To this day I feel like not many individuals are aware of this. The picture above shows the poverty cycle which at times it may be called the “ghetto” cycle. It has been proven that minorities, especially black women, are most likely to become trapped into poverty. One of the reasons why these black women are usually trapped into the poverty cycle is because they are usually evicted from their household and that’s how the cycle begins.
“How The Eviction Epidemic Is Trapping Black Women In Poverty,” is a article I read on HuffPost Black Voices. Harvard University sociologist Matthew Desmond is publishing a book titled Evicted, in which he follows eight of his neighbors from his younger years as they try and fail to find stable housing, as well as the landlords, property managers, eviction movers and judges who decide their fates.
Desmond says, “Eviction is fundamentally changing the face of poverty, one way we can interpret eviction is like, ‘Oh, it’s a result of irresponsibility, it’s bad spending habits.’ But if … you’re spending 80 percent of your income on rent, eviction is much more of an inevitability than an irresponsibility.”
Eviction is something very common from where I come. I am from the South End area from Springfield, Massachusetts which some people might call “Little Puerto Rico,” because that’s where you’ll find the biggest population of Latinos, you’ll see many Bodegas up and down streets as well as Spanish restaurants and so much more.
One thing that intrigued me from reading this article is that it was not surprising, I felt like I was reading something I already knew. It’s obvious that the government makes sure minorities in general are trapped in this poverty cycle. They make sure we are all trapped in the same projects and neighborhoods so we won’t feel the need to actually leave because if we do we won’t be with “our people” anymore. We’ll be in a different world where you won’t have the same culture or ethnic background as your neighbor or manager.
The fact that black women are in a high risk of being trapped in this cycle for being evicted is quite heartbreaking. In Desmond’s book he goes into great depths of research. While he observes the neighborhoods he once was a part of he met children and their families of whom were evicted or were going through horrible struggles.
One question I’d like to ask is why do you think black women are at a higher common risk of being evicted rather than white women?
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