Reviewed by Robert Fleming
William Julius Wilson, the leading sociologist of race and class in recent memory, is a very smart man. In fact, Wilson has received a MacArthur “Genius Grant,” awarded a National Medal of Science, and has been deemed one of Time Magazine’s 25 “Most Influential People in America.” It’s hard to be convinced when Wilson speaks on race and class as he does so aptly in his new book, More Than Just Race.
With the long-awaited election of President Barack Obama, a Black man, whites in America feel that the issue of race and bigotry is not the hot button issue that it once was. Wilson, author of The Declining Significance of Race, says not so fast, reminding us that poverty, violence, and hopelessness in our inner cities are still dire plagues that threaten the promise of homeland security. The Hood, with its many dangerous projects and drug crimes, seems to be stuck in a time warp, as if the progress of the nation has passed it by.
The debate over poverty in the inner city has been split down political party lines. Conservatives in the GOP think racism is not the underlying problem, instead they consider the morality and character of the poor to be the preventive restricting progress. They list loose morals, violence, family instability, and poor planning rather than the barrier of racism from denying them the American Dream. Liberals from the Democrat party think it’s the emotional and psychological residue from slavery and Jim Crow that cripples the poor.
The Harvard sociologist Wilson uses all of his previous research from two decades in his new book to state systemic and institutional barriers and cultural liabilities that hinder the poor from shedding the ghetto and poverty. Combining all of these elements to frame a new context to hold the disadvantaged in place, he addresses the three crucial areas that spell disaster for those living in poverty: the enduring status of the inner-city ghetto, the tragedy of the unprepared, unschooled Black male, and the decline of the Black family.
Wilson probes the structural barriers put in place by the Federal government before 1960, illegal lending practice and racial redlining, flight of urban jobs due to automation and overseas labor, and higher employment standards for better paying jobs. After the Black middle class fled the inner city, the poor and the unskilled were left to their own devices, isolated, less healthy, and totally out of the employment loop.
Black men, young and old, are left behind in the rigid confines of the ghetto, with no school degrees and few employment prospects. Desperate, they can barely provide for themselves, or the numerous children born out of wedlock , so they abandon the women and their families, Wilson argues. The statistics he offers are compelling and lend weight to his social theories. Their women assume the risky role of single motherhood and the youngsters are reared in broken homes where the cycle of crime and despair are repeated over and over. Wilson defends the infamous Daniel Patrick Moynihan report, “The Negro Family: The Case For National Action” (1965), saying it was fine as far as it went, but its general condemnation cancelled any possibility for a national dialogue of ghetto poverty.
Much of this book makes Wilson sound like a liberal, but what white critics miss is how he is saying that there must be a truthful, unbiased conversation on poverty and race. He lauds President Obama for trying to start that process yet he knows that the right wing conservatives will not permit that dialogue.
“If, in America, you can grow up to be anything you want to be, then any destiny – even poverty –can be rightly viewed through the lens of personal achievement or failure,” Wilson writes. “Certainly it’s true that most Americans have little direct knowledge or understanding of the complex nature of race and poverty in the inner city, and therefore broadly based cultural explanations that focus on personal character are more likely to gain acceptance.”
When Wilson stresses that the cure to the thorny problem of the poor can be found in eliminating the persistent power of racism and improving the American economy, he realizes that his theories will be resisted by liberal and conservative alike. The poor have very few friends and the acclaimed author knows that. Overall, this is probably one of the finest books on race and poverty Wilson has written and it surely deserves our attention.