Word: underclasses
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...prospects, but they all have one thing in common: their mothers repeatedly took crack cocaine, often in combination with other drugs, during pregnancy. That makes them part of a tragic generation of American youngsters -- a generation unfairly branded by some as "children of the damned" or a "biologic underclass." More often, they are simply called crack kids. A few have severe physical deformities from which they will never recover. In others the damage can be more subtle, showing up as behavioral aberrations that may sabotage their schooling and social development. Many of these children look and act like other kids...
...less notice than the first, until the nation woke to find itself transformed. By the time their numbers had tapered off, around 1970, many of the travelers were embarked upon another journey -- up the ladder of class advancement. But almost as many were rattling in the dungeons of the underclass, causing reverberations throughout American life...
Lemann concludes by arguing against the conservative truism that federal antipoverty programs are doomed to failure -- and by wondering how long it will be before the national will to defeat poverty can be summoned again. "In American life," he writes, "the underclass is stuck in the antechamber where policy issues rest until they become political crusades." Perhaps someday the great trek northward will at least have a monument like the one that stands at Ellis Island to commemorate the first great migration. Meanwhile, The Promised Land is an important cornerstone in the effort to understand why so many travelers...
...military requires that almost all recruits have a high school diploma or its equivalent, which excludes from the military nearly three quarters of the Black men who used to apply, along with many other poor people. The armed forces draw the bulk of their strength neither from an exploited underclass nor from the generally hedonistic upper classes, but from the lower-middle and middle classes, who usually think that serving in the military is an honorable way to live...
...kill browns for the benefit of whites. The all-volunteer force is a sham, since economic factors have forced the poorer, Blacker sections of America to sign up in disproportionately high numbers. As in Vietnam, the body bags will again carry home the remains of the politically disempowered underclass...