With All Due Respect To Dr. Michelle Scott of University of Maryland, Baltimore County...

Firstly, your faith and "objectivity as a historian" cannot be separated. For, "As in water face reflects face, So a man’s heart reveals the man." (Proverbs 27:19) Furthermore, "A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good things, and an evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth evil things." (Matthew 12:35) You can't separate a worldview for any other kind of view, and vice versa. Secondly, there is a class of undeserving poor men. "A lazy man buries his hand in the bowl, And will not so much as bring it to his mouth again." (Proverbs 19:24) Also:

⁶ But we command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you withdraw from every brother who walks disorderly and not according to the tradition which he^[a] received from us. ⁷ For you yourselves know how you ought to follow us, for we were not disorderly among you; ⁸ nor did we eat anyone’s bread free of charge, but worked with labor and toil night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you, ⁹ not because we do not have authority, but to make ourselves an example of how you should follow us.

¹⁰ For even when we were with you, we commanded you this: If anyone will not work, neither shall he eat. ¹¹ For we hear that there are some who walk among you in a disorderly manner, not working at all, but are busybodies. ¹² Now those who are such we command and exhort through our Lord Jesus Christ that they work in quietness and eat their own bread.

¹³ But as for you, brethren, do not grow weary in doing good. ¹⁴ And if anyone does not obey our word in this epistle, note that person and do not keep company with him, that he may be ashamed.¹⁵ Yet do not count him as an enemy, but admonish him as a brother.

(From 2 Thessalonians 3)

There are welfare queens, people who want to blame the White man and conservatives (including you, since you talk about a "conservative backlash"), and others who refuse to face that deliberate ineptness, sloth, and similar factors are what influence and cause poverty and even the supposed War on Poverty (which has been a miserable failure) to happen in the first place-- in other words, as I admittedly tweeted during class today, "Reaganomics may've worked if the "undeserving poor" & the Church did their jobs." 

Also in other words, we wouldn't even need a "War" on Poverty, which has actually been a death march to poverty-- and we thought that slavery and the Holocaust were over. Oh no: many Blacks and many of us Jews-- that is, those of us in the ghettos such as Crown Heights and Northwest Baltimore-- have enslaved and entrapped ourselves under the burdens of unneeded government entitlements such food stamps, welfare checks, Social Security and unemployment benefits, and other "safety" nets. 

Thus, in conclusion, you are serving only to perpetuate a self-imposed Holocaust (among Jews) and self-imposed slavery (among Blacks and others)  by being among those who blame trickle-down economics and Republicans instead of those who refuse to work for and feed themselves, and instead of the Church-- who has grown deliberately weary in doing good; and which supposedly, since you implied that you had a faith, includes yourself.