Poverty and elimination of urban health disparities

The aim of this article is to examine the intersection of race and poverty, two critical factors fueling persistent racial and ethnic health disparities among urban populations. From the morass of social determinants that shape the health of racial and ethnic communities in our urban centers, we will offer promising practices and potential solutions to eliminating racial and ethnic health disparities. Key words: poverty; disparities; race To be impoverished is to be an internal alien, to grow up in a culture that is radically different from the one that dominates the society. The poor can be described statistically; they can be analyzed as a group. But they need a novelist as well as a sociologist if we are to see them. They need an American Dickens to record the smell and texture and quality of their lives. —Harrington1 The Color Line: Race in Historical and Contemporary Perspective Herein lie buried many things which if read with patience may show the strange meaning of being black here at the dawning of the Twentieth Century. This meaning is not without interest to you... for the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color line... the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea. —W.E.B. Du Bois2 The “color line ” is not fixed but ripples through time, finding expression at distinct stages of our de-velopment as a nation. As the meaning of race has changed over time, its burdens and privileges have shifted among population groups. At one time in our history, for instance, the Irish and Italians were con-sidered “nonwhite, ” along with other immigrants who were not descendants of the early Anglo Saxon Protes-tant settlers. The original language of white racial differences began with the anxious response of early Americans to waves of immigration, beginning in th