Sociological Insights From Growing up in Suburban Town

I come from New Castle County in Delaware. The memories I have from growing up there are mostly happy, with a few I’m more indifferent about here and there. It is interesting when data about New Castle from the Census Bureau is considered. Through critical thinking, we can gain a lot of information and knowledge about a place simply via the usage of the data the Census Bureau. This information also has allowed me to gain a deeper understanding about my own personal grasp of life in New Castle. One subject that I have always been very interested in researching when considering my neighborhood is race. In the past, I have had my mom advise me to be careful around the homeless -- many of whom are African-Americans. I know that she is not racist nor ethnocentric and is well aware of the unfair stereotypes and generalizations that African-Americans have seen plenty of. Yet, as a middle class white male myself, I still had to question the justification for her reasoning. She calmly responded by stating that depending on the area, there are different demographics that have different circumstances. According to her, in New Castle, you must be careful when entering the “poor” neighborhoods where people are more desperate. These neighborhoods are often located on the east side of Wilmington or in the town of New Castle itself. There is a lot of crime and violence in these locales, and unfortunately, the majority of the residents there are African-American. However, she then went on to say that there are other areas in the United States where it is the reverse. For example, in the Appalachian Mountains, many white people are uneducated, impoverished and threatening. Upon hearing this, I became very curious. If there are truly more black criminals than white criminals in our neighborhood, could the black poverty rate be higher as well? Using FactFinder, I was able to construct a potential explanation.

According to FactFinder (in the contrasts of Caucasian people to African Americans), there is a much larger population of Caucasians than African-Americans in Delaware. Knowing that Delaware is rather suburban and somewhat northern, it doesn’t particularly surprise me that that is the case. I have heard from my parents as well as many others that African-Americans more commonly reside in the Southern parts of the United States and more urban areas (although this could be incorrect). According to Factfinder, the African-Americans that reside in New Castle County do in fact suffer from far more poverty than the Caucasians. In 2017, (the most recently recorded year), 17% of the white population is in poverty status while 30% of the black population is in poverty. I also learned that the females are somewhat more likely to suffer from poverty than males for the white demographic. But for the black demographic, it is the other way around. Some 29% of the African American females suffer from poverty in contrast to the 31% of males, while 19% of the Cacaisian females are in poverty in contrast to the 15% of males. This statistic came as somewhat of a surprise to me as it has seemed to me that the men and women in my neighborhood have equality of opportunity; I also wouldn’t expect it to differ according to race. However, when seeing how small the correlation is, this could just be a coincidence.

Learning this information very much changes my outlook on New Castle. I believe that nowadays in the U.S. society, most of the time white males end up doing the best in terms of income. It is because of that that I am not surprised that the poverty rate for white males was the lowest of all of the poverty rates in New Castle County. Despite this, I am in touch with my progressive ideals and I hope that eventually the income levels will be equal for all of the demographics everywhere. Despite the difference of poverty levels, I also would not consider New Castle to be segregated. As unfortunate as it is that many of the white people that reside in the county like my mother consider the African-American population to be the most dangerous, I have also seen plenty of African-Americans in the area who are wealthy and accepted. I believe that within 20 more years or so, New Castle will continue to progress and by then will be pretty much Pluralist. I do know that there was much racial segregation in the distant past in our country; there likely was some in New Castle county as well. Because of this, I would assume that the white and black races have developed apart from one another throughout the past couple of decades. I also have a theory as to why the poverty rate was higher for white women compared to white men and lower for black women compared to black men. In the past, in addition to African-Americans, it was also more difficult for women to find work and become successful. However race and gender are two separate categories. In my opinion, race is a much larger handicap than gender. Because of this, being an African-American female likely wasn’t much worse than being an African-American male, if at all. Hence the circumstance of African-American females being in less poverty than African-American males nowadays. However, being female can still be a disadvantage in terms of jobs, thus making it a little bit more difficult for white females than white males.

Possibly in response to the margin of poverty between races, different corporations in New Castle county have taken steps in terms of jobs for African Americans. The Woodlawn Library, for example, has endeavored to hire more POC for working positions. It is likely that movements like this will eventually lead to the pluralism of New Castle county. However, in order to get other companies to take this measure, it would likely require much more vocal public pressure, government incentives and shareholder activist pressure.