Cogently he argues that the Great Society architects thought that creating educational, training, and development programs would, by their very existence, simply cause poverty to shrink. There was very little analysis of the impact that changes in the US economy would have - not only on the programs, but on the beneficiaries. One telling indication that his finger is on the correct pulse - economics - is this: in nearly every year that unemployment has risen and wages have fallen, poverty has grown worse, yet "when the economy has picked up, poverty has lessened."
There are a couple of things that are significant about this book, which, even now, 14 years later, makes it one of the more useful and original analyses even done on US urban problems.
(1) When it was written, in the late 1980's the economic trends that Mr Wilson so clearly elucidates as the problem were still largely unstudied, especially the interconnectivity and complexity of the issues. Mr Wilson says conservative writers such as Charles Murray are incorrect when they proclaim that because poverty rates were as high in the 1980's as they were in the 1960's, the Great Society programs were failures. This neglects, or conveniently ignores, the fact that there was a doubling of the unemployment rate, which disproportionately affected blacks. The causes of huge unemployment rates amongst young black men are less to do with racism, but more the following: the mechanization of southern agriculture, the large number of baby-boomers and white women who entered the labor market in the 1970's, and the profound shift of the economy from manufacturing to service industries. Blacks were heavily represented in manufacturing and the decline in key sectors such as automobile, rubber, and steel had a particularly deleterious effect on black employment.
(2) While it can be seen that THE TRULY DISADVANTAGED was in part, a response to conservative analyses of the issues, this book is not a rhetorical rejoinder. There was significant new material brought forward by Mr Wilson and the focus was on an objective assessment of cause; not on ascribing blame to racism, culture, or government policy. I remember reading UNHEAVENLY CITY REVISITED as part of an Urban Studies course at college in the 1980's and what has remained with me, and is heightened when compared with Mr Wilson's book, is the rather shallow analysis of the former, and its emphasis on cultural and social factors as determinants for urban decay. I graduated before Mr Wilson's book was published, so have no idea if it was used as a text. It should be.
This book stands as an insightful look into the causes of urban decay and poverty; it highlighted economic trends that were not seen by others and it came out at a time when competing scholars were offering only narrow, single source answers. If you prefer one of the latter, there is non better than LOSING GROUND which lays the blame for black poverty squarely at the feet of government policy.
"A book is a version of the world. If you do not like it, ignore it; or offer your own version in return" (Salman Rushdie)
We're still waiting for an equally well-reasoned and rounded version as this one.
I believe that this is a worth while book for any reader trying to understand the complexities of the urban poor.
