ABSTRACT
If the ghettos are not impervious to social intervention techniques, they are at least highly persistent, showing remarkable ability to absorb or ward off attempts at change. Similarly, it would be tendentious and exaggerated to consider the ghetto simply as the product of a deliberate conspiracy on the part of "the power structure", "white racism", "the establishment", or other reified social phenomena mustered up as scapegoats in a reductionist explanation of a highly complex situation. The ghetto dweller is in a special position with regard to the social control processes of the surrounding society. In the first place, the formal processes of social control may work with inordinate rigor on him if he violates one of society's norms. Perhaps the greatest dynamic is from the ghetto itself. For something is stirring there. There are the riots, which dramatize the stirring of a mighty and potentially cataclysmic force capable of tearing the cities apart.
