Word: underclass
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...many ways, Bob Marley was the beat. He was the first superstar from the Third World. He popularized, even personified, the rhythm of reggae and its roots in the pitiless poverty and mystical spiritual aspirations of the black Jamaican underclass. His voice sounded like sugarcane but cut like a switchblade. His love songs, like Guava Jelly, Stir It Up and Three Little Birds (included here in a previously unreleased and altogether ravishing alternate version), were lighted with a sexual fervor suggesting that passion itself is a kind of temporary redemption. His political songs, whether metaphorical (I Shot the Sheriff...
...which began as a fierce and proudly insular music of the American black underclass, is now possibly the most successful American export this side of the microchip, permeating, virtually dominating, worldwide youth culture. It is both a recreational vehicle and a form of social commentary: you can dance to it (one Mexican rap hit has a salsa kick) and think it over too (a German piece rails against neo-Nazi goons and a complacent, fat-cat government). The language may differ from place to place, even when it's English, but the music is everywhere...
...will be political, social and economic. Such competitors as Japan and the European Community, which pour substantial resources into education, have already caught up with and surpassed the U.S. in the quality of their workers, and the trend will continue. In America a growing, uneducated, unemployable and mostly minority underclass will put increasing pressure on society to pay more than lip service to education...
However, Bell forgives middle-class Blacks who separate themselves from the underclass because they too face racism, a racism that Bell presumes would rear its ugly head in a moment of crisis...
...Harvard is already recruiting the disadvantaged, why go out of the way to recruit especially minorities? Aren't all poor people created equal? Class-based recruitment and other such programs would extend sufficient opportunities to the minority (and the white) underclass; the addition of race as a factor would only help those minorities who are not economically disadvantaged...