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Born Poor, Stay Poor: The Silent Caste System of America

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There’s a lot missing from debates and policy surrounding poverty but the biggest deficit, according to Dr C. Nicole Mason, is in honesty. Impoverished people aren’t poor because they’re lazy, they’re poor because social mobility is institutionally suppressed.Dr C. Nicole Mason was born in Los Angeles, raised by a beautiful but volatile 16-year-old single mother. Early on, she learned to navigate between an unpredictable home life and school where she excelled. Having figured out the college application process by eavesdropping on the few white kids in her predominantly Black and Latino school, and along with the help of a high school counselor, Mason eventually boarded a plane for Howard University, alone and with 0 in her pocket.

Mason found a path out of poverty – something that only 4% of America’s impoverished population are able to do. An alarming majority will never rise into the middle class, and so it seems that in the US, if you’re born poor, you stay poor. And no one is being very honest about this invisible caste system.

Mason is a vocal advocate against the presumption that the poor are poor simply because they don’t help themselves enough. “[In college] we heard a lot of things about welfare queens, people living off the system, not wanting to work, women being lazy, having multiple children. And that really wasn’t the reality for the women who were actually impoverished.” Mason found that the policies were detached from reality, and in fact the barriers built into the system (some intended to motivate people) – such as time limits, additional child penalties, and few provisions for childcare – were ineffective and suppressed social mobility. “What was excluded from that policy was a clear pathway out of poverty, like education,” she says.

When people think of poverty they think in terms of money and material resources, but a large part of being poor is suffering from a lack of social connections and networks, and living in a low-income area with no infrastructure that enables the leap up to the middle class.

If institutions and leaders want to support and elevate poor communities, Mason argues that they need to provide better infrastructure (like libraries, parks, good grocery stores, and hospitals) as well as bridging programs both within the community and, very importantly, outside of it, so people can get in contact with people outside of their normal social network. “We just need to be honest about what it really takes for everybody to have a fair shot at the American Dream,” she says.

Dr. C. Nicole Mason’s new book is Born Bright: A Young Girl’s Journey from Nothing to Something in America
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C. NICOLE MASON

C. Nicole Mason is the author of Born Bright: A Young Girl’s Journey from Nothing to Something in America and heads up CR2PI at the New York Women’s Foundation. Her commentary and writing have been featured in the Los Angeles Times, The Chronicle of Higher Education, POLITICO, The Nation, The Progressive, Spotlight on Poverty, Marie Claire Magazine, USA Today, ESSENCE Magazine, The Huffington Post and on CNN, MSNBC, NPR, and NBC, among other outlets. Nicole is the Executive Director of the Center for Research and Policy in the Public Interest (CR2PI) at the New York Women’s Foundation. Nicole is also the creator of the Lead The Way Initiative for emerging women of color executive directors and mid-level managers working in the social sector. Since it’s inception, more than 100 leaders have cycled through the program including a Presidential Appointee and a MacArthur Foundation Genius.

For more than two decades, Nicole has worked on a range of pressing social issues from violence against women to reproductive justice to economic security. She is also the former Executive Director of the Women of Color Policy Network at New York University’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. There, she held the distinction of being one of the youngest scholar-practitioners to lead a major U.S. research center or think tank. Under her direction, the Network became a leading authority and voice on public policies impacting women of color, low-income families and communities of color.
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TRANSCRIPT
C. Nicole Mason: We’re not talking honestly about what it really takes to get from poverty to the middle class. So, for example, we know that only four percent of peopl

Read the full transcript at https://bigthink.com/videos/c-nicole-mason-on-poverty-in-america

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