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African American Neighborhoods

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Psychology today can tell us that the environment in which we grow up in can have an important impact on a youth’s identity and future. Growing up in not only a state of poverty, but with additional social and economic disadvantages can have an overwhelming negative influence on student’s performance. In major cities across the United States schools that poverty stricken African American students attend are segregated, not in a legal sense, but because of location. Neighborhoods with soaring levels of poverty are limited to the oftentimes overpopulated, underfunded, and understaffed local schools. Creating a culture of multigenerational families isolated in their own poverty. There is a plethora of studies over the years that have thoroughly …show more content…

In a poor neighborhood we can watch a white and an African American child grow up. The difference between the two will be that the white child will have an smoother time growing up and moving out and into a middle-class neighborhood and the African American child will face many more strife and conflict. This is helps explain why 48% of African American families have lived in low-income areas for a typical minimum of two generations, while that only occurs to 7% of white families (Sharkey, 2013, p. 39). For African Americans it is significantly more difficult to leave the poverty that they were born …show more content…

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