The War Against the Poor: The Underclass and Anti-Poverty Policy

Noted Columbia University sociologist Gans (The Urban Villagers) offers a dry but forceful critique of current attitudes and policies toward the poor. First, he probes the rhetoric that stigmatizes the poor as undeserving, showing how the term ``underclass'' was curiously transformed from Gunnar Myrdal's economic term to a common code word for minorities that ignores the economic sources of their out-of-the mainstream behavior. Though some of the poor threaten society with street crime, Gans argues that we magnify that in comparison with other threats to safety, the economy and our values. Labeling the poor as undeserving has many larger functions, he notes, including supplying jobs for those who control and guard them (e.g., ``police, judges, lawyers, court probation officers, guards''). Gans's proposals to combat recidivism with job training and to offer universalistic, race-blind job programs may attract attention, but his recommendation of an income security grant seems out of sync with today's politics, as are his musings about a future economy that shares jobs and flattens incomes. But his proposal that the media and foundations act to debunk stereotypes about the poor, showing ``how much their life consists of coping with frequent crises,'' seems an urgent prerequisite to any policy change. (Aug.)