Word: underclass
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...months, nonwhites were laid off at nearly twice the rate of whites (the unemployment rate for blacks grew from 10.4% in 1974 to 14.7% in 1975), and since then blacks have been called back to work more slowly. Consequently, some people who had begun to struggle out of the underclass were abruptly thrown back. The underclass has been hurt by the flight of manufacturing firms?many requiring only semiskilled or even unskilled labor?to the suburbs and the Sunbelt. Since 1969 Chicago has lost 212,000 jobs, while its suburbs have gained 220,000; in the same period, New York...
...default, the underclass economy is a welfare economy. Nonwhites received 37% of the $11.4 billion in federal and state welfare payments last year. Blacks make up no less than 44.3% of enrollees in the $10.3 billion...
Welfare dependency means that for many members of the underclass, the concepts of income and jobs are barely related, if at all. Says Michael Lemmons, 17, who is earning $2.50 an hour this summer as a janitor's assistant in a Watts federal manpower program: "If you keep giving people stuff, that's why they loot when the lights go out. Working is out of their minds. They think everything must be taken...
...many women in the underclass, welfare has turned illegitimate pregnancy into a virtual career. Says Barbara Wright, a welfare mother of four in Brooklyn: "A lot of young girls in the ghetto believe that the only way for them to get something in this society is by becoming pregnant and getting on welfare." One Harlem hustler makes the all-too-typical rationalization: "Everybody steals. Politicians steal. What's the use to bust my ass from 9 to 5 to get $100 a week...
...which benefits often trickled up to the so-called poverticians?the programmers, social workers and suppliers to the needy. Any massive program to stimulate the whole economy, in an attempt to bring down unemployment rapidly, would only give a rocket boost to inflation. The primary victim would be the underclass...