Word: underclasses
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Discussions of the underclass in the 1970s and 1980s tended to frame the issues in individualistic terms, blaming the plight of the underclass on individual shortcomings, such as lack of motivation or bad attitudes toward work. This "culture of poverty" thesis achieved widespread acceptance in a country which has long believed that poverty begins at home, and became the cornerstone of the Black neoconservative critique of the welfare system. Theorists such as Kennedy School Professor Glenn Loury and Thomas Sowell denounced welfare for reinforcing the deviant behavior patterns of the inner-city poor, which is largely Black...
...statistics are repeated with a numbing frequency, but Wilson contends that because the underclass is overwhelmingly Black, such statistics tend to reinforce racial stereotypes, again focusing attention on individual characterisitcs instead of the deterioration of the ghetto community strucuture. His task is to break through that impediment and to show the structural basis for urban poverty...
Wilson makes no bones about being a social democrat, and his policy suggestions are correspondingly nothing if not ambitious in the context of American politics. He is not afraid to claim that helping the underclass entails an overhaul of the American economy and growth in the public sector...
...real impact of the concentration of poverty in the ghettos and the increasing social isolation of the underclass has been to create "a social milieu significantly different from the environment that existed in these communities several decades ago." Increasingly, the members of the underclass live in a world radically different from mainstream society...
...recognition of the impact of structural constraints and opportunities on the life chances of the underclass opens up a slew of public policy alternatives. Wilson states in his preface that a major goal of The Truly Disadvantaged is precisely to spell out some of these public policy alternatives...