Poverty is a condition in which a person or community is deprived of, or lacks the essentials for a minimum standard of well-being and life. Since poverty is understood in many senses, these essentials may be material resources such as food, safe drinking water, and shelter, or they may be social resources such as access to information, education, health care, social status, political power, or the opportunity to develop meaningful connections with other people in society. - Wikipedia at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty Amy Sample Ward

Racism is any belief whose primary basis is the concept of race.
Because it carries connotations of race-based bigotry, prejudice, violence, oppression, stereotyping or discrimination, the term has varying and often hotly contested definitions. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, racism is a belief or ideology that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, especially to distinguish it as being either superior or inferior to another race or races. - Wikipedia at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism Amy Sample Ward