By Beth Kwiatek
“What does it mean when a group of young Black faces walk into a suburban school and say, “We don’t belong here”? What does it mean when those same kids face judges who are all male and white? What does it mean when those Black kids see white kids build cities in The Congo, Morocco, and Zimbabwe?”
By Henry Louis Taylor Jr.
“[Our] world was a deeply flawed one characterized by racism, classism, misogyny, homophobia, hyper-privatization and the maldistribution of wealth, needless poverty, unnecessary hardship, ghetto-slums, mass incarceration, premature death and injustice. The type of cities, suburbs and economy built for inhabitation played a critical role in shaping the differential existence that produce exclusivity, inequity, inequality and injustice among the people.”
By Henry Louis Taylor Jr.
“Neighborhoods matter in the quest to mitigate the harmful effects of poverty and low-incomes on the lives of Erie County residents. An abundant literature argues that neighborhood contexts are, in themselves, important determinants of the life chances and outcomes of people’s lives. The individual, the neighborhood, and the institutions, found inside and outside the community, interact to influence the socioeconomic wellbeing of its residents.”
By Henry Louis Taylor Jr.
“My argument is that the War on Poverty failed because it was based on a set of false assumptions. Poverty is not a curable disease caused by the interplay of culture and individual shortcomings, but rather it is a normalized economic state within the neoliberal capitalist system. Therefore, the positionality of people within the economy is determined by racialized labor market dynamics, which distributes high-, middle-, and low-income jobs to laborers in the workforce. Within this labor market system, poverty is a subdivision of the low-income employment sector.”
By Henry Louis Taylor Jr.
“The Fruit Belt neighborhood is a more colorful place thanks to the work of these students. A rusty chain-link fence around the Futures Academy community garden is now covered by a painted mural, a project informed by lessons in color theory and the effects of color on mood. Leading visitors through the garden is series of stepping stones, each painted with the students’ aspirations for their future neighborhood. That project was based on fieldwork in the community. Just beyond the borders of the garden is a “little library” constructed with a repurposed palette – and adorned with the colorful imagination of these campers.”