1. See U.S. Bureau of the Census, Current Population Reports: Money Income and Poverty Status, 1988, p. 127; Rose, American Profile, p. 7.

2. Rose, American Profile, p. 21.

3. Ken Auletta, The Underclass (New York: Random House, 1982).

4. "The Vanishing Black Family: Crisis in Black America," CBS Reports, January 25, 1986, television documentary.

5. The conference proceedings are reported in "Joint Center for Political Studies Conference Report: Defining the Underclass," Focus, June 1987, pp. 8-12. The consensus definition is cited in id., p. 11.

6. See id., p. 9; Wilson, The Truly Disadvantaged, p. 10.

7. Rose, American Profile, p. 35. break

8. See "Joint Center for Political Studies Conference Report"; Wilson, The Truly Disadvantaged, p. 60; Vander Zanden, The Social Experience, p. 239; Isabel V. Sawhill, "Poverty and the Underclass," in Challenge to Leadership: Economic and Social Issues for the Next Decade, ed. Isabel V. Sawhill (Washington, D.C.: Urban Institute Press, 1988), p. 227.

9. Wilson, The Truly Disadvantaged, p. 60.

10. See Vander Zanden, The Social Experience, p. 239; Sawhill, "Poverty and the Underclass," pp. 227-230; David Whitman and Jeannye Thorton, "A Nation Apart," U.S. News and World Report, March 17, 1987, pp. 18-21.

11. A 1987 congressional study conducted by the Joint Economic Committee contends that a "low-wage explosion," which began in 1979, is keeping more than thirty million Americans below the poverty line. "Between 1979 and 1985—the most recent year for which government data are available—44 percent of the net new jobs created paid povertylevel wages" (Barry Bluestone and Bennett Harrison, "A Low-Wage Explosion: The Grim Truth About the Job 'Miracle,'" New York Times, February 1, 1987, sec. 8 [Business]).

12. See, e.g., Thurow, Zero-Sum Society, pp. 184-187; Joel Kotken, "The Reluctant Entrepreneurs: Are American Blacks Still Stuck on the Bottom Rung of the Economic Ladder Because So Few Start Businesses on Their Own?" Inc ., September 1986, pp. 81-86; Anthony Ramirez, "America's Super Minority," Fortune, November 24, 1986, pp. 148-149; "Asian Americans: Are They Making the Grade?" U.S. News and World Report, April 2, 1984, pp. 41-43; "Racial Tensions Mount Between Blacks, Koreans," Jet, July 1, 1985, p. 5. Other minority groups often experience less racial discrimination and segregation than African Americans do, which helps to explain their relative progress. Farley and Allen, for example, report that even the most recently emigrated minority groups experience less housing discrimination and segregation than African Americans ( Color Line, p. 148). These authors also claim that foreign-born blacks, such as West Indians, are only marginally better off than those born in the United States and are far worse off than whites (id., pp. 362-405).

13. See Edward C. Banfield, The Unheavenly City Revisited (Boston: Little, Brown, 1974); Oscar Lewis, The Children of Sanchez (New York: Random House, 1961).

14. See Wilson, The Truly Disadvantaged .

15. See William Ryan, Blaming the Victim, rev. ed. (New York: Vintage Books, 1976). break

16. See, e.g., Luix Overbea, "Youths Hold Key to Black Family Survival," Christian Science Monitor, April 1, 1987; "Growing Up Poor," Transcript no. 403, "Frontline" television series, February 2, 1986 (Boston: WGBH Educational Foundation, 1986); Carlyle C. Douglas, "Future of Young Black Men Looks Bleak, Panelists Say," New York Times, May 19, 1985, sec. 1 (main); "Children Having Children," Time, December 9, 1985, pp. 78-90; "A Threat to the Future," Time, May 14, 1984, p. 20. At the release of the Urban League's annual report The State of Black America 1986, National Urban League president John Jacob remarked that the plight of young African American men is one of the most pressing problems facing America today ( San Diego Union/Tribune, February 2, 1986). The role of teenagers in the breakdown of the African American family was highlighted in "The Vanishing Black Family," the controversial television report; for an excellent discussion of the program, see William Raspberry, "America's Black Family Crisis," San Diego Union, January 24, 1986.

17. See, e.g., "Children Having Children," p. 81.

18. The remark of the Atlanta teenager is quoted in "Main Street," TV Guide, June 14-20, 1986, p. A-69; the Newark teenager appeared in the televised report "The Vanishing Black Family" in January 1986.

19. "Growing Up Poor," p. 17.

20. Andrew Stein, "Children of Poverty: Crisis in New York," New York Times Magazine, June 8, 1986, p. 68.

21. Id.

22. "Growing Up Poor," p. 5.

23. Stein, "Children of Poverty," p. 68.

24. "Growing Up Poor," p. 6.

25. Studies have shown that food prices in poverty-stricken areas are above average; see, e.g., Rose, American Profile, pp. 7-8.

26. "Growing Up Poor," p. 6.

27. James P. Comer and Alvin Poussaint, Black Child Care: How to Bring Up a Black Child in America—A Guide to Emotional and Psychological Development (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1975), pp. 22-23, 19-21.

28. See, e.g., Thomas Morgan, "The World Ahead: Black Parents Prepare Their Children for Pride and Prejudice," New York Times Magazine, October 27, 1985, pp. 32-35.

29. Claude Brown, Manchild in the Promised Land (New York: Signet, 1965).

30. Claude Brown, "Manchild in Harlem" New York Times Magazine, September 16, 1984, pp. 38-40. See also Douglas, "Future of continue

Young Black Men"; "When Brother Kills Brother," Time, September 16, 1985, PP. 32-36.

31. "Welcome, America, to the Baby Bust," Time, February 23, 1987, p. 28.

32. Id., p. 29. See also "Growing Up Poor."

33. John Edgar Wildeman, Brothers and Keepers (New York: Penguin, 1984), pp. 57-58, 64.

34. See Williams, Eyes on the Prize ; Higginbotham, In the Matter of Color ; Winthrop D. Jordan, White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550-1812 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1968); Julius Lester, To Be A Slave (New York: Dell, 1968); Herbert Aptheker, Nat Turner's Slave Rebellion (New York: Grove Press, 1966); Kenneth Stampp, The Era of Reconstruction, 1865-1877 (New York: Vintage Books, 1965); Kenneth Stampp, The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Antebellum South (New York: Vintage Books, 1956).

35. See National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (Kerner Commission), Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders: Summary of Report (New York: Bantam Books, 1968; New York: A. Philip Randolph Institute, 1970), pp. 9-16, 5. See also "The Cycle of Despair," Life, educational reprint, March 8, 1968. For an account of how local governments, through the unequal distribution of municipal services, helped to create the impoverished conditions under which many African Americans now live, see Haar and Fessler, Wrong Side of the Tracks .

36. Statistics on the unemployment rate are found in U.S. Bureau of the Census, Current Population Reports: The Social and Economic Status of the Black Population in the United States—An Historical View, 1970-1978, Special Studies Series P-23, Publication no. 80 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1979), pp. 69, 70. See also Farley and Allen, Color Line, p. 214, figure 8.1. On the poverty rate, see U.S. Bureau of the Census, Current Population Reports: The Social and Economic Status of the Black Population, 1970-1978, pp. 29, 49, 50. On income levels, see Smith and Welch, Closing the Gap, p. 104. See also U.S. Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1971, 92d ed. (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1972), p. 316; U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970, pt. 1, G (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1975), pp. 189-256.

37. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Current Population Reports: The Social and Economic Status of the Black Population, 1970-1978, p. 74.

38. Smith and Welch, Closing the Gap, pp. 6, 23-26. break

39. Statistics on housing are taken from U.S. Bureau of the Census, Current Population Reports: The Social and Economic Status of the Black Population, 1970-1978, pp. 137, 139, 141. Statistics on education are taken from id., p. 93.

40. Carl Rowan, "The Blacks Among Us," Reader's Digest, June 1985, p. 72.

41. "Strivers and Defeatists," New York Times, November 2, 1986, sec. 4 (Week in Review).

42. Rowan, "The Blacks Among Us," pp. 74-75.

43. National Advisory Commission, Report, pp. 15-16.

44. See, e.g., "When Brother Kills Brother."

45. James Baldwin, The Evidence of Things Not Seen, (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1985), p. 19.

46. Fiss, "Theory of Fair Employment Laws," pp. 237-240. For a more detailed discussion of racial sensibility, see Brooks, "Life After Tenure." For a discussion of other deleterious psychosocial consequences of racism, see Oscar A. Barbarin et al., eds., Institutional Racism and Community Competence, DHHS Publication no. (ADM) 81-907 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1981); Alexander Thomas and Samuel Sillen, Racism and Psychiatry (New York: Brunner/Mazel, 1972); Joel Kovel, White Racism: A Psychohistory (New York: Vintage Books, 1970).

47. These statistics are reported in Sheldon H. Danziger, Robert H. Haveman, and Robert D. Plotnick, "Antipoverty Policy: Effects on the Poor and the Nonpoor," in Fighting Poverty: What Works and What Doesn't, ed. Sheldon H. Danziger and Daniel H. Weinberg (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986), pp. 50-77; and Kornblum and Julian, Social Problems, pp. 232-234.

48. National Opinion Research Center, General Social Surveys, 1972-1983, p. 117; Converse et al., American Social Attitudes, pp. 61, 91. See also Chapter 3 for further discussion.

49. See, e.g., Greg J. Duncan, Years of Poverty, Years of Plenty (Ann Arbor: Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, 1984); Mary Jo Bane, "Household Composition and Poverty," in Danziger and Weinberg, Fighting Poverty, pp. 209-231.

50. Wilson, The Truly Disadvantaged, pp. 7, 30, 49, 56, 60-61, 143-144, 160.

51. See "Strivers and Defeatists."

52. Comer and Poussaint, Black Child Care, pp. 19-21.

53. Wilson, The Truly Disadvantaged, p. 60. A recent article (Donald S. Massey and Mitchell L. Eggers, "The Ecology of Inequality: Minorities and the Concentration of Poverty, 1970-1980," American Jour - soft

nal of Sociology 95 (March 1990): 1153-1188) confirms the view that African American interclass spatial separation has increased since the 1960s, but questions the importance of this trend in explaining the emergence of "concentrated urban poverty." Among the article's empirical findings that challenge this relationship are the following: the "highest levels of interclass segregation are observed in black communities notable for their lack of concentrated black poverty (e.g., Anaheim, San Jose), while metropolitan areas with very high concentrations of black poverty (e.g., New York, Philadelphia, and Detroit) have low to moderate levels of segregation by income" (id., p. 1171). As important as these findings are, they do not, however, measure the degree of interclass social and cultural interaction or otherwise disprove the theory advanced in this book that increased interclass separation helps to explain the emergence of the underclass subculture, especially dysfunction and self-destruction (see p. 121). Moreover, the article defines the African American underclass solely in terms of urban poverty, failing to differentiate among the working poor, the welfare poor, and other subgroups within the poverty class as discussed earlier in this chapter. The article simply demonstrates that upper-income migration from African American ghettoes fails to account for concentrated African American poverty; it says little about the relationship between that exodus and the African American underclass subculture.

54. James Comer, "Black Americans' Problems Are the Orphan of History," Los Angeles Times, February 14, 1986, pt. 2, sec. J.

55. See, for example, the discussion in Chapter 3 concerning insufficient resources in predominantly African American public schools.

56. Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987), p. 91. Bloom expressly criticizes African American college students who have "veered off toward black separation" by demanding "segregated tables in dining halls" and "separation in housing and in areas of study" (meaning African American studies programs).