On Wilson's The Truly Disadvantaged,
Bensman, David
THE TRULY DISADVANTAGED: THE INNER CITY, THE UNDERCLASS, AND PUBLIC POLICY, by William Julius Wilson. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. 1987. 246 pp. $27.50. America declared "war on...
...so would a program providing guaranteed benefits for all children in single-parent families...
...In the late 1960s, when some black nationalists and white radicals wrote scathing attacks on the Moynihan Report, many liberals were so intimidated that they simply stopped writing about social dislocations in the inner city...
...The cities are filled with children growing up in families with no working parents, no prospects of a better life, no hope...
...But Wilson's analysis does not rest on hostility to affirmative action...
...Unemployed black males often abandoned their families...
...Family or child allowances, which provide benefits for children regardless of the family's income, are commonplace in Western Europe...
...For a generation, the American people have blamed liberals for the persistence of poverty and the prevalence of crime in the streets...
...This program closely resembles that advocated by the beleaguered battalions of the American democratic left, as well as the social democratic parties of Western Europe, with whom Wilson specifically identifies...
...In a powerful work of social analysis and political advocacy, Wilson diagnoses what went wrong and prescribes a program to remedy our society's festering ills...
...in order to stimulate noninflationary growth in a global economy, the progressive coalition Wilson envisions will have to reorder social priorities and reform economic institutions...
...Edward Kennedy's defeat in the 1980 presidential primaries rang the death knell of Great Society liberalism and ushered in a decade of malign neglect...
...And means-tested welfare programs will never have enough political support to provide more than minimal maintenance for the disadvantaged...
...Poor blacks remain poor, he argues, not because of discrimination, and not because of cultural deprivation, but because they have few opportunities to get the kinds of jobs that would allow them to rise...
...Wilson also recognizes that there are many poor people for whom improved economic opportunities alone would not suffice...
...They provide the greatest help to those who truly need it, without provoking widespread political opposition...
...This argument has infuriated some black nationalists and delighted neoconservatives...
...indeed, he is keenly SPRING • 1988 • 245 Books aware that affirmative action has enabled moreadvantaged black people to gain better jobs and move out of the ghettos...
...America declared "war on poverty" twenty-five years ago, yet in most inner-city neighborhoods conditions are worse now than they were then...
...The Keynesian programs of the Golden Age of capitalism alone are no longer adequate...
...Unlike the neoliberals, who would rely on mean means-tested programs, Wilson advocates expansion of universal entitlement programs wherever possible...
...Lack of child care made it hard for women to work...
...As urban ghettos became exclusively the home of poor people, the "concentration effects" of poverty increased...
...In a few years, the proportion of black children living in households headed by a single parent increased dramatically...
...University of Chicago sociologist William Julius Wilson's book The Truly Disadvantaged squarely addresses not only the causes of the persistence of urban poverty but also the causes of liberalism's failure...
...Without publicly funded child care, many poor black women simply cannot get the education or training they need if they are to find better jobs...
...In the years since Michael Harrington opened an innocent nation's eyes to the sorry reality of "the other America," hundreds of thousands of babies have died of remediable maladies, and millions more have had their growth stunted by lead poisoning, malnutrition, and easily preventable childhood diseases...
...Many turn to lives of crime, filling our jails to overflowing...
...As the truly disadvantaged became more isolated from job networks, they no longer had access to information about where jobs could be found...
...For the first five years after the "discovery" of poverty, liberals possessed the political initiative: their program to dismantle discriminatory barriers and equalize economic opportunities engaged the conscience of the American people...
...For children, the elderly, and the handicapped, some sort of improved welfare system is necessary...
...Education and job-related skills lose their value...
...In his final chapter, "The Hidden Agenda," Wilson sketches a public policy to eliminate poverty by creating decent-paying jobs...
...Beginning with a polemic against those who have attempted to deny the problem, Wilson argues that black intellectuals made a fatal error by pretending that there was nothing wrong with poor people, that all the problems of the poor could be explained by invoking society's racism...
...Between 1970 and 1984, the number of jobs in New York City requiring less than a high school education decreased by 492,000, while the number of jobs in New York City requiring some higher education increased by 239,000...
...As a result of these trends in the labor market, the overwhelming majority of blacks in the inner city confront miserable alternatives—work and live in poverty, or don't work and live in poverty...
...By the late 1970s, neoconservatives developed a politically effective explanation of the persistence of urban poverty: federal do-good welfare and affirmativeaction programs had created a dependency syndrome that stripped poor blacks of the moral strength needed to take advantage of the abundant opportunities our society offers...
...Teachers become frustrated...
...The crimes of poor young people have poisoned the political atmosphere, killing the good will of society's more fortunate, and giving sustenance to the ugly racism that has always afflicted the white majority...
...Unlike the neoliberals who dominate the Democratic party these days, Wilson argues against reliance on programs aimed at minorities and the poor: job training won't have much effect when there aren't many jobs that pay a decent living...
...Child care is another politically popular universal policy that would greatly benefit the disadvantaged...
...Solid data indicate that as black males found economic opportunities shrinking, black families broke apart...
...The "culture of poverty" might recede in the face of expanded economic opportunity...
...Nevertheless, The Truly Disadvantaged is a monumental work of intellectual virtuosity and political courage...
...Unlike public assistance, they carry no social stigma, and they do not contain disincentives for the parents to work...
...pregnant single women saw little reason to marry the fathers of their children when those fathers could not provide financial support...
...Even though Wilson's emphasis on universal entitlement programs and economic policies to create more decent-paying jobs is not new—he 246 • DISSENT Gooks credits Bayard Rustin, Michael Harrington, and Tom Kahn—his work is a significant contribution to public discourse at a time when so many former liberals have abandoned their commitment to social spending and full employment...
...Poverty really hurts people...
...But for those left behind in the ghetto, Wilson insists, the problem of class subordination actually worsened...
...One might argue, however, that Wilson's call for macroeconomic policies to stimulate economic growth is too vague and that his endorsement of universal entitlements rings somewhat hollow in the face of the huge deficits Democratic and Republican conservatives have created during their recent tax-cutting and missile-buying spree...
...Strong economic growth, improved welfare programs, and expanded universal entitlements would not work miracles, says Wilson, but they would provide the economic basis for black families to regain coherence...
...A national program of Aid for Dependent Children with benefits adjusted yearly for inflation would be a step in the right direction...
...By stopping his analysis short of these structural problems, Wilson has left himself open to attacks from both the right and the left...
...Every mugging, rape, and drug deal blights liberal prospects and provides ammunition for conservatives...
...The departure of more-advantaged blacks stripped inner-city neighborhoods of important role models and weakened the force of moral sanctions adults tried to impose on the young...
...And even those few who do get decent-paying jobs find private child care prohibitively expensive...
...Wilson demonstrates just how bad things have become in our inner cities...
...When employed blacks left poor neighborhoods, they ceased to be a major source of help for ghetto dwellers seeking jobs...
...The restrictive monetary policies of the Carter and Reagan years, which controlled inflation while fueling the growth of unemployment, were a prime barrier to black progress...
...Wilson agues relentlessly against both racial and cultural explanations for the persistence of poverty in the inner city...
...In the process, he affirms, America has become a more racially integrated and, thus, a more democratic society...
...And as the prospects for employment diminish, other alternatives such as welfare and the underground economy are not only increasingly relied on, they come to be seen as a way of life...
...Single mothers earned incomes well below poverty levels, and they lacked the resources to climb out of poverty...
...if we could return to the tight labor markets of the 1960s, there would be decent jobs for blacks to aspire to, and job training programs might then enable the disadvantaged to escape the secondary labor market in which they have been trapped...
...Schools deteriorate...
...By facing up to the extent of social pathology in the inner city and by demonstrating the economic roots of that pathology, Wilson has fashioned a convincing argument for renewed federal activism...
...In one of the most controversial sections of his book, Wilson acknowledges that the dismantling of discriminatory barriers and the creation of affirmative action programs have had some important negative consequences for poor blacks...
...As industrial businesses have left the cities for the suburbs, or for low-wage areas in the Sunbelt and abroad, the job market for urban blacks has dramatically worsened...
...Instead, Wilson calls for macroeconomic policies that will stimulate economic growth...
...White liberals were also guilty—of what amounts to moral cowardice...
...lack of educational funding made it hard for them to upgrade their skills...
...But the patience of the white majority soon wore thin: George Wallace and Spiro Agnew demonstrated all too quickly that there was much political hay to be made attacking liberal "apologists" for black criminality...
...Wilson roots the deterioration of black inner-city neighborhoods firmly in economics...
...These errors, Wilson argues, constituted a surrender of the political terrain to conservatives, who were the only people speaking convincingly about the social pathology that everyone knew existed...
Vol. 35 • April 1988 • No. 2
