ABSTRACT
In The Truly Disadvantaged, Wilson argues that the black ghetto has become a much more dangerous, deprived, and socially disorganized place across the course of the twentieth century. He begins with a discussion of the problem of labeling; the term “underclass” like the phrase “culture of poverty,” has been used by political conservatives since the 1980s to blame the victims of urban poverty for their own plight. Wilson repudiates the arguments of political conservatives while challenging liberals to reestablish control of public discourse concerning the underclass. He analyzes the effect of structural economic change and the suburbanization of the black middle class in concentrating the problems of the black poor in the inner cities. He asserts that the urban black poor suffer from a “tangle of pathologies” and live in “social isolation” from the mainstream of social life in America. He also discusses the merits of social policies of universalism versus targeted income-tested or race-based programs to address the urban underclass.
