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7/25/2019 "The Liberal Technocrat"- Adolph L. Reed Jr.
1/5
6, 1988
167
REED
JR.
TRULY DISADVANTAGED:
City, the Underclass, and Pub-
Press.
254
pp.
wing the Reagan years public
discussion about poverty has
:moved considerably o the right
I
to focus on the behavior of the
16 the meaner-spirited versions of
a
logy; according to the better-
s imply a fate
efalls certain types of individu-
on
the one side
a brand of
love to wean the poor from
ntal appeals on behalf of pathetic
who suffer from a disease
poverty. In
William Julius Wilson at-
to
shift the terms of this discus-
away
from such banalities. His in-
are to address the problems of
detail, the policy implications
that analysis. He succeeds to the ex-
that he offers detailed view that
a
broader, more dynamic
N-ly a decade ago Wilson published
of
socioeconomic
mportantthan
of
Americans. The book debated
ylackchol-
severalyears, houghmostof
Ji. associate
is
ofThe. Jesse Jackson Phenomenon
Press The Politi-
Thought of W.E;B. DuBois
Press, also
Race, Politics and Culture: Crit-
Essays on he Radicalism of the
Press .
the criticism
of
it arose of fearsabout
its implications and not from Wilsons
arguments, which were hardly. unsup-
portive of
an
affirmative action agenda.
Of course conservatives have tried to
undercut programs such as affirmative
action by appropriating Wilsons argu-
ment that they are disproportionately
beneficial to upwardly mobileblacks,
but Wilson imself has consistently
maintained that race-specificpolicies,
properly applied, crucial to the
ad-
vancement
of
racial democracy. His
ar-
gument about the declining significance
of race has also been attractive to many
on the left, because it refuses to treat
racism as
a
monolithic force, unaffected
by historical context. What Wilson of-
fers is
a
view of race that links changes
in the character of racial subordination
to shifting pational economic impera-
tives. In folding racial dynamics into
economic dynamics this view sidesteps
the apparent autonomy of racial con-
flict in the United States-a problem
that has long plagued the lefts vision
of
a politics based on interracial solidar-
ity. Moreover, Wilson identifies himself
proudly
as
a social democrat and shows
some initation-at those who have sought
to associate him with black neoconserva-
tism.
Part
of his project in
is to extend his argu-
ment about race
and
economics to the
urban underclass.
Wilsons story is straightforward.
Blacks (and Hispanics) moved into cities
in great numbers just when the econom-
ic hub of urban life was changing from
god-producing o ~~e prod~~
ing activity. But
as a
result
of
that
change, those cities-mainly inhe
Northeast and Midwest-had lost the
sorts
of
lower-skill jobs needed to
accommodate the influx. Clustered in
ghetto neighborhoods because of the
opportunity-structure,blacks
and Hispecs experienced the social
isolation that produced undesirable
concentration effects. The latter in-
clude the well-known tangle-of-patholo-
gy litany-crime, een-age pregnancy,
female-headed families, out-of-wedlock
births and welfare dependency. In
sons view, this dynamic can under-
stood only by recognizing hat it derives
not so much from contemporary racism
as rom heoperation of impersonal
economic and demographic forces.
He takes great pains to distinguish
himself from the culture of poverty
tlieorists-e.g., Murray and the disin
genuous, Nicholas Lemann-who ascri
the intractability of poverty:to the at-
titudes, values and behavior of fie inner
city poor. FprWilson the characteristic
of
ghetto-specific .culture are prag-
matic adaptations to isolation and to
limited opportunity, both ofwhichhave
made it ?difficult to sustain the basic
institutions in these neighborhoods (in-
cluding churches, stores, schools, recre
ational facilities, etc.) in the face of in-
creased joblessness caused -by the fre-
quent recessions during the and
early and changes in the urban
job structure.The deterioration
of
those local institutions has led to socia
disorganization and the decline of ex-
plicit norms and sanctions against aber-
rant behavior.UnlikeLemann,Murray
et al., Wilson argues that the key con-
clusion from a public policy perspectiv
is that programs created to alleviate
poverty, joblessness, and related forms
of
social dislocation should place pri-
mary focus on changing the social and
economic situations, not he cultural
traits, of the ghetto underclass. He
moves from that conclusion to propose
a broad policy offensive based on
versal employment and training pro-
grams open to the general public. But
Wilson supports this view, whichhas its
merits, by a curious reading of Ameri-
can history, according which the
greatest strides in social reform have
been made not through conflict and
struggle but when liberals and conser-
vatives find common ground. (How
can
we fit abolition, suffrage, unioniza-
tion, the New Deal, civil rights or abor
tion rights into that framework?)
Most of the components of Wilsons
implicit agenda seem reasonable enoug
though he neglects to explain where to
find the coalition to form such a con-
sensus. This oversight is not so damn-
ing; he wiiiuld probably respond by say-
ing that specific strategies are not his
job. Moreover, the thrust of this book
lies not in its policy proposals but in its
efforts to make public social policy de-
bate more humane, intellectually honest
and, careful. Unfortunately, on the latter
score; despite good intentions and the
occasional insight or useful fact-e.g,,
that black een-age pregnancy has not
been increasing nd,may be in long-term
7/25/2019 "The Liberal Technocrat"- Adolph L. Reed Jr.
2/5
168
The 6 1
decline- fails
in several very important ways to break
with the premises of the Reagan era~dis-
course on the poor. Thespecific charac-
ter of this failure is certainly worthy of
the lefts attention-especially at
a
time
when the term social democrat is be-
ing applied to everyone who believes in
Social Security, Medicare and public
works employment.
To begin with, Wilsons entire inter-
pretation springs from the conjunction
of two disturbing and retrograde em-
phases, which-surprisingly for such a
distinguished sociologist-remain unex-
amined throughout the book. These
are first, the focus on disorganiza-
tion,aberration, deviance and
pathology that has influenced urban
sociological study at the University of
Chicago since the days of Robert Park
and the Americanization movement f
the World War I eraand, second, a
deeply patriarchal vision of main-
stream life.
When Wilson employs a language
of
social pathology, he is implyinga mode
of social health from which the under-
classdiverges. What is that model?
Because he does not state it explicitly,
we must infer it from his list of aber-
rant behavioral patterns that suppos-
edly define the underclass. On
basis, the healthy mainstream apparent-
ly is characterized by law-abiding, two-
parent families nwhichwomenhave
babies in adulthoo, with
the
imprima-
tur of church and s
t
te. Certainly, crime
and teen pregnancy would be endorsed
by no sensible person, but why should
we be concerned with how adult women
choose to organize their reproductive
activity and conjugal arrangements?
Wilson, has a n answer. The problem
This
is in
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is not that there is anything inherently
bad about female-headed households,
but, becausewomen earn lessmoney
than men, households headed by wom-
en are more likely than others
to
fall
below the poverty line. One might think
that pointwould lead him to call for pay
equity, universal day care and other
initiatives to buttress womens capacities
for living ndependently n the world,
but Wilson goes in exactly the opposite
direction. He defines the ultimate prob-
lem as
a
shortage of marriageable
men-going so faras to construct a
marriageable male pool index-and
argues for targeting employment and
training programs primarily at unem-
ployed young males who will thus be-
come more attractive as potential
spouses. (With respect to illegitimacy,
Wilson, like most underclass theorists,
makes no distinction between out-of-wed-
lock births and teen pregnancies, which
in fact are quite distinct phenomena.)
For all its apparent ingenuousness,
this
view s abominably sexist, not to
mention atavistic. Indeed, Wilsons very
definition of the underclass focuses al-
mosf exclusively on womens behavior.
If
it were not forviolent crime,pathol-
ogy would be recognizable only among
females.Wilson-like Park and the
others in the Chicago pantheon-sug-
gests that the behavioral patterns of the
poor warrant concern because they re-
flect social disorganization, and yet that
argument is undercut by his own insist-
ence that they are pragmatic responses
to structuralenvironment. The problem
is not the social disorganization of the
innerkcity poor, but Wilsons and oth-
ers distaste for, and reluctance
to
exam-
ine the institutional and organizational
forms that the inner-city poor, particu-
larly women,havedevised to survive
and
to
create meaning and dignity in
lives bitterly constrained by forces ap-
parently beyond their control.
Wilsons reflexive antifeminism and
commitment
to
the language of social
pathology account for another element
in his failure to escape the prevailing or-
thodoxy about poverty. The mainstream
propriety that he embraces issteeped
in a nostalgia now prevalent whenever
black intellectuals discuss the problems
of the black community. He recalls wist-
fully the time when lower-class, work-
ing-class, and middle-class black fami-
lies all lived more or less in the same
communities . .
.
sent their children to
the s h e chools, availed themselves of
the same recreational facilities, and
shopped at the same stores. He
members that in the 1940s black
Harlem couldsleepsafely on fire
capes n he summer heat and w
could venture uptown to consume
ture. The fact is that that safe, org
community was a more limited, c
plex and problematic entity than no
gia would allow,and its glue was no
much nuclear, intact families as
imperatives of racial segregation.
Wilson notes that when the stric
of racial subordination were relaxe
blackmiddleclass left the :inner
bantustans, and tohis credit he,doe
much indulge in the self-congrst,ula
prattle, now current among race-
tions engineers, about the black mi
classs special responsibility to
vide role models for thepoor. Yet h
cycles a related component of that
talgic deology in asserting a nee
restore two-parent families wit
regard to the fact that such a projec
nores the structural sources of pove
he describes.Moreover, he seems ob
ous to the danger that the new con
with the black family-like the old
cern with the black family and the o
concern with the immigrant family
an empty, moralistic ideology that s
to stigmatize the poor and enforce p
archal institutions -by appealing
past that may have been largely my
cal anyway, and one that was certa
predicated on the subordination
women. This is
not
to attack the
parent family, but family pol
should enable people to sustain w
ever sorts of iving arrangements
find
most
congenial-not impose
a
sa
sanct model.
There is one last problem with W
sons account, and it has perhaps
mosteriouslyimiting onsequences
for his treatment of poverty and pu
policy and or his broader argum
about race and economics.
is uninformed by
sense of politics as
a
factor in the c
tion and re-creation
of
the social w
Overlooking codified. segregation-
central issue in black life for two-th
of a century-in a paean to he
organic community, proposing a m
roeconomic dating service rather
attacking patterns of wage discrim
tion against women, and reading
flict out of the history of social ref
in the U.S. all exemplify his fai
Most strikingly, though, Wilsons
rative of the origin of the under
focuses exclusively on the role of b
7/25/2019 "The Liberal Technocrat"- Adolph L. Reed Jr.
3/5
6
1988
4 1
nor they create specific out-
hey are the products of con-
human action and in turn create
agendas. The transformationof
storical force but by
combination
of
private investment de-
ns and state action.
This
impetus
that-along with explicitly segrega-
ities in Federal public hous-
off minority communi-
displaced large sectionsof hese
n expressways, office complexes,
centers. There lies
of Wilson's social isolation.''
Wilson's overview leads him to mis-
m in the late and to miscon-
the ole of critics like Bayard
go beyond race to a
a broader program of social de-
ur-
by placing it within a
Without a clearsense
of
political ac-
responsibility, Wilson sees only
In
only
human agency he recog-
is the behavior of the underclass,
has done anything wrong,
contradictions abound. the un-
as a
contends that the un-
will witherawayas
why not define the underclass simply
nd lack of opportuni-
seems o lie at the
of moralistic ideology and patri-
dressed
up
as
social science.
failure to consider the political
of his argument allows Wil-
s. That also
a
weakness
of
of because
of race in the affirmative action ap-
But
it is especially inadequate
discussionof the condition
of
the
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7/25/2019 "The Liberal Technocrat"- Adolph L. Reed Jr.
4/5
170 Nation.
Februarv 6
makes it impossible to distinguish pure-
ly racial from purely economic impera-
tives. Heavily black or Hispanic labor
markets are assumed to be plagued by
low skill levels nd poor work habits;
parcels of land occupied by minorities
are underutilized and ripe for redevel-
opment because the presencef minority
populations lowers market value. Wilson
himself notes that numbers of low-
skill jobs havebeenncreasing na-
tionally butnot irn those cities where
minorities are concentrated. In this con-
text the race/class debate is beside the
point. I t forgets that the logic of mar-
kets isocially and politically con-
structed and that race enters into social
and economic life in complex and indi-
rect ways. While the idea
of
institu-
tional racism is probably an
ron, racial subordination is reproduced
through he impersonal operations of
markets-with or without activedis-
crimination. Wilson rightly notes that
racism-a notion that implies individu-
al instances of prejudice and discrimina-
tion-does not explain the condition of
the underclass; however, like his antag-
onists he acceptsa view that sees only
the alternatives
of
explicit racial dis-
olicy
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crimination and race-blind stru
forces as explanations for black
nomic subordination. This is in pa
cause Wilson cannot see that hist
made by human action. Contrary
imputations of some of his propo
on the left, Wilsons argument doe
juxtapose race and class but race
whichhe treats as be
the scope of social intervention.
-
Finally,
an instructive text for the left as we
the end of Reaganism and, we hop
proach the empowerment of a l
Democratic regime. Wilson ex5mp
the limits of the liberal technocka
sion. ultimate concern is nut
durable patterns of dispossessio
stratification but with apparentl
cidental roadblocks to equal\oppo
ty. Thus, he separates joblessnes
poverty in a way that often eems b
At bottom his viewseems to be
poverty is acceptable (if palliate
maintenance programs) as long a
portunities exist for joining the up
mobility queue.
But what if there
is
no upward m
ity queue-or at least not one eith
enough to accommodate the large p
lations of blacks and
panics or -sturdy enough
to
with
the dynamics of racial and class s
dination? The economy is not ne
with respect to those dynamics. R
its inner logic-driven by concrete
choices-works-systematically to
centrate benefits among some gro
costs
among
others. Blacks, for exa
arenot new migrants who s
happened to show up in cities too
indeed, they have occupied the bo
of the urban social order througho
twentieth century.
Much of Wilsons omnibus socia
gram for jobs andraining is, unde
sent circumstances, a practical first
However, his bias against politic
conflict short-circuits his interpret
of the systemic sources of the unde
and threatens to keep everything i
bile while we wait for liberals and
servatives to form a consensus. In
tion, although hisviewof inne
poverty is some improvement over
of those available in public deba
cently, his habit of seeing the poor
ly as objects of administrative a
leads him to adopt,he language of
al repressiveness and patriarchy.
result, he cannot really free himse
the antidemocratic, Reaganite fram
reference.
= . .
7/25/2019 "The Liberal Technocrat"- Adolph L. Reed Jr.
5/5