The Economics of the Civil Rights Revolution in the American South written by Gavin Wright

Sadly, the economic engine of Inglewood’s city hall is poverty porn. Worse, it is by design and engineered by a few people whose intent is to profit from it even as they purport to be working for the very people they exploit, people who by a grander design were historically exploited overtly for centuries and in the last several decades remain exploited in a far subtler fashion.

What does all this have to do with Sharing the Prize?

Wright reaches back to the formative years of the Civil Rights movement so deeply as to purposely usurp the very term “Civil Rights”— and for good reason.
Such a premise is sure to frighten many people— chief among them the purveyors of poverty who profit from pretending to grant “power to the people”—in South L.A.

Why undo a term such as “Civil Rights”? is not the
question, however, but why did the economic aspect of genuine economy in the U.S. seem to get ignored from
the beginning? Before it was known as the Civil Rights movement, the push was for economic equality, a push that extended to education and which remains a problem with Inglewood Unified School District and its many financial scandals and recent developments by Inglewood pols who have chosen to replace well-paying, long-term union jobs with low- wage, part-time positions.

In Sharing the Prize, Wright dissects the many problems regarding why Civil Rights require an economic and educational base.

The phrase is one that subtly sabotages what was originally meant as a campaign to acquire jobs, education and freedom. The problem these days—and then—is that the economic and education goals set forth by the Movement and Martin Luther King, Jr., have been obscured in a fashion meant to make black people appear to be prone to poverty and crime.

The result is one that benefits those who set up non- profits ostensibly meant to help such people—especially in cities nationally known for having significant populations of black people regardless of their significant economic and educational status.
In present-day Inglewood, we are experiencing a dearth of such possibilities that have been engineered by people who have profited from understanding what Wright has written.

($35.00: Harvard University Press/ Belknap Press, hardcover, 368 pages)