Word: ghettoes
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...centerpiece out of the episode of the Golden Calf: gold is collected and formed into an idol; a ritual slaughter of animals is followed by a sacrifice of Four Naked Virgins; there is an orgy of drunkenness, sexual license and suicide. By forsaking emotionally neutral biblical robes for specific ghetto mufti (only Moses, portrayed by Bass-Baritone Theo Adam, is outfitted in Old Testament garb), Ponnelle risked having the quarrelsome Jews appear like characters in one of Julius Streicher's Nazi racist fantasies, evoking the stereotype of avariciousness and the calumny of blood libel. Even the splendid performances of Adam...
Where once the ghetto provided a mix of black social classes, now residents are bound together under the yoke of poverty and impoverished aspirations. In a forthcoming book, The Truly Disadvantaged, Wilson argues that those who have been left behind in the ghetto have inherited not "a culture of poverty but social isolation." Inner-city residents can go weeks without encountering anyone, black or white, who is a middle-class achiever...
Much of the recent debate over poverty has stressed the need to provide jobs and training for welfare recipients like Carla Smith. But by making welfare the crux of the problem, both liberals and conservatives have ignored the single most serious cause of the misery of the ghetto: the shockingly high jobless rate among young black men. Unskilled and ill-educated, these young men are the true victims of America's dramatic transition away from a manufacturing base. Even when there is decent-paying work available, Wilson contends that social isolation excludes the black underclass from the "job- network system...
...course, some of these ostensibly unemployed young black men do earn money illegally, often from selling drugs. But the explosive growth of the ghetto drug culture further erodes the work ethic. In a recent paper, Anderson laments the growing cleavage between what he calls "old heads and young boys." Old heads were the traditional neighborhood mentors of ghetto youth. Their message, Anderson writes, "was about manners and the value of hard work, involving how to get a job, how to keep a job, how to dress for a job interview, how to deal with a prospective employer." But with work...
Twenty years of failed programs, from community development to public housing, point to a depressing conclusion: little will be done to make the ghetto an acceptable place to live and raise children. This by no means suggests abandoning those trapped in the inner city. Rather, the emphasis of both government and private philanthropy must be on helping the black underclass escape the social isolation of these inner-city wastelands. What successes there have been come not through cosmetically improving the ghettos but by providing residents with opportunities through jobs and education to rise out of them. Saving people, not inner...