Taking an objective approach, Massey and Denton identify what they deem the most important factor in understanding race relations and the persistence of racial inequality: residential segregation. Once the most commonly cited explanation by sociologists, the separation of black and white neighborhoods was the basis for numerous studies and the eventual Supreme Court decision, Brown v. Board of Education, and its resultant school desegregation programs. Following this decision and the passing of the Civil Rights Act (1964), Voting Rights Act (1965), and the Fair Housing Act (1968), many politicians declared the problem was solved, civil rights leaders stopped pressing for reforms, and the term "segregation" fell into disuse.
The national debate on poverty continued, employing four different theoretical explanations that all lacked this crucial factor:
Cultural explanations centered on a "culture of poverty" established by social structure that took on a life of its own, self-perpetuating by imposing "a lack of impulse control, a strong present-time orientation, and little ability to defer gratification" on the urban poor. Once a part of this "culture", a person is instilled with cultural values that allow poverty (and its culture) to persist in the urban "underclass".
Racism explanations arose in response to the cultural explanations, which many had taken out of context (popularly and scholarly) and transformed into "a self-serving ideology that 'blamed the victim'". Upheld by more liberal theorists, these explanations blamed institutional racism, primarily in schools and economy, for keeping blacks poor and dependent.
Welfare explanations came about towards the end of the 1970s primarily to criticize the liberal welfare policies that had taken effect. These explanations accused the programs of "alter[ing] the incentives governing the behavior of poor men and women" to work less for a free handout instead of working hard for a salary, or of undermining poor Americans' independence and confidence by not demanding anything of them in exchange for free aid and services. Ultimately, the prevalence of these explanations would lead to the political success and actual failure of welfare reform in the 1990s.
Economic explanations, put forth by liberal social scientists, point to the changing inner-city economy: "the decline of manufacturing, the suburbanization of employment, and the rise of a low-wage service sector [that] dramatically reduced the number of city jobs that paid wages sufficient to support a family". Due to past discrimination, blacks were concentrated in areas that are now suffering the most from economic restructuring.
What the authors argue is that all four sets of explanations fail to consider the presence or importance of segregation. Massey and Denton reject the "culture of poverty" argument, claiming instead that it's a "culture of segregation", that "segregation created the structural conditions for the emergence of an oppositional culture... often hostile to success in the larger economy". They agree with the idea of institutional racism, and add that "residential segregation is the institutional apparatus that supports other racially discriminatory processes and binds them together into a coherent and uniquely effective system of racial subordination." Likewise, they agree with the economic explanation and argue that without segregation, the outcomes of economic restructuring would not have been so disastrous or confined to "densely settled, tightly packed, and geographically isolated areas". They also agree that welfare policies, due to segregation, were confined to these isolated "black ghettos", and they created an environment where poverty and welfare dependency trickled down through the generations. In short, racial segregation is alive and well and is the "principal organizational feature of American society that is responsible for the creation of the urban underclass".
In my opinion, this argument is well-formed and convincing. Most often we hear of segregation in the context of governmental law (especially in the form of Jim Crow Laws), but we don't consider the segregation of social norms or the immobility of those without assets. The four alternative classes of explanation the authors present (culture, racism, welfare, and economy) boil down to "victim of society" arguments, to which I am morally opposed, although the economic explanation is the most credible of the four.
It is startling to learn that ongoing racial segregation is an elephant in the room. Indeed, certain articles I've read and classes I've taken don't acknowledge it as ongoing but suggest that a re-segregation is occurring, or they consider poverty as a matter of class (and race/gender, in intersectionality theory). The idea of segregation is one that should be remembered when discussing racial socioeconomic inequality.
Relevance: 5/5 (very relevant)
Salience: 4/5 (salient)
References:
- Myrdal, Gunmar. 1944. An American Dilemma. - cited in agreement, as an example.
- Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka Kansas. - as an example.
- Clark, Kenneth B. 1965. Dark Ghetto. - cited in agreement.
- Oscar Lewis - cited in disagreement, as a cause. "Cultural explanations for the underclass can be traced to the work of Oscar Lewis, who identified a 'culture of poverty' that he felt promoted patterns of behavior inconsistent with socioeconomic advancement".
- Assistant Secretary of Labor Patrick Moynihan - as an example.
- Edward Banfield - as an example.
- Douglas Glasgow and Alphonso Pinkney - cited in agreement, as an example. "We readily agree with Douglas, Pinkney, and others that racial discrimination is widespread and may even be institutionalized within large sectors of American society..."
- Charles Murray - as an example.
- Lawrence Mead - as an example.
- Wilson, William Julius. 1987. The Truly Disadvantaged. - cited in agreement, as a cause.
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