William Julius Wilson changed the way scholars saw urban poverty.
Did it make a difference?
My new article looks at the influence of Wilson’s classic 1987 book, The Truly Disadvantaged. The Harvard sociologist’s book stimulated an enormous volume of research about inner-city neighborhoods, and it also shaped public policy. Yet 25 years after its publication, hardly anyone is talking about poverty. Not since the early 1960s has the issue received so little attention.
Here’s an excerpt from the story:
Jacqueline lived in one of the most toxic environments in urban America. If you’ve seenThe Wire, HBO’s series about crime and punishment in Baltimore, you can picture daily life in her neighborhood on that city’s West Side. Drug dealers. Junkies. Shootings. Her high-rise housing project felt like a concrete cell. Jacqueline, a single mother with a sick child, was desperate to escape.
Then she got a ticket out. In the…
View original post 287 more words
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
Recent Comments