Word: underclass
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Close to half of American black families have advanced to the middle class, but their rise has only increased the frustration of an underclass that sees no way up. Says Harvard Social Psychologist Robert Bales: "When economic conditions get better, those who are left behind get angrier." Before their eyes dance television programs and commercials that show everybody enjoying a cornucopia of consumer goods-as if everybody should have them as a natural right. They feel no stake in a society that seems to deny them the opportunity to acquire those goods. Northwestern Political Scientist Ted Gurr, co-author...
Like most other experts, Harvard Sociologist Talcott Parsons is "skeptical" that the pillage in New York would set off a new nationwide wave of disturbances. But behaviorists generally believe that, given a similar combination of total darkness, blistering heat and simmering anger on the part of an underclass, much the same kind of riotous looting could erupt in almost any other city...
...narcotics smuggling. Last week in New York City, an illegal Panamanian immigrant shot two policemen when they tried to arrest him in the course of a drug sale; one was killed. Says Charles Knapp, a troubleshooter for the U.S. Labor Department: "We're setting up a whole new underclass of people who are essentially outside...
...social therapy, and like personal therapy it is not easy." Kenneth Tollett, director of Washington's Institute for the Study of Education Policy, calls for busing to undergo "almost a cost-benefit analysis" to determine its worth. He notes further: "The difference is not blacks v. whites but underclass v. middle class...
...zone operates its own courts, hospital, schools and even postal service, but few of the 15,000 Panamanians who work there share in the luxury. They remain largely an underclass; of 214 Canal pilots, for example, only two are Panamanian, the rest U.S. citizens. Outside the zone, per capita income averages about $1,000 annually, dropping to $123 for the lowest fifth of the population. Inside the zone, it approximates the U.S. middle class norm. Until recently, even the zone's water fountains were segregated-some for Zonians only, others for the Panamanians...