Myths and Realities of U.S. Inequalities

view recording

Sage authors Mark Robert Rank (Washington University-St. Louis) and Dawne M. Mouzon (Rutgers University) lead a presentation and discussion on some “Myths and Realities of U.S. Inequalities.”

Mark Rank addresses Five Myths About Poverty: 

• Poverty happens to other people
• Most of the poor live in inner cities
• America’ poor can rise from rags to riches with hard work
• Poverty is the result of individual failure
• America’s poor are comparatively well off

Prof. Rank is the author of Confronting Poverty: Economic Hardship in the United States (January, 2021) and other scholarly works on U.S. poverty.

Dawne Mouzon addresses Five Myths About Black Americans’ Health:

• Poor health outcomes for Black Americans are due to poor health choices
• Black American are less healthy than White Americans because of their lower socioeconomic status
• Racism primarily affects mental health, not physical health
• Black Americans have more mental health problems than White Americans
• Distrust of medicine is primarily about historical events like the Tuskegee Syphilis experiment

Prof. Mouzon is the author of Health and Inequality: The Social Origins of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities (forthcoming) Her work on this topic also appears in Getting Real About Race, edited by Stephanie McClure and Cherise Harris (Third Edition, forthcoming fall 2021).