Word: underclasses
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...many, the very existence of the Underclass constitutes a disturbing repudiation of liberalism. In the '60s and '70s, poverty was considered a responsibility of society as a whole, the legacy of institutional racism and generations of discrimination. But during the Reagan era, the Zeitgeist shifted. Now poverty is often blamed on the poor and on the system of government support created to help them. Glenn Loury, a black Harvard professor and neoconservative, reflects this sensibility. "The bottom stratum of the black community," he writes, "has compelling problems which can no longer be blamed solely on white racism, and which force...
Ironically, the success of the civil rights movement contributed to the continuance of the Underclass. The removal of many racial barriers allowed blacks who had made it to get out of the ghetto. This out-migration gutted the social structures of inner-city society, leaving neighborhoods bereft of a functioning middle class -- a middle class that once provided the neighborhood with shops and businesses and, more important, offered a model of workaday values that bound the society together...
...these issues, the rhetoric of Michael Dukakis and George Bush is virtually interchangeable. Both candidates shun the word Underclass; neither accepts the word's implication that there are Americans who cannot even reach the first rung of the economic ladder. Such linguistic prissiness and ideological timidity make addressing the problem even more difficult. As for solutions, the candidates echo each other. Bush: "A job in the private sector is the best antipoverty program that has ever been invented." Dukakis: "Full employment is the most important human-services program we have...
...background and ideology, the two men differ in their approach to hard-core poverty. Whereas Reagan practiced a policy of malign neglect toward the Underclass (interspersed with jabs about "welfare queens" and "young bucks" using food stamps), Bush has tried to show a more caring side. He says he wants "a kinder, gentler nation," but he has yet to offer much more than Reaganomics with a human face...
...minimum wage, and the 52,000 represents about a quarter of all the people who have been eligible. As workfare, it is all carrot, no stick; no one is faced with a benefit cutoff if he or she refuses to work. As a result, much of the hard-core Underclass is beyond the reach of ET. Those who get jobs tend to be those who have been employed in the past. Still, it is a start...