Urban poverty theory comes full Circle -Salim Muwakkil, In These Times (1993)

For decades, debates have raged about the causes of the disproportionate rate of urban black poverty. In the '60s, the "culture of poverty' explanation held sway. This theory blamed the emergence of the underclass on patterns of behavior that were inconsistent with socioeconomic advancement. According to its most enlightened proponents, this culture was a coping mechanism for the chronic social Immobility experienced by those living In areas of concentrated poverty. Those socialized In such a culture were said to lack Impulse control and the ability to defer gratification. The instability of their families led to early sexual Initiations, lack of spousal fidelity and high levels of child abandonment

Perhaps the most prominent proponent of this thinking was Daniel Patrick Moynihan who, as assistant secretary of labor, authored a report that labeled these characteristics "tangles of pathology.' Conservative theorists, seeking ways to discredit President Lyndon Johnson's ambitious War an Poverty, picked up on this argument and used It to blame poverty on Its victims. People were poor because of self-destructive behavior patterns, they insisted. In reaction to this sophistry, liberal theorists began recasting the black family as a beleaguered but resilient Institution under relentless attack by institutional racism.

By the onset of the Reagan revolution, some conservative theorists were employing a new logic. Trumpeting triumphs of a civil rights movement that they had ardently opposed, they argued that blacks now had legal access to American prosperity, but preferred the easy road of welfare dependency.

Charles Murray, in Losing Ground. Social Policy 1950-1980, blamed poverty on the same liberal welfare state that had been designed to eliminate It Murray argued that federal anti-poverty programs altered the Incentives governing the behavior of poor people by reducing the desirability of marriage, Increasing the benefits of unwed childbearing and lessening the lure of menial labor. The welfare state effectively undermined those cultural characteristics that encouraged success, Murray and his legion of acolytes argued.

In the '90s, Murray has dusted off and reinvigorated the argument. It has reappeared In the current debate on welfare reform. Perhaps this Is Murray's way4f belatedly responding to William Julius Wilson, a University of Chicago sociologist and the man most responsible for debunking Losing Ground. Wilson argues that macro-economic shifts were responsible for the peculiar and intractable species of urban poverty that now bedevils us.

Wilson primarily promotes liberal policies to address the problems of the ghetto poor, but he champions a race-neutral approach. This neutrality Is palatable to the "new Democrat' postures of the Clinton administration.

Another University of Chicago sociologist, Douglas Massey, has recently been getting a lot of attention by arguing that racial segregation Is the key structural factor responsible for the perpetuation of black poverty In the United States. Ironically, Massey's diagnosis closely echoes one made bi the Kerner Commission In 1968. The commission established to study the causes of inner-city riots-squarely placed the blame for ghetto poverty on white America. "Mat white Americans have never fully understood-but what the negro can never forget-4s that white society Is deeply Implicated In the ghetto," the report read. "Mite Institutions created It, white Institutions maintain It, and white society condones IL' The message was resolute, honest and well-received at the time. Ultimately, It was Ignored.