Word: slum
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...same idea is echoed forcefully by Bayard Rustin, the civil rights veteran, who condemns the "self-righteous, elitist neo-Malthusians who call for slow growth or no growth. The policies of these elitists would condemn the black underclass, the slum proletariat and rural blacks, to permanent poverty." Rustin contends that the curtailment of construction projects, factory expansions and farm ventures for environmental reasons already has cost many potential jobs for blacks. The only way that unemployed blacks can join the work force in a significant way, he argues, is for the economy to grow vigorously...
...much-ballyhooed Harvard campus and Cambridge. Were we in for a shock! The campus was seedy, dirty and an overall state of decay. Even more of a shock was the city of Cambridge. The dirt and filth in the streets was comparable to that of the most run-down slum in New York...most store windows looked as they hadn't been washed in years and the restaurants and stores had an overall seedy look. I am sorry to say that we were unable to come up with any reasonable defense or explanation for our California guests...
...possible to romance too much about New York: anyone rhapsodizing that "anything is possible" in the city must acknowledge that the anything has a dark and even unspeakable side-slum miseries, ghettos like the South Bronx burning themselves out, and horripilating parlors of decadence, catering to the most specialized of the perverse. Much of the rest of the nation regards New York as a cautionary tale, the urban exemplar of everything that can go wrong: poverty, pollution, crime, racial conflict, corrupt and stupid government, dirt, traffic, immorality and, no doubt, sinful pride...
...bleeding hearts, these. They pointed to the many slum dwellers who did not riot as proof that those who vented their anger in violence were somehow deviant and could be somehow fixed or cured. The doctors' blind faith in a simplistic biological approach was incredible. Their statement conjures up an image of teams of white-coated neurosurgeons descending on America's ghettos, intent on weeding out those with faulty brains and patching up their neurological circuitry. Fortunately, the physicians' suggestions never got far beyond the theoretical stage, although in 1970 Mark and Ervin did come out with a semi-popular...
That poverty, unemployment, slum housing, and inadequate education underlie the nation's urban riots is well known, but the obviousness of these causes may have blinded us to the more subtle role of other possible factors, including brain dysfunction in the rioters who engaged in arson, sniping, and physical assault...