The Politics Of Public Housing: Black Women's Struggles Against Urban Inequality (transgressing Boundaries)
by Rhonda Y. Williams /
2004 / English / PDF
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Black women have traditionally represented the canvas on which many
debates about poverty and welfare have been drawn. For a quarter
century after the publication of the notorious Moynihan report,
poor black women were tarred with the same brush: "ghetto moms" or
"welfare queens" living off the state, with little ambition or hope
of an independent future. At the same time, the history of the
civil rights movement has all too often succumbed to an idolatry
that stresses the centrality of prominent leaders while overlooking
those who fought daily for their survival in an often hostile urban
landscape.
Black women have traditionally represented the canvas on which many
debates about poverty and welfare have been drawn. For a quarter
century after the publication of the notorious Moynihan report,
poor black women were tarred with the same brush: "ghetto moms" or
"welfare queens" living off the state, with little ambition or hope
of an independent future. At the same time, the history of the
civil rights movement has all too often succumbed to an idolatry
that stresses the centrality of prominent leaders while overlooking
those who fought daily for their survival in an often hostile urban
landscape.
In this collective biography, Rhonda Y. Williams takes us behind,
and beyond, politically expedient labels to provide an incisive and
intimate portrait of poor black women in urban America. Drawing on
dozens of interviews, Williams challenges the notion that
low-income housing was a resounding failure that doomed three
consecutive generations of post-war Americans to entrenched
poverty. Instead, she recovers a history of grass-roots activism,
of political awakening, and of class mobility, all facilitated by
the creation of affordable public housing. The stereotyping of
black women, especially mothers, has obscured a complicated and
nuanced reality too often warped by the political agendas of both
the left and the right, and has prevented an accurate understanding
of the successes and failures of government anti-poverty
policy.
In this collective biography, Rhonda Y. Williams takes us behind,
and beyond, politically expedient labels to provide an incisive and
intimate portrait of poor black women in urban America. Drawing on
dozens of interviews, Williams challenges the notion that
low-income housing was a resounding failure that doomed three
consecutive generations of post-war Americans to entrenched
poverty. Instead, she recovers a history of grass-roots activism,
of political awakening, and of class mobility, all facilitated by
the creation of affordable public housing. The stereotyping of
black women, especially mothers, has obscured a complicated and
nuanced reality too often warped by the political agendas of both
the left and the right, and has prevented an accurate understanding
of the successes and failures of government anti-poverty
policy.
At long last giving human form to a community of women who have too
often been treated as faceless pawns in policy debates, Rhonda Y.
Williams offers an unusually balanced and personal account of the
urban war on poverty from the perspective of those who fought, and
lived, it daily.
At long last giving human form to a community of women who have too
often been treated as faceless pawns in policy debates, Rhonda Y.
Williams offers an unusually balanced and personal account of the
urban war on poverty from the perspective of those who fought, and
lived, it daily.