<P> The people in the culture of poverty have a strong feeling of marginality, of helplessness, of dependency, of not belonging . They are like aliens in their own country, convinced that the existing institutions do not serve their interests and needs . Along with this feeling of powerlessness is a widespread feeling of inferiority, of personal unworthiness . This is true of the slum dwellers of Mexico City, who do not constitute a distinct ethnic or racial group and do not suffer from racial discrimination . In the United States the culture of poverty that exists in the Negroes has the additional disadvantage of perceived racial discrimination . </P> <P> People with a culture of poverty have very little sense of history . They are a marginal people who know only their own troubles, their own local conditions, their own neighborhood, their own way of life . Usually, they have neither the knowledge, the vision nor the ideology to see the similarities between their problems and those of others like themselves elsewhere in the world . In other words, they are not class conscious, although they are very sensitive indeed to status distinctions . When the poor become class conscious or members of trade union organizations, or when they adopt an internationalist outlook on the world they are, in my view, no longer part of the culture of poverty although they may still be desperately poor . </P> <P> Although Lewis was concerned with poverty in the developing world, the culture of poverty concept proved attractive to US public policy makers and politicians . It strongly informed documents such as the Moynihan Report (1965) as well as the War on Poverty, more generally . </P> <P> The culture of poverty also emerges as a key concept in Michael Harrington's discussion of American poverty in The Other America (1962). For Harrington, the culture of poverty is a structural concept defined by social institutions of exclusion that create and perpetuate the cycle of poverty in America . </P>

The culture of poverty was outlined by quizlet