More Than Just Race: Being Black and Poor in the Inner City

In Chapter 3, Wilson cites Patterson’s phrase to describe a learned set of behaviors that are typical in impoverished inner cities, and which impede inhabitants’ integration into wider society. Such norms include emphasis on appearance and fashion, sexual conquests, and partying. Wilson also discusses the “code of the street” in Chapter 1 (18).

Cultural continuity refers to the idea that culture is passed down from one generation to the next. Wilson asserts in the conclusion of More Than Just Race that more empirical research is needed to determine whether sub-Saharan African family culture has any impact on the African American family unit. 

Wilson controversially includes culture in his appraisal of the plight of the African American poor. He defines culture in Chapter 1 as “the sharing of outlooks and modes of behavior among individuals who face similar place-based circumstances” (4). This definition is significant because it incorporates Wilson’s notion of culture as an accretion of “social scripts” (4). Culture is thus a product of history for Wilson, meaning African American inner-city cultures wrestle with the legacy of inequality.

Wilson defines “in-group meaning making” as “shared views on how the world works” (16), and he argues that such meaning making shapes social interaction. “[F]or example, in the inner-city ghetto, cultural frames define issues of trust/street smarts […] that lead to observable group characteristics” (16-17). Wilson argues that this dynamic is the cultural corollary of segregation and chronic poverty (17).

Chapter 4 mines statistical data and longitudinal studies to fathom the low rates of labor force attachment among inner-city African American families. Attachment to the labor force is determined by the ability of workers to secure and maintain jobs over a period of time.

Wilson cites Harvard social science professor Lawrence Bobo’s definition of laissez-faire racism in Chapter 1 as the perception that blacks are responsible for their own economic predicament and therefore undeserving of special government support (16). In 2001, only one in five whites supported the idea that the federal government has an obligation to support the living standards of blacks because they have been discriminated against for so long.

Wilson’s definition of racism in Chapter 1 is crucial to his overall parsing of the issue of black poverty:

At its core, racism is an ideology of racial domination with two key features: (1) beliefs that one race is either biologically or culturally inferior to another and (2) the use of such beliefs to rationalize or prescribe the way that the “inferior” race should be treated in this society, as well as to explain its social position as a group and its collective accomplishments (15).

While the former kind of racism is much decreased in the United States, it remains in institutional systems such as school tracking, Wilson asserts.

In Chapter 4, Wilson examines the disintegration of the black family unit in the context of chronic poverty. He points out that overall, reservation wages—the wages a jobseeker is willing to accept—are lower for blacks than for whites. 

Wilson writes in Chapter 1 that “‘Social acts’ refers to the behavior of individuals within society” (5). This includes stereotyping, stigmatization, and discrimination in hiring decisions, for example, as well as admission to educational institutions and exclusion from unions, employers’ associations, and clubs. 

Social processes are those functions that promote ongoing relations among members of the larger group. Wilson writes in Chapter 1: “Examples of social processes that contribute directly to racial group outcomes include laws, policies and institutional practices that exclude people on the basis of race or ethnicity” (5). Importantly, social processes for Wilson include not just explicit discrimination such as the Jim Crow segregation laws, but also more subtle structural and cultural processes. An example might be racial profiling by police that purports to be about public safety but focuses solely on minorities, or “redlining by banks that purports to be about sound fiscal policy but results in the exclusion of blacks from home ownership,” Wilson writes (5). 

Wilson defines social structure in Chapter 1: “Social structure refers to the way social positions, social roles, and networks of social relationships are arranged in our institutions such as the economy, polity, education, and organization of the family” (4). Wilson includes the examples of a labor market offering financial incentives and punishments, and institutional roles. 

A key concept in Wilson’s argument involves the geographic segregation of impoverished African American communities due to structural factors with roots that stretch back to the last century. Wilson defines the phrase in Chapter 2: “Spatial mismatch is a term that social scientists use to capture the relationship between inner-city residents and suburban jobs: the opportunities for employment are geographically disconnected from the people who need the jobs” (41). 

In Chapter 3, Wilson discusses the reasons for black male unemployment in inner cities, giving statistical discrimination as one contributor. An example of this kind of discrimination is decision making by employers based on generalizations about inner-city black males, without reviewing the qualifications of the applicant (75). 

Mead argues that black unemployment rates are due to individuals giving up looking for work because they feel the odds are stacked against them. In Chapter 3 and throughout More Than Just Race, Wilson opposes this idea, claiming that there is insufficient evidence for Mead’s notion that such apathy is the psychological corollary of historical enslavement (83). Wilson also draws on other studies that show inner-city unemployment is not simply due to apathy, and he identifies these ideas as what Harvard sociology professor Lawrence Bobo calls laissez-faire racism (16).