Socioeconomic Stasis and Racial Immobility in the United States: How Does American Political Polarization Contribute to African American Poverty?

Author

Carmel Agnant, CUNY Graduate CenterFollow

Date of Degree

9-2025

Document Type

Master's Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Program

Political Science

Advisor

Michael Sharpe

Subject Categories

Political Science

Keywords

political polarization, wealth gap, racial immobility, socioeconomic stasis, poverty-stasis

Abstract

African Americans in the United States presently exist in a poverty-stasis, a perpetual social and economic underclass positioning despite a constantly evolving American economy, society, and bodies of legislations due to political polarization. This follows a lengthy history of racial immobility (preventing a racial group from economic mobility) and stagnation since America’s era of sectional polarization over slavery. African Americans lack access to build wealth and have always struggled with societal exclusion. Legislation created and enacted that would support them politically, legally, socially, and/or economically are consistently met with legislative gridlock or countervailing measures to reverse and nullify advancements in those spheres in a peculiar back-and-forth rally that has yet to cease. The Republican and Democratic Parties, historically and contemporarily, are politically opposed in this manner. An analysis of the 1800s and the 1930s to 1960s will present two distinct (and similar) temporal areas of party divergence contributing to poverty among Black Americans and its resulting poverty-stasis. The 1800s show the political origination of such poverty as the mostly Northern Republican Party split sectionally with the mostly Southern pro-slavery Democratic Party. The 1930s to 1960s display the political maintenance of African American poverty as the Republican Party grew to be weary of Black inclusion and the Democratic Party became the platform for limited socioeconomic opportunities after steady partisan realignment transition. The New Deal, the Great Society, and the War on Poverty (sub-part of the Great Society) were met with a large-scale conservative backlash among White Americans in the 1960s, spurred by the Republican Party’s Southern Strategy platforming and positioned Richard Nixon for a presidential victory. The parties, throughout this time and into the 1980s, split racially in terms of economic matters as constituents sorted into Republican White voters and Democratic Black voters. Although the platforms between parties have switched over time, the opposition to including African Americans into society and its resulting polarization have been the same. Both temporal areas have shown that oppositional party tension subjects Black communities to poli-economic austerity in law/policy, creates an environment of politicization to African American advancement, and reinforces over time the structural causes of economic inequality. The causal factors not only stagnate improvements to their socioeconomic conditions, but the factors also maintain their stalled outcomes. The fight to prevent the efforts of African Americans to exit poverty has never been abandoned, even after hundreds of years. Political blockades employed have sophisticatedly evolved in tandem with measures that would support their socioeconomic development (inclusion into American society).

Recommended Citation

Agnant, Carmel, "Socioeconomic Stasis and Racial Immobility in the United States: How Does American Political Polarization Contribute to African American Poverty?" (2025). CUNY Academic Works.
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/6476