Attacking the Racial Isolation of the Underclass: Explanations and Strategies for a New Era
Public Deposited- Creator
-
Godschalk, David K.
- Affiliation: School of Law
- Abstract
- Twenty-five years after the Kerner Commission issued its report on urban poverty and civil disorders, urban African-American communities face a situation that has grown steadily worse. The most blatant legal obstacles to African-Americans have been struck down, but societal discrimination and economic inequality still prevent many blacks from enjoying a status that is truly equal. As the nation's population has become more urban, the populations of the central cities have become disproportionately African-American, Hispanic, and Asian. Poverty in America has decreased in non-metropolitan areas while growing rapidly in the central cities. The impact of this increase has fallen most heavily on residents of the 'ghetto neighborhoods' described by the Kerner Commission, sixty-five percent of whom are African-Americans. The number of poor persons living in ghetto neighborhoods increased by 30 percent between 1970 and 1980, at which time almost a third of all metropolitan blacks lived in a ghetto. Recent studies have suggested that a fundamental change in the nature of urban poverty has accompanied its statistical increase. These studies point to the existence of a new sociological group: the 'urban underclass.' While there is no firm consensus over how the underclass differs from what used to be known as the lower class, there is general agreement that the underclass is characterized by high levels of joblessness, illiteracy, violence, despair, and a growing economic, spatial, and cultural isolation from "mainstream" America.
- Date of publication
- 1993
- DOI
- Resource type
- Article
- Rights statement
- In Copyright
- Journal title
- Carolina Planning Journal
- Journal volume
- 19
- Journal issue
- 1
- Page start
- 56
- Page end
- 63
- Language
- English
- Digital collection
- Carolina Planning Journal
Relations
- Parents:
- In Collection:
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