have routinely been hit the hardest during economic downturns since the 1970s. Overall African American unemployment doubled between the 1960s and the 1980s (Greenstein, 1987). The apparent success of the 1996 welfare reforms can be qualified somewhat with the fact most of those entering or re-entering the workforce had minimal education and increased competition for low-paying positions (Holzer, 2007). In August of 2011, unemployment rates for African Americans soared to 16.7 percent, the highest level since 1984 (Censky, 2011).

William Julius Wilson developed a "black marriageable male index" to explain the growing number of African American single mothers and higher African Americanunemployment rates among African American males after the 1960s. This "index" reveals that in the 1960s, there were 70 employed men to 100 women, whereas in the 1980s the numbers were 50 to 100, respectively. The federal government's economic policies exacerbated this problem: policies used to minimize interest rates and inflation also resulted in higher unemployment (Greenstein, 1987). Wilson (2003) also observed that the increasing stratification within the African American population resulted in the movement of racial debates from the realm of economics and employment to the sociopolitical realm, and this process resulted in the perception that the scholarly study of low-income African American communities was an unworthy topic. As such, Wilson appeared to be open to the charge of capitulating to the worst elements of culture of poverty-type arguments. Although overt discrimination against African Americans had decreased, the combination of other cultural and structural elements seemed to create a new "underclass" that lived in perpetual poverty or extreme poverty (Wilson, 2003).

Viewpoints

Cultural & Structural Aspects of Race & Poverty

Some African American scholars argue that Wilson placed too much emphasis on psychological and cultural factors and discounted the role of overt racism (Applebome, 1996). Those theories were an attempt to explain recent trends that he argued could not be accounted for merely through the effects of racism and the culture of poverty theory (Wilson, 2003). Massey and Denton (1993) take an especially strict tact on overt discrimination and other structural factors that are easier to study than cultural trends. They apply the term "apartheid" to the combined effects of discrimination and segregation, and they claim that the effects of the loss of manufacturing jobs in metropolitan areas would have been less severe if the African American community was less segregated (Curley, 2005). Legislated desegregation has been relatively successful in contexts in which policies are strictly enforceable, such as in the US Armed Forces and, probably to a lesser degree, workplaces and some universities (Bane, 2005).

Although the Moynihan Report emphasized that poverty tends to be self-reinforcing, it framed the issue in cultural terms that are now likely to sound racist or similar to the "blaming the victim" accusation it received in 1965. For example, Moynihan asserts that marriage is the "core of culture," that fatherless households both contributed to and caused more unemployment among African American men, and that structural factors (namely, slavery, urbanization, and employment patterns) had crippled the ability of the African American community to raise children. He also portrayed the cultural crisis as an escalating "pathology." However, he argued in favor of the implementation of public works-type programs such as the ones used in the late 1930s to increase employment levels, but the Johnson administration favored bolstering funding for social programs and greater tax credits (Holzer, 2007).

Holzer's (2007) study of the Moynihan Report observes that the social damage done to African American males has been severe. A third of young African American males are either on parole, on probation, or are incarcerated, and a criminal record limits legal employment prospects. They can face up to a 50 percent "tax" on income if child-support measures are enforced, and about half of African American men are estimated to be prone to those measures. These factors are likely to result the pursuit of illegitimate income (Holzer, 2007). Patterson (2006) is extremely critical of Holzer on this point, but he also points to a distinct cultural conundrum: African American adolescents apparently have the highest level of self-esteem of any ethnic group despite academic performance, and yet males are aware of the dire effects of not finishing high school and largely ignore the risks. He terms the male youth subculture — based on party-drugs, sexual conquests, and pride in the status of African American athletes and entertainers — a "Dionysian trap." Patterson calls for more intensive study of the relationship between self-respect, pride, and mainstream culture, and disputes Moynihan's claim that African Americans, as group, have not escaped the social effects of slavery. The one-fifth of the African American population that remain an "underclass" in ghettos have few prospects for upward mobility (Patterson, 2006).

Consumption & Accumulation Models

Marcus (2005) provides a more rigorous portrait of how cultural models are applied and argues that African Americans and Hispanics in poverty should indeed be viewed as very different. That study examines the effects of attempts to place homeless individuals with family members and affirms the consensual hypothesis that success rates are higher among Hispanics. The reason appears to be cultural rather than structural. African American participants in the study exhibit a strong sense of independence in their social views and expectations of themselves and others, and they criticized Hispanic males for using women and children as "workers" in the home and in small businesses. Hispanics frequently expressed less concern with autonomy, identity, and freedom. Hispanic participants with a high-school education, however, are more adapted to the autonomy ascribed to the consumption model of family organization, whereas black-skinned immigrants from West Africa and the Caribbean were more indicative of the accumulation model. African American participants expressed shame over being dependent on their extended families, but all participants tended to assert that using a public shelter is preferable to economic dependence on their families. Successful family placement often required frequent intervention and conflict resolution among all ethnic groups, but intervention is generally more successful among Hispanics.

Families that conformed to the behavior ascribed to the accumulation model could experience conflict through, for example, women altering their traditional social roles as a result of intensive workplace participation. Men who clearly belonged to the accumulation model can also generate conflict due to professional roles that remove them from their home community. Marcus (2005) concludes that it is unrealistic to expect one ethnic group to uphold cultural standards without the financial resources to do so, and that the Moynihan Report incorrectly treated African Americans as culturally different from other US-born ethnic groups. In short, cultural patterns that encourage independence and autonomy are expensive to fulfill, and yet the "mutual aid" model is not especially culturally applicable to African Americans.

Terms & Concepts

Accumulation Model: The accumulation model of family organization is characterized by self-sacrifice, social interdependence, cooperation, and the accumulation of wealth. A typical example would be a family-run small business in which the women and children work for minimal compensation. This model is often considered the basis of economic success among immigrant households and is also common in developing countries (Marcus, 2005). The contrasting model is known as the consumption model.

Brown v. Board of Education (1954): This 1954 decision by the Supreme Court upheld the position that separate schools for whites and African Americans are inherently unequal. This decision gave anti-discriminatory legislation the authority to mandate its provisions by, for example, withholding funding from non-segregated institutions. The 1964 Civil Rights Act expanded this authority.

Concentration Effects: The idea of the Concentration Effects of poverty in public housing was largely developed by William Julius Wilson. It refers to a variety of related economic and social factors that induce negative effects related to poor family, education, and employment outcomes in high-density poverty areas.

Consumption Model: The consumption model of family organization is associated with the mutual pursuit of self-fulfilling goals and is dependent on financial well-being; this model is characterized by independence, autonomy, and greater social distance that those adhering to the accumulation model.

Culture of Poverty: Anthropologist Oscar Lewis popularized the term "culture of poverty" in an intensive ethnographic investigation of the urban poor in Puerto Rico and Mexico. He emphasized a "design for living" that survived many generations and a fatalistic quality resulting from a sense of hopeless, which also informs the tendency to be unable to make sacrifices in the service of long-term goals. In this context, the term often refers to the effect of poverty on socializing children. Later sociologists applied this concept to developed nations and noted that African Americans often exhibited this sort of problem with socialization in combination with suffering from overt discrimination.

Extreme Poverty: In the United States, extreme poverty refers to individuals or households earning less than half the amount designated as the poverty line, which would render that amount roughly $5,000 for individuals and $10,000 for a family of four.

Moynihan Report: The Moynihan Report is the unofficial name given to Daniel Patrick Moynihan's "The Negro Family: The Case for National Action" (1965). Much of the content derived from African American sociologists Kenneth Clark and E. Franklin Frazier. Moynihan's urgent and bold language about the deterioration of family structure in African American communities resulted in ample controversy when the report was leaked to the public, but by the 1980s the Moynihan report had gained more approval and was established as a central historical document in the study of recent American poverty.

Oppositional Culture: Oppositional culture is associated with deliberate rejection of mainstream values. It is often applied to African American youths who reject the importance of academic performance.

Poverty Line: According to Health and Human Services, the poverty line was $10,210 for an individual and $20,650 for a family of four in 2007. The formula for calculating the poverty line was developed by administrators at the US Department of Agriculture in 1961 and, later, Social Security; the formula triples the cost of a nutritious diet to calculate housing costs.

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Suggested Reading

Deparle, J. (1992, July 19). Conversations: William Julius Wilson; Responding to urban alarm bells at scholarship's glacial pace. New York Times.

Fram, M.S., Miller-Cribbs, J.E., & Van Horn, L. (October 2007). Poverty, race, and the contexts of achievement: Examining educational experiences of children in the U.S. South. Social Work, 52, 309-319. Retrieved September 5, 2008 from EBSCO Online Database SocINDEX. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=29339674&site=ehost-live

Gans, H. (1967). The negro family: reflections on the Moynihan report. In L. Rainwater and W. Yancey (eds.), The Moynihan Report and the Politics of Controvert; a Trans-action Social Science and Public Policy Report, pp. 445–456. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Gaskin, D. J., Thorpe Jr., R. J., McGinty, E. E., Bower, K., Rohde, C., Young, J. H., . . . Dubay, L. (2014). Disparities in diabetes: The nexus of race, poverty, and place. American Journal of Public Health, 104, 2147–2155. Retrieved January 8, 2015, from EBSCO Online Database SocINDEX with Full Text.

Heimer, K., Johnson, K., Lang, J., Rengifo, A., & Stemen, D. (2012). Race and women's imprisonment: Poverty, African American presence, and social welfare. Journal of Quantitative Criminology, 28, 219-244. Retrieved November 11, 2013, from EBSCO Online Database SocIndex with Full Text. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=74639006

Luther, C.A., Kennedy, D.A., & Combs-Orme, T. (2005). Intertwining of poverty, gender, and race: A critical analysis of welfare news coverage from 1993–2000. Race, Gender & Class, 12, 10-33. Retrieved September 5, 2008 from EBSCO Online Database SocINDEX. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=21746089&site=ehost-live

Massey, D.S, Gross, A.B., Eggers, M.L. (1991). Segregation, the concentration of poverty, and the life chances of individuals. Social Science Research, 20, 397–420.

Noon, J.M. (2006). Race, class, gender, and the experience of material hardship in the United States in 2004. Conference Papers — American Sociological Association, 2006 Annual Meeting, Montreal. 1-21. Retrieved September 5, 2008 from EBSCO Online Database SocINDEX. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=26643113&site=ehost-live

Penner, A. M., & Saperstein, A. (2013). Engendering racial perceptions: An Intersectional analysis of how social status shapes race. Gender & Society, 27, 319–344. Retrieved November 11, 2013, from EBSCO Online Database SocIndex with Full Text. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=87617687

Schuck, A.M. (2005). Explaining black-white disparity in maltreatment: Poverty, female-headed families, and urbanization. Journal of Marriage & Family, 67, 543–551. Retrieved September 5, 2008 from EBSCO Online Database SocINDEX. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=17535611&site=ehost-live

Spitzer, S. J. (2006). Untangling the 'tangle of pathology': Daniel P. Moynihan and the shifting politics of race and welfare in the 1960s. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Western Political Science Association, Hyatt Regency Albuquerque, Albuquerque, New Mexico Online. Retrieved September 5, 2008 from http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p97331%5findex.html or http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p%5fmla%5fapa%5fresearch%5fcita tion/0/9/7/3/3/p97331‗index.html

Tsang, C.R., & Dietz, T.L. (2001). The unrelenting significance of minority statuses: Gender, ethnicity, and economic attainment since affirmative action. Sociological Spectrum, 21, 61-80. Retrieved September 5, 2008 from EBSCO Online Database SocINDEX. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=3892864&site=ehost-live

Wilson, W.J. (1987). The truly disadvantaged: The inner city, the underclass, an public policy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Wilson, W.J. (1996). When work disappears. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

Wilson, W.J. (1998). When work disappears: New implications for race and urban poverty in the global economy. LSE STICERD Research Paper No. CASE017. Retrieved September 5, 2008 from SSRN http://www.ssrn.com/abstract=1158908

Young Jr., A.A. (2003). Social isolation, and concentration effects: William Julius

Wilson revisited and reapplied. Ethnic & Racial Studies, 26, 1073–1087. Retrieved September 5, 2008 from EBSCO Online Database SocINDEX. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=11642374&site=ehost-live

Essay by Jeff Klassen, MA

Jeff Klassen holds a master's degree in English from the University of Western Ontario. He is currently pursuing a law degree.