More Than Just Race: Being Black and Poor in the Inner City

More Than Just Race: Being Black and Poor in the Inner City
ISBN-10
0393337634
ISBN-13
9780393337631
Category
Social Science
Pages
190
Language
English
Published
2010
Publisher
W W Norton & Company Incorporated
Author
William Julius Wilson

Description

The discussion of racial inequality has long been divided along ideological lines: conservatives tend to emphasize cultural factors such as attitudes, worldviews, habits, and styles of behavior, whereas liberals pay more attention to structural conditions, with most of the attention devoted to racialist structural factors such as discrimination and segregation. Wilson presents a framework for understanding the formation and maintenance of racial inequality and racial group outcomes that integrates cultural factors with two types of structural forces - those that directly reflect racial bias and those that do not, including impersonal economic forces. He applies this framework to the three areas that have generated the most intensely politicized debates: the formation and persistence of the inner-city ghetto, the plight of low-skilled black males, and the fragmentation of the African American family. Wilson's arguments are provocative and will generate controversy because he dares to seriously consider cultural explanations for the persistence of racial inequality. His conclusion is equally controversial: he explains that structural and cultural forces are inextricably linked, but that only through reforming the structures that reinforce the racial status quo can we adequately address racial inequality through public policy.

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