The Poor White Problem

Poor whites don't even make up 5% of the poor. Contrast that to more than 60% of blacks. But that's not a story for foreign media.

Residents of an informal camp outside Johannesburg.

It’s become common for foreign journalists (and documentary films) going to South Africa to find poor whites and contrast these with the wealth of the small, emerging black “middle” class.  Yet, poor whites don’t even make up 5% of the poor. Contrast that to more than 60% of blacks. But that’s not a story. And if you pointed that obvious fact out you’d be racist.

The obsession with the “poor white problem” is an old concern of white South Africa and the West which dates back to the late 19th century, influenced the formation of the Union of South Africa in 2010 (an agreement among whites, English colonialists and Afrikaners post-Anglo-Boer War to govern in their own interests at the expense of black people), the 1922 miner’s strike (by white workers to keep black mine worker wages down), involved the American Carnegie Commission, the rise of the National Party (obsessed with poor whites falling into the poverty assumed as natural for coloureds and Africans), and the apartheid state’s massive affirmative action programs for whites, especially Afrikaners, as well as its violent rule for the next nearly five decades. Which is why between 60% to 70% of black people, including coloureds and Indians, are poor now and just 5% of whites are.

South African media at least know better. But not the foreign media. Meanwhile, I have compiled a list of some of the stories by major foreign news agencies and news outlets, especially Euro-American ones, about the so-called poor white problem in postapartheid South Africa (which you can roughly date to the end of Thabo Mbeki’s first term as president).

Poor white South Africans blame reverse discrimination.

White Poverty – In the New South Africa.

Rich whites keep wealth and poor beg

Race against time

Poor Boer.

South Africa’s hidden white poverty

Afrikaners hit bottom.

Further Reading

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