The Abyss in America’S Inner Cities

This chapter provides a brief survey of the abyss in America's inner cities, focusing on four dimensions: unemployment and underemployment, high school dropouts, mass incarceration, and unwed motherhood and teen pregnancy. In America's inner city neighborhoods, crime, poverty, unemployment, unwed motherhood, and teen pregnancy rates are sky-high. Poorly educated in dreadful schools, the black male underclass is ever more disconnected from mainstream society. The United States faces a stubbornly high unemployment rate hovering between 8 and 9 percent. Along with the unemployment, there are millions more of underemployed individuals, who work part-time but would like to work full-time, and those who have stopped looking for jobs, so-called discouraged workers, who would take jobs if available. Black males, especially high school dropouts, face mass incarceration or are under the watchful eye of the probation or parole system that marginalizes them from mainstream economic and social life in the United States.