Children of Children: The Perverse Cycle of Poverty in African-American Society "We tend to believe that [the American] free-market system rewards those who help themselves, and that those who are willing to 'pull themselves up by the bootstraps' can and will 'get ahead,'" author Tiziani C. Dearing writes. This concept is exposed by the history of black suppression in America, which runs deep into the roots of American history and grounds neo-slavery, or 'slavery by another name,' in black

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... ty today. Nearly 150 years after the Emancipation Proclamation outlawed slavery, some black individuals remain victims of neo-slavery, chronically entrapped by crime, incarceration, drug addiction, broken families, unemployment, and poor education. In the poem "Children of Children," by Oscar Brown Jr. , the speaker of the poem addresses a primarily white audience and illustrates the negative circumstances of numerous black American youths, especially their early sexual awakenings and premature reproduction. Rather than specifically mentioning poverty itself that is often defined as having a lack of financial means, he shows the poverty of human rights being implemented within the black community by illustrating reproductive entrapment, hopelessness, and incarceration. These human rights are what separate freedom from enslavement. Many black youths are teenage parents born from other teenage parents that continue reproducing disadvantaged children in the cycle of poverty. The poem's concern is the white audience blaming the black youth for their poverty and instructing them to be personally responsible for their actions in order to change their situation. Brown believes this mentality is destructive and does not solve the problem, as the youths are only products of their underprivileged environment. Alleviating poverty needs come from within the white community by having white people change their prejudiced mentality of