Last April, the Children’s Defense Fund reported that more than 1 million African-American children live in “deep poverty,” in households with incomes less than half the U.S. government’s already inadequate poverty level. This is up dramatically from early 2000, when “only” 686,000 black children were that poor—an accomplishment certain to be deleted from George W. Bush’s re-election résumé. The story… return to article
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Reader Comments (4)Page 1 of 1 pagesThe two-income household has added fuel to this fire.
Since this has imbedded itself on our culture, corporations have bombarded us with advertising to convince us to buy more with our extra income. Super Bowl advertising rates for example.
Single parent households take it harder than before and the kids still suffer
Yet in the struggle for more, we shuffle our kids off to day-care then try to fit them into scheduled blocks of our time as though they were clients.
Teachers become parents and guardians to our kids once they’re old enough and violence has risen.
Answers? God, I don’t know. Throw some money at it like the drug wars. See how well that’s worked?
Growing up lucky enough to be in a solid household with my beaten down mom taking care of us, I’ve seen these changes slowly coming.
One thing I would never and have never said is today’s kids have it better than I did. I never had to worry about someone packing heat or about drug tests at school. I had it easier than they did.
Posted by neil on Aug 13, 2003 at 7:41 PM This review hits me very close to home. As a brand new parent (of twin girls), my political outlook is becoming increasingly more radical by the day. It angers me to no end that our political leaders have indeed completely “abandoned” any idea that the U.S. government has any obligation whatsoever to the children of this society. Giroux’s conclusions, in the reviewers words, of the right-wing’s inability to “imagine” any “meaningful collective human experience outside the realms of private and commodified experience” cuts directly to the heart of the matter.
While the book may seem short on practical solutions, it looks like it will be very useful in identifying the crux of the problem and therefore can inform any political strategy and tactics tha aim to create a more humane culture/society.
If anyone reading this comment in the NYC area (especially parents) who may want to engage this book in an informal discussion group setting, I would be interested in organizing/participating in such a venture.
With a problem this profound and pervasive, it can never hurt to collectively generate some clarity on these issues and bring more focus in our work for social change.
This book seems like a great place to start that discussion. I look forward to reading it.
Posted by Joe Delia on Aug 25, 2003 at 12:06 PM “Why are so many intellectuals, particularly the academics on whom Giroux seems to count, so indifferent to child-friendly social justice at the end of the day? Passion and theory aside, how precisely are we to build the sorts of organizations and institutions that might create such justice and democracy? “
The answer may be that it is a question of class - most of these intellectuals are comfortable upper class, and want to remain there.
62 % of the population is working class, and the poor are made the enemy to those striving to enter or rise up in the middle class.“To truly revitalize hope we need to outline a coherent, viable political and institutional vision of how to advance and realize radically democratic educational values.”
True, but one must be able to see how this would benefit those we ask to do this - we live in a Darwinian society with materialism the highest goal. Sorry to say.
Posted by Barbara on Aug 31, 2003 at 10:24 PM Page 1 of 1 pages -
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