Talk:Underclass

Work?

The underclass don't work for a living, they scrounge, steal and swindle, working class people work for a living.

While it is true that underclass persons do not work, most are not scoundrels or criminals. Many are disabled and for one reason or another are not able to participate in the labor force. Sociologist Leonard Beeghley at the University of Florida actually made a point in stating that "suprisingly few use guns to alter their economic position." (Beeghley, 2004) Signature^brendel 17:42, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

It all depends on which of the four groups of the underclass is being referred to.

However, disabled or not, the underclass does not work, so that should be reflected in the article. --Mender (talk) 22:33, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Some underclass people work, mostly in unskilled, manual jobs. They often go from one low-paid, dead-end, unskilled, temporary job to another. Many have periods of unemployment between such jobs, but to make the blanket statement that underclass people do not work is incorrect. A person living in severe poverty who relies on welfare benefits as their job does not pay them enough money to live is underclass, and often categorised as such due to their welfare dependency and inability to fully fund their own living expenses. Gerhard Gruber (talk) 03:48, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

This statement is correct. Joblessness is not a necessary condition of the underclass. I added a quote by WJ Wilson on this page that includes "low-paying jobs" in the definition of the underclass. Joshseim (talk) 15:07, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

Popularized the term underclass?

I don't think so a quick google scholar search shows that there are MANY articles using this term in their title and text before Murray's book. futurebird 19:58, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Ian Duncan Smith is a great believer in the 'undeserving poor', as one can see in every aspect of his benefit reforms bill in the UK at present. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.42.227.11 (talk) 00:48, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Gunnar Myrdal, a Swedish scholar writing in the early 1960s, is often cited as the first academic to use the term. Joshseim (talk) 16:51, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Equating the Underclass with the Poor?

I'm writing in reference to the following statement included in the "Defining the Underclass" section, "The notion of a social underclass in contemporary American societies is widely disputed among social scientists and philosophers. The size of this underclass depends on how it is defined. Defined simply as the “Poor”, the underclass grew from 29.3 million people in 1980 to 36 million in 1997, with non-Hispanic white-poor dropping from 19.7 million to 16.5 million people, blacks growing from 8.6 to 9 million, and Hispanics growing from 3.5 to 9 million poor."

Who defines the underclass simply as the poor? The underclass concept is distinct from general notions of the "poor." I suggest the statement I quoted above be removed from this article unless somebody can cite a scholar or journalist who actually equates these terms. Joshseim (talk) 15:00, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

Advancing this Article

Greetings,

I'm a PhD student in the Department of Sociology at UC Berkeley. As part of my coursework, I will be editing and expanding this artice. My primary goal is to expand coverage of the "urban underclass." Below is a working list of readings that I intend to use in the coming months. I will continuously update this list. It is also my hope that fellow Wikipedians will share suggested readings in response to this discussion section.

a. Anderson, Elijah. 1990. Streetwise: Race, Class, and Change in an Urban Community. Chicago IL: The University of Chicago Press.

b. Anderson, Elijah. 1999. Code of the Street: Decency, Violence, and the Moral Life of the Inner City. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.

c. Marks, Carole. 1991. “The Urban Underclass.” Annual Review of Sociology. 17:445-66.

d. Small, Mario Luis and Katherine Newman. 2001. “Urban Poverty After the Truly Disadvantaged: The Rediscovery of the Family, the Neighborhood, and Culture.” Annual Review of Sociology 27:23-45.

e. Wacquant, Loic. 2008. Urban Outcasts: A Comparative Sociology of Advanced Marginality. Malden, MA: Polity Press.

f. Wacquant, Loic L.D., and William Julius Wilson. 1989. “The Cost of Racial and Class Exclusion in the Inner City.” The Annals of the American Academy 501:8-25.

g. Wilson, William Julius. 1987. The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy. Chicago IL: The University of Chicago Press.

h. Wilson, William Julius and Robert Aponte. 1985. “Urban Poverty.” Annual Review of Sociology 11:231-58.

Joshseim (talk) 17:23, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Recent Addition to Underclass Definition

[Below is a recent addition I made to the defining the underclass section. I may include some of Ken Auletta's notions soon. Please respond with directions to other authors/readings with general conceptions of the underclass. I am happy to review and integrate other definitions.]

Erik Olin Wright defines the underclass as a “category of social agents who are economically oppressed but not consistently exploited within a given class system.”[3] The underclass occupies the lowest possible rung on a class ladder, below the working class. According to Wright, the underclass are oppressed because they are generally denied access to the labor market, and thus they are “not consistently exploited” because the opportunity for their economic exploitation is minimal. In other words, unlike the working class, which is routinely exploited for their labor power, the underclass generally does not hold the labor power worthy of exploitation. Wright argues,

“The material interests of the wealthy and privileged segments of American society would be better served if these people simply disappeared…The alternative, then, is to build prisons, to cordon off the zones of cities in which the underclass live. In such a situation the main potential power of the underclass against their oppressors comes from their capacity to disrupt the sphere of consumption, especially through crime and other forms of violence, not their capacity to disrupt production their control over labor.” [4]

This quote partly concerns the spaces and locations for the underclass. The underclass generally occupies specific zones in the city. Thus, the notion of an underclass is popular in urban sociology, and particularly in accounts of urban poverty. The term “underclass” and the phrase “urban underclass” are, for the most part, used interchangeably.[5] Studies concerning the post-civil rights African American ghetto often include a discussion of the urban underclass. Many writings concerning the underclass, particularly in America, are urban-focused.

William Julius Wilson’s 1978 book, The Declining Significance of Race[6], and his 1987 book, The Truly Disadvantaged[7], are popular analyses of the black urban underclass. Wilson defines the underclass as “a massive population at the very bottom of the social ladder plagued by poor education and low-paying jobs." [8]

Elijah Anderson’s, 1990 book, Streetwise[9], employs ethnographic methods to study a gentrifying neighborhood, “The Village” (pseudonym), bordering a black ghetto, “Northton” (pseudonym), in an American city. Anderson provides the following description of the underclass in this ghetto,

“The underclass of Northton is made up of people who have failed to keep up with their brethren, both in employment and sociability. Essentially they can be seen as victims of the economic and social system. They make up the unemployed, the underskilled, and the poorly educated, even though some hold high-school diplomas. Many are intelligent, but they are demoralized by racism and the wall of social resistance facing them. In this context they loose perspective and lack an outlook and sensibility that would allow them to negotiate the wider system of employment and society in general.” [10]

Joshseim (talk) 17:38, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Underclass and Journalism Section

[I have added the following section concerning American journalists' use of the term "underclass." The academic literature on the underclass, particularly by critics of the urban underclass terminology, often point to journalistic accounts. The Time Magazine article I reference seems to be the most frequently citied pop media illustration of the underclass. However, this section is in clear need of expansion. I encourage fellow wikipedians to summarize and cite other newspaper or newsmagazine articles on this topic. Also, I have thumbnail image for the cover of this Time Magazine issue, but unfortunately, due to copyright issues, I cannot post it without Time's permission.].

Throughout the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, the term "underclass" was also employed by American journalists. Most notably, a 1977 Time Magazine cover story titled, “The American Underclass” describes a population of Americans “removed the American dream.” According to this article, members of the underclass face an absence of decent jobs, welfare dependency, racism, and other barriers to social mobility. An early passage from the article details the underclass term as a

“common description of people who are seen to be stuck more or less permanently at the bottom, removed from the American dream. Though its members come from all races and live in many places, the underclass is made up mostly of impoverished urban blacks, who still suffer from the heritage of slavery and discrimination. The universe of the underclass is often a junk heap of rotting housing, broken furniture, crummy food, alcohol and drugs. The underclass has been doubly left behind: by the well-to-do majority and by the many blacks and Hispanics who have struggled up to the middle class, or who remain poor but can see a better day for themselves or their children. Its members are victims and victimizers in the culture of the street hustle, the quick fix, the rip-off and, not least, violent crime.”[24] Joshseim (talk) 13:36, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Critiques of the Underclass Concept Section

[I recently added a new section - "Critiques of the Underclass Concept." Please help me develop this subsection by expanding the mentioned critiques. Also, I'm thinking that it may be wise to include a section before this one outlining the politicization of the underclass. In other words, we could briefly compare and contrast how the political left and the political right have traditionally employed the term "underclass."]

Following the popularization of the underclass concept in both academic and journalistic writings, some academics began overtly critiquing underclass terminology. Those in opposition to the underclass concept generally argue that the word “underclass” has become a homogenizing term that simplifies a heterogeneous group on the one hand, and a derogatory term that demonizes the urban poor on the other hand.[25] [26] Also, many who counter the underclass notion suggest that “underclass” has been transformed into a code word to refer to poor inner-city blacks.[27] For example, Hilary Silver highlights a moment when David Duke, former Grand Wizard of the KKK, campaigned for Louisiana Governor by complaining about the “welfare underclass.”[28] The underclass concept has been politicized, with those from the political left arguing that joblessness and insufficient welfare gives rise the underclass while the political right employ the underclass term to refer to welfare dependency and moral decline.[29] Many sociologists suggest that this latter rhetoric – the right-wing perspective – became dominant in mainstream accounts of the underclass during the later decades of the twentieth-century.[30]

Herbert Gans is one of the most vocal critics of the underclass concept. Gans suggests that American journalists, inspired partly by academic writings on the “culture of poverty,” reframed “underclass” from a structural term (i.e., defining the underclass in reference to conditions of social structure) into a behavioral term (i.e., defining the underclass in reference to rational choice and/or in reference to a subculture of poverty).[31] Gans suggests that the word “underclass” has become synonymous with impoverished blacks who behave in criminal, deviant, or “just non-middle-class ways.” [32]

Loïc Wacquant deploys a relatively similar critique by arguing that “underclass” has become a blanket term that frames urban blacks as behaviorally and culturally deviant.[33] Wacquant notes that underclass status is imposed on urban blacks from outside and above them (e.g., by journalists, politicians, and academics), stating that “underclass” is a derogatory and “a negative label that nobody claims or invokes except to pin it on to others.”[34] And, although the underclass concepts is homogenizing, Wacquant argues that underclass imagery differentiates on gender lines, with the underclass male being depicted as a violent “gang banger,” a physical threat to public safety, and the underclass female being generalized as “welfare mother”(also see welfare queen), a “moral assault on American values.” [35]

These charges against underclass terminology have motivated replacement terms. For example, William Julius Wilson, sympathetic to criticisms brought against underclass terminology (particularly those criticisms posited by Gans), begins to replace his use of the term underclass with “ghetto poor” during the early 1990s.[36] For Wilson this is simply a replacement in terminology in an attempt to revamp the framing of inner-city poverty as being structurally rooted. He states, “I will substitute the term ‘ghetto poor’ for the term ‘underclass’ and hope that I will not lose any of the subtle theoretical meaning that the latter term has had in my writings.”[37] Gans also suggests replacing underclass terminology, but instead of “ghetto poor” he suggests the term “undercaste."[38] Unlike Wilson’s replacement, Gans is not simply calling for a replacement term, but a revised concept altogether. For Gans, the position of the so-called “underclass” is better-suited for paradigms of caste stratification than class stratification. He conceptualizes the undercaste as “a population of such low status as to be shunned by the rest of the society, with opportunities for contact with others of higher status and upward mobility even more limited than those of the people today described as an underclass.”[39] In closing this conception, Gans admits hesitation in advancing a notion of undercaste – an other umbrella term “open to anyone who wishes to place new meaning, or a variety of stereotypes, accusations and stigmas under it” – but argues that undercaste is nevertheless a suitable term worthy of replacing the politically charged language of the underclass.[40] Joshseim (talk) 17:50, 7 October 2011 (UTC)