Poverty persists in America even amidst the world’s richest nation. Attempts to attribute longterm poverty to social barriers, such as racial discrimination or lack of jobs, have failed. Some scholars now attribute poverty to culture in the sense that many poor become disillusioned and no longer seek to advance themselves. More plausible is cultural difference. The United States has an individualist culture, derived from Europe, where most people seek to achieve personal goals. Racial minorities, however, all come from non-Western cultures where most people seek to adjust to outside conditions rather than seeking change. Another difference is that Westerners are moralistic about social order, demanding that behavior respect universal principles, while in the non-West norms are less rigid and depend mostly on the expectations of others. These differences best explain why minorities— especially blacks and Hispanics—typically respond only weakly to chances to get ahead through education and work, and also why crime and other social problems run high in low-income areas. The black middle class has converted to an individualist style and thus advanced, but most blacks have not. Government has recently reduced crime and welfare in poor areas, but the ultimate solution to poverty is for the poor themselves to adopt the more inner-driven individualist style.

中文翻译：

---

贫困与文化

即使在世界上最富有的国家中，贫穷仍然存在于美国。将长期贫困归因于种族歧视或缺乏工作等社会障碍的尝试失败了。现在，有些学者将贫困归因于文化，因为许多贫困者变得幻灭了，不再寻求进步。文化差异更为合理。美国具有源自欧洲的个人主义文化，大多数人在此寻求实现个人目标。但是，少数族裔全部来自非西方文化，在这些文化中，大多数人寻求适应外界条件而不是寻求改变。另一个区别是，西方人对社会秩序持道德观，要求其行为遵守普遍原则，而在非西方国家，规范则不那么僵化，主要取决于他人的期望。这些差异最能说明为什么少数族裔（尤其是黑人和西班牙裔）通常对通过教育和工作取得成功的机会的反应较弱，并且解释了为什么在低收入地区犯罪和其他社会问题泛滥。黑人中产阶级已经转变为个人主义风格，因此有所进步，但大多数黑人没有。政府最近减少了贫困地区的犯罪和福利，但解决贫困的最终方法是让贫困者自己采取更内在的个人主义风格。