Illuminating the Urban Underclass

By looking at poverty through an economic perspective, William Julius Wilson brings to the table new ideas that add insight and help to refocus the liberal perspective of the past. This is important because until then, issues involving poverty had either focused too much on blaming racism and ignoring the problems that an extremely impoverished class even existed or, on the other side, blaming the individual and welfare. His explanation is crucial for sociologists, and society at large, to understand so that poverty can be viewed in terms of the effects of the economy and joblessness. First it is necessary to understand his concept of the urban underclass. This includes the people in poverty lacking skills and training in areas that have high rates of joblessness, out-of-wedlock births, female-headed households, crime, and violence. He uses this definition, instead of just “lower class” because it better emphasizes the reality of the situation many of these people deal with daily. After a time of deindustrialization and depopulation, this urban underclass experiences intense social isolation and well as concentration effects which I will discuss in detail later. Though Wilson relates his ideas to the city of Chicago throughout the 1970’s, his concepts are still relatable today.

Due to deindustrialization, the shift from an abundance of factory jobs in Chicago to the lack thereof, unemployment began to rise drastically. Joblessness is one of the biggest factors affecting the urban underclass and it is largely related to social isolation and concentration effects. In areas like the ghettos of Chicago, these effects are especially relevant. Throughout our readings I kept relating Wilson’s depiction of the urban underclass to the movie Hardball. Even though this is a piece of fiction, I think it is useful in illuminating some of the problems of the urban underclass that much of society might not have personal experience with. In the movie we see the effects of social isolation and joblessness in the community. There is a high level of gang activity because it is an alternative to getting a job in a socially isolated community. Wilson explains how this isolation leads to a lack of job networks in the urban underclass. This means it is difficult to be recommended for jobs or to even become aware of job openings in the area. Additionally, companies do not bring their stores into these areas, further isolating these individuals and preventing employment opportunities. This leads to the participation in the underground economy as a viable option to making enough money to survive. In Hardball, gang violence is the way that G-baby dies at the end of the movie. We also see an abundance of idleness and loitering because many of the members of the projects are jobless. In addition, because of the high levels of violence in these areas, families must constantly be careful to avoid conflict and violence. This is demonstrated in the scene where everyone is sitting below the windows inside of their own apartments because of the real fear that a stray bullet may come in.

Unlike in other neighborhoods where one can find a more mixed variety of income levels, this is not the case for the urban underclass where everyone is poor. People with the means to leave the inner city did so, leaving behind a concentrated group of socially isolated individuals. This means that children do not grow up seeing the possible alternative ways of life that many people have. They do not see full-time working members of society leaving for work in the morning and getting home at night. They do not see the success one can enjoy after finishing high school or the alternatives to life on welfare. Instead, they see a disregard for education. They see ways of making money that involve crime and killing. They see a single-mother as the head of the household as the norm. Because of this sort of homogeneity of lifestyles, alternatives do not seem apparent. This is seen in Hardball when one of the baseball players with real potential dropped out of the team and stopped showing up to school because he had joined a gang. In these highly concentrated areas of poverty, joblessness and other factors are the most devastating. Though it seems that Wilson begins to approach a “culture of poverty” stance when discussing the idea of community role models, these effects are all the result of the greater economic structures at play.

             The kids in the movie lived in one of the Chicago projects that are now torn down. It is interesting to contemplate where youngsters like these ended up when they were forced to leave their home. On a positive note, it is possible that some of them were able to make it into some of the available mixed-income housing or suburban areas that provided many more luxuries than they had before. Maybe these kids were able to go to a better school and receive the education they deserve. Unfortunately, others probably were enveloped in aspects of gang activity and crime that plague such socially isolated areas. By using Wilson’s perspective on the underclass one can get a better view of the economic reasons behind such poverty while also understanding the concentration effects and social isolation that individuals endure.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o80wKKJI6uc