The Necessity of Poverty By: R.S. Helms. Facts are Facts While rewriting the rewrite of the rewrite of my book dealing with the problems of addiction, alcoholism, and homelessness, in the ghetto setting, with all the tentacles reaching into the already impoverished neighborhoods of our subculture, which traps and enslaves its people. Poverty affects all races, all religions, and all subcultures of the United States, however, when we address poverty, all minds turn to the African-American. This is not because they are largest ethnic group in poverty, nor the largest ethnic group, the Hispanic has now taken number two spot. (white non-Hispanic 64%; Hispanic 16%; Black non-Hispanic 12%; Asia 5%; Native American 1%).. it is impossible to get any sort of good figures on the percentages on poverty, not that there is not a lot of numbers available, but each group has their own set of numbers, depending on what cause they are following or who did the r...