Word: underclasses
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Rampaging members of the underclass carried out much of the orgy of looting and burning that swept New York's ghettos during the July blackout. (In all, 55% of the arrested looters were unemployed and 64% had been previously arrested for other offenses.) They are responsible for most of the youth crime that has spread like an epidemic through the nation (TIME cover, July 11). Certainly, most members of this subculture are not looters or arsonists or violent criminals. But the underclass is so totally disaffected from the system that many who would not themselves steal or burn...
More black leaders are beginning to make the point that in spite of the continuing racism that is still a barrier to opportunities, the underclass must help itself out of its morass. In his pulpit style, Chicago's the Rev. Jesse Jackson, head of the Operation PUSH self-help group, says: "It is bad to be in the slum, but it is worse when the slum is in you. The spiritual slum is the ultimate tragedy. The victimizer is responsible for us being down, but the victim is responsible for us getting up." Jackson has called for neighborhood volunteers...
...underclass will find that harder to do, given its painful heritage. Encouraging incentive in the underclass, and overcoming the barriers of racism, could take just five or ten years; more likely, the tasks will require a generation or more. The entire society?business, government and ordinary citizens?will have to chip away at the problems. The alternative to progress would be more desperation, hostility, violence and disaffection within the underclass. That is something even the world's wealthiest country would find difficult to afford...
That disaffection is doubly distressing because the nation is in its third year of a strong economic recovery, an advance that has created 6 million new jobs since the end of the 1973-75 recession. No fewer than 90.5 million Americans are now at work. The underclass remains a nucleus of psychological and material destitution despite 20 years of civil rights gains and 13 years of antipoverty programs that were only temporarily slowed, but never really hobbled, during the Nixon era. Tens of billions of dollars are spent every year by the Federal Government, states and cities to eliminate drastic...
...opportunities have splintered the nonwhite population. The brightest and most ambitious have rapidly risen, leaving the underclass farther and farther behind?and more and more angry. While the number of blacks earning more than $10,000 is expanding and the number earning $5,500 to $10,000 is shrinking, almost a third of all black families are still below the poverty line, defined as $5,500 for an urban family of four (only 8.9% of white families are below the line). Says Harvard Sociologist David Riesman: "The awareness that many blacks have been successful means that the underclass is more...