50 YEARS LATER INTEGRATION REMAINS ELUSIVE

摘要

The significance and reach of the Civil Rights Act of 1964-signed by Lyndon Johnson 50 years ago this July-goes without saying. People in 1964 could scarcely have imagined that we'd so quickly have a black President and black billionaires and a large black middle class. But midcentury Americans might also have been surprised by the persistence of black poverty, despite massive federal attention to the problem. In 2011, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, 12% of whites lived in poverty; 26% of blacks did. That's an improvement from 1959, when 55% of black families lived in poverty. But we appear to have reached a ceiling. Despite the $1 trillion a year we spend on antipov-erty programs, the rate of black poverty has actually increased since 2000.