Word: underclasses
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...both sides of the ideological spectrum, observers warn against taking Okun's point too far. Those on the right say battling inequality myopically can create inefficiency and more inequality in the long run; welfare, with its disincentives to work, can foster an underclass that steadily recedes from mainstream prosperity. Those on the left say battling inequality farsightedly--via investments in the schooling and health of citizens--can lead to greater equality and greater economic efficiency...
...point is that, '70s or '90s, nothing changes for the black underclass. And in Michael Henry Brown's screenplay, nothing much is added to earlier work in these fields by Francis Coppola and Oliver Stone. Yet Dead Presidents is well worth watching for the Hugheses' prodigal camera finesse. In some of their elaborate tracking shots (at a prom-night party, over a series of backyard fences), you get a hint that their art could mature quickly. Cinema needs the Hugheses at their best--which is yet to come...
...same years have seen a disappearance of the well-paid manufacturing jobs that pulled blue-collar workers, black and white alike, into prosperity. Good jobs now require skills that schools in poor neighborhoods do an ever more dismal job of teaching. And the white fear of a black underclass fosters the kind of racism that constantly puts even the black middle class on the defensive...
...much of a problem in the U.S. Instead, all our racial troubles can be traced to the fact that "black culture" is so dysfunctional it amounts to a "civilizational" gap between African Americans and the rest of society. He does not bother to differentiate between the crime-ridden urban underclass and the middle-class high achievers such as Woodson, head of the Washington-based National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise, and Loury, a professor at Boston University...
...certainly does need a searching debate on racially tinged issues from affirmative action to welfare dependency and crime. It is quite clear, for example, that racism alone cannot account for the sorry plight of the underclass and that traditional civil rights remedies can do nothing to solve it. But such a dialogue stands little chance of being productive if it is polluted by the nonsense D'Souza is peddling. Those who want to deal honestly with race can begin by boycotting his book--not because it's politically incorrect, but because it is just plain wrong...