Word: underclass
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...York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who 20 years ago presciently warned of the breakdown of the black ghetto family, rejected the idea that Democratic programs should be blamed for creating a dependency on Government, which aggravated the underclass crisis. "It has become a belief bordering on prejudice," he said, "that the social ills of the present are the consequence of misguided Democratic social policies of the past two generations. None hold to this belief more guiltily, if furtively, than the Democrats." His party, Moynihan observed, is in "worse shape nationally than since the aftermath of the Civil War." He urged...
...discussion demonstrated that important factions of the Democratic Party are now willing to confront the topic of the underclass and think it could work to their political advantage. "If we approach the social question correctly," Cuomo noted, "we will seize the opportunity Reagan has given us." A common theme was that the Democrats must seek effective ways to improve the plight of the poor while not clinging to expensive programs that have not proved helpful. "What worked in 1966 may not work in 1986," said Pennsylvania Congressman William Gray, a black who chairs the House Budget Committee. "Saying that...
Ronald Reagan's economic policies have created a period of general prosperity mixed with a worsening of the plight of the underclass. This has helped prompt a national re-examination of race and poverty, with a focus on the black-family crisis. Just last week the Census Bureau announced that more than 54% of all black children are now born to unwed mothers, compared with 18% for the population as a whole...
...jobs. Nicholas Lemann, in an incisive series in the Atlantic, analyzes how the migration of poor blacks into the inner cities and the outward migration of middle-class blacks have created a destructive ghetto culture. It can only be broken, Lemann argues, by providing public-works jobs that get underclass blacks out of the ghetto...
Democratic Party leaders are beginning to wrestle with radical approaches like these. Many of the panelists at last week's forum discussed the need to provide jobs, experiment with workfare initiatives and find ways to shape Government programs so that they encourage, rather than discourage, self-help among the underclass. But as Moynihan noted, "We are grievously short of specific ideas." For the Democrats to regain the initiative on what has traditionally been one of their most important issues, the quest to conquer the problems of poverty in America, they will have to find ways to sharpen the ideas that...