Word: underclass
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...Wolf family, like its adopted city, is in an advanced state of decline. Along with thousands of other families in dying inner cities, the Wolfs have become mired in a morass of welfare, crime and self-destruction. In a generation, they have descended from proud working class to demoralized underclass. Nine of the 13 children have never held a meaningful job, nor do they care to. Only one of the boys finished high school. Two of the girls became teenage mothers and live on welfare. One of the girls lived a fast life that came to a crashing...
Theories abound, but answers remain elusive. Perhaps the most promising approach grows out of the work of Black Sociologist William Julius Wilson of the University of Chicago, who popularized the concept of the underclass in his 1978 book The Declining Significance of Race. Wilson and his philosophical allies reject the simplistic single-factor theories of cause and effect, which range from the permissiveness of welfare to the pervasiveness of racism. Instead, they stress the ever widening social and economic gap between ghetto residents and the rest of American society, both white and black...
...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" that permeates other neighborhoods. One statistic tells it all: in 1985, 43% of all black male high school dropouts in their early 20s reported earning no money whatsoever. As recently as 1973, that figure was just...
...widely heralded welfare reforms designed to wean recipients from the dole by requiring them to accept training and jobs. Says Wilson: "If you do create some jobs for those on welfare, you're just going to take them away from the working poor. You have a kind of underclass musical chairs here. You give jobs to one and the other slides down into the underclass...
...programs for job training, child care and education that are "available to all members of society who choose to use them." By making these available to all citizens, he contends, enough political support will be generated to sustain the effort. In Wilson's view, special treatment cannot help the underclass. In the long run, only by extending more opportunity to all Americans, regardless of class, will its problems be solved...