Know Your Price: Valuing Black Lives and Property in America’s Black Cities

Moynihan Report,

negative reinforcement campaign that attempts to punish Black people

First popularized in the 1960s by anthropologist Oscar Lewis, culture of poverty theories argued that low-income people share inherent characteristics and values that keep them impoverished.

“What are the benefits to living in a Black-majority city?” and, “Why do so many of us choose to stay in them?”

is good about Black families? Where are the assets of Black communities?

now know that my existence is a manifestation of Black women’s resistance against the criminalization of poverty and the devaluing of Black lives. For

Privileged eyes constantly remove their gaze from root causes of social and economic despair to myopically perceive positive family adaptations as dysfunction or as causing poverty.

According to the research nonprofit the Institute on Assets and Social Policy, “Assets provide the tangible resources that help individuals move out of and stay out of poverty.”2 Assets

However, he set a dangerous example by identifying the main problem as Black people not living up to White middle-class ideals. This is a mold that researchers of Black people and cities willfully maintain to this day. One of the major goals of this book is to show that there is nothing wrong with Black people that ending racism can’t solve.