Word: underclasses
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...social disintegration within the ghetto. Harvard Government Professor Glenn Loury, one of the leading lights of this new movement, told the Democrats that welfare "makes it possible" for a recipient to remain locked in poverty. Calling for a "frank acknowledgment" of the pathological behavior of some segments of the underclass, he stressed that welfare recipients should be encouraged to develop an "obligation" to improve their situation by taking on the responsibilities of work and family...
...York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who 20 years ago presciently warned of the breakdown of the black ghetto family, rejected the idea that Democratic programs should be blamed for creating a dependency on Government, which aggravated the underclass crisis. "It has become a belief bordering on prejudice," he said, "that the social ills of the present are the consequence of misguided Democratic social policies of the past two generations. None hold to this belief more guiltily, if furtively, than the Democrats." His party, Moynihan observed, is in "worse shape nationally than since the aftermath of the Civil War." He urged...
...discussion demonstrated that important factions of the Democratic Party are now willing to confront the topic of the underclass and think it could work to their political advantage. "If we approach the social question correctly," Cuomo noted, "we will seize the opportunity Reagan has given us." A common theme was that the Democrats must seek effective ways to improve the plight of the poor while not clinging to expensive programs that have not proved helpful. "What worked in 1966 may not work in 1986," said Pennsylvania Congressman William Gray, a black who chairs the House Budget Committee. "Saying that...
Ronald Reagan's economic policies have created a period of general prosperity mixed with a worsening of the plight of the underclass. This has helped prompt a national re-examination of race and poverty, with a focus on the black-family crisis. Just last week the Census Bureau announced that more than 54% of all black children are now born to unwed mothers, compared with 18% for the population as a whole...
...barriers of discrimination. As Chicago Tribune Columnist Mike Royko put it, "I might understand PUSH's concern for Porterfield if he had been flung out of the station door and forced to cadge quarters on a street corner . . . (but) he hasn't exactly become a member of America's underclass...