Social Isolation or Poverty Culture: Rhetorical Manifestations of Attribution Bias

In “The Truly Disadvantaged,” Williams Julius Wilson provides an interesting perspective to the complexities and challenges facing the “underclass” and the rhetoric used by liberals and conservatives in discussing issues such as poverty. In regards to the back and forth dialogue between two vastly different approaches to the topic, Wilson recognizes that both sides have taken extreme stances. Liberals, he suggests, focus primarily on external factors, such as racism, when explaining poverty. Conservatives on the other hand tend to focus on internal factors, such as personal characteristics like laziness or poor life choices. This debate is evident and made common in political and social discourse. When discussing issues such as welfare individuals often take one of these two perspectives, suggesting poverty is either entirely socially constructed or entirely personally constructed. The problem with such assertions is that this conversation has become dichotomic. From a privileged perspective we have largely come to ignore the interplay between these two forces, the push and pull between culture and external social factors, and that as poverty is perpetuated the two are largely inextricable. Although Wilson recognizes the faults in both stances on the issue, he suggests that the liberal perspective (focusing on the systematic forces at play) carries most relevance in alleviating the challenges facing the underclass. In order to do this however, he suggests a defensive stance which avoids stigmatizing language and relies on oversimplifying the issue must be abandoned and instead consideration must be given to the relationship between poverty culture and how it is a construct of social isolation.

For some, Wilson’s stance is nuanced in regards to the cultural or societal argument. However, social evidence suggests the complications facing the underclass are primarily dictated by external factors. We see this in the ways in which impoverished communities are created and ultimately perpetually sustained. Populations struck with poverty are experiencing the effects of de-industrialization, that is a movement of jobs and businesses out of the city centers. In the wake of a resulting exodus those left behind are thrust into a depraved economy, facing a loss of jobs and lack of resources. Ultimately these communities become isolated from mainstream society. It is this aspect of the underclass that appears to perpetuate the challenges of poverty. While the rest of society may progress around them, these concentrated impoverished areas are left further behind, separated from the rest of society by both physical and social limitations with little chance for change. 

Although it is evident that these areas are formed through these shifts in society some people would still argue the complications of poverty are inherent in poverty culture, and yet this logic relies on analyzing behavior within the "underclass" in order to explain said behavior. This flawed explanation gives no conclusion as to where "poverty culture" originated. Wilson argues this can be traced to these social forces previously explained. In this regard, the rhetoric surrounding poverty seems more detrimental than beneficial; given both perspectives we see that they are largely rooted in an attribution bias, that is we either explain them based purely on external factors or internal characteristics. Rather than consider the interplay between culture and social influence, the dialect seems to focus on only one or the other and on making the other side defensive. In order to ameliorate the effects of poverty, as Wilson suggests, we must change the way we view and discuss poverty and focus on how society influences and shapes culture in order to understand how this gap can be reduced.