The Black family, especially the African American people have continued to suffer from social problems. As a result, they have found themselves in the ghettoized neighborhoods with no hopes to uplift themselves from the current situation. Their efforts to move out of these areas have been limited by the several problems, including poor housing, unemployment, poverty and historical and social injustices. Poor housing is the major social problem facing the ghetto residents. Most of the people living in destitute areas lack sufficient resources to rent or establish high quality buildings. As a result, they are forced to confine themselves in the houses that they can afford rent. They lack of proper housing is accompanied by lack of basic facilities such as retail stores, reliable transport system and healthcare. The provision and the reliability of the basic resources are the key determinants of the social well-being (Cutrona 190). However, it is difficult to find these resources in the ghetto neighborhoods.
High employment levels, poverty and lack of educational facilities have also been major social problems evident in the deprived neighborhoods. These problems have formed a continuous chain that is difficult to break (Coates). For example, the research showed that it was easier for the children from wealthy neighborhoods to succeed in life than the children in the ghettoized neighborhoods. This research goes head to hold that children from concentrated poverty neighborhoods are likely to suffer more behavioral and social problems than kids from the rich neighborhoods (Austin). This is supported by the fact that poor kids tends to score lower and have the high chances of dropping out of school than the rich kids.
The extreme suffering of the African American people has been attributed to residential segregation that has left them to continue hovering in poverty (Austin). Ideally, the background of the African Americans is associated with poverty. The African American economic and social status can be tied to the ancient slavery that people of African origin were forced at (Coates). Later, upon the ending of slavery, the freed slaves were not allowed to inhabit the same area with the whites. The settling strategy brought in residential segregation and therefore, continue to widen the gap between the poor African Americans and the whites.
Besides the residential segregation, concentrated poverty has been another major social challenge attributable to the ghetto residents. African Americans are in the list of the high poverty-stricken community in America (Austin). Additionally, the findings indicate that African Americans do not only suffer from poverty, but highly concentrated poverty. For example, according to economic snapshot report, it was found that about 45 percent of the African American children lived in concentrated poverty areas and only 12 percent of the white American children lived in those areas. Lastly, the continued social problems associated with the ghetto people can be linked to the historical, social injustices. The black people as presented by Moynihan strongly believed that their continued suffering was perpetuated by the whites (Coates). For example, he said that as the black people strive to achieve success in life, the white oppression will be always in place in the form of evictions, injustice, and discrimination and therefore, instead of realizing achievement, they were forced back to their sorry poverty status. As a result welfare dependency and unemployment rates remained high among the African Americans.