Wilson, William Julius. More Than just Race: Being Black And Poor In the Inner City - Essay Example

The Review of More than Just Race The William Julius Wilson is an American sociologist who received a PhD from theWashington State University in 1966. After receiving the PhD taught sociology at the University of Massachusetts before started teaching in the University of Chicago from 1972 until when he moved to Harvard University in 1996 and he is one of only 20 University Professors with the highest distinction for a Harvard faculty member. William was the past president of the American Sociological Association, he has received 44 honor degrees, a MacArthur Prize Fellow, elected to the National Academic of Sciences, the American Academic of Arts and Sciences among others, and he is a receiver of the 1998 National Medical of Science with the highest scientific honor. He is joined with the Malcolm Wiener Center for social policy, he was an original board member of the progressive Cenury Institute and he is currently a board member of Public/Private Ventures at Philadelphia. He is an author of a great number of publications such as The Declining Significance of Race, The Truly Disadvantaged, The Work of the new Urban and one of his latest books is more than just Race: Being Black and Poor in the Inner City. He has been studying social stratification, economic inequality and the plight of poor black people for years and each of his academic productions has been given great reviews, despite the controversial nature of his theses. He is one of the America’s most influential scientists of urban poverty and inequality and he has turned into a more legible and far less disputable over his long career. In More than just race: he takes advantage of the past decades of research to formulate into a greater degree, the understanding of race and urban inequality in the United States in terms of structure and culture. In this book the author reviews his own important research over the past two decades as well as some of the most successful urban sociology of his peers to earn a persuasive argument that both institutional and systemic obstacles pertaining to culture defects that hinder the poor blacks from evading poverty and the ghetto life (Wilson 3). Despite the fact that he remains intent on exhibiting the impacts of impersonal economic forces, he ultimately shares an uncomfortable idea on the books title that attribute to basic significance to the impact of race on the intensified poverty of the inner city. Although the book emphasize on the experiences of inner city African Americans life the research is not limited to the intricacy of understanding race and racial inequality in America. The he gets deeper in the causes of racism and poverty and in his view; he says that it is the poor people’s cultures that cause poverty. He begins by differentiating the structural obstacles to black social raise from what is discerned to be cultural (Wilson, More than Just Race 3). The book creates a debate on two important factors collaborated with racial inequality: the social structure and the culture where he uses the inner city to provide additional details since it is the central focus of the structure-culture disputes. The book is clear on the reason why the structural causes are far more important than cultural since these causes break down into those that are racist and those that are impersonal thus affecting black people disproportionately (Harding, Small and Lamont 201). This argument integrates the two forms of structural forces that are the implicit and explicit established racial prejudices that are an addition to the cultural forces that form and underline racial inequality. After the prolonged discussion of how the structural and cultural factors conspire together to produce racial inequality. He organizes the remaining chapters as explorations of controversial issues in the public debate giving each chapter a special part on structural and culture but he eventually remains firm that culture matters, but not as much as the social structure (Wilson, More than Just Race 152). He explores this by preparation cultural aspects firmly within a structural background that tries to present his act of convicting that the social scientist have to emphasize the powerful impact of structural forces. These forces include paying attention to poverty, the economic plight of inner-city blacks and the breaking up of the poor black families where they are both materially and symbolically specific to ghettos. This is what he refers to as racial group outcomes at starting points it might seem that the authors’ tendency regarding the structural analysis would lead to the concept of racism but this fails to materialize primarily because Wilson continues to believe intentionality as a defining characteristic of structural and cultural procedures that earn the word racism. The book also covers immersed foundation where in the regulated exploration of racism he has taken serious progress to avoid economic determinism and also treats culture and structural as though they are reified variables’ in advancing the cultural work. The main arguments rely on idealistic logical extrapolations of one without the other and this would allow the delight of sociopolitical procedures the same way as the blacks in the inner city are treated in terms of the racial cultural frames that facilitate them. Disparate authors have censured this book for undermining the black protest movement by proclaiming that race was of a declining significance in the cause of poverty and inequality of the African Americans. Another issue is that the title does not quite match the main idea discussed in the book because the book is preoccupied by another academic argument of the culture/structure discussion. Wilson steps into this infringement and methodically reviews the knowledge of both sides to end up concluding that structure and culture are interlaced and from this it could have been more faithful if the book was entitled More Than Just Structure. On contrary to the subtitle: Being Black and Poor in the Inner City declaring that more than just race should be considered, the author deliberately shifts the focus from racism and antiracist to a nearsighted examination of culture (Conley 61) that supposedly cease poor blacks from following the footsteps of their middle class brothers. The concluding chapter is where the is maddening because Wilson proposes no agenda for change but sticks to the idea that the way issues are framed is of crucial importance for the political leaders and the nation talk about and address issues of race and poverty (Wilson, More than Just Race 134). He states the Obama’s speech is one of the models of this framing as he leaves the readers to read between these ambiguous lines to perceive their implications on the public policy. More Than Just Race” is ponderous to a certain level and academic in style where the book gives details of an important and fascinating question but ends inconclusively and anxiety that calls for more research. But this is a greatly written book with considerable substantial virtues’ it is a uncomplicated, persuadable and sensible, not literal of ideological turn and posturing that often damage even serious academic studies of racial issues. Wilson is a great society copious, that is why conservatives might resist his analysis though his idea that racism is less to blame for poverty than the race-neutral changes, and the assay to rehabilitate the study of culture of poverty has made him a debatable figure in liberal academic and civil right encircles. Wilson has been misunderstood in his fight on the black poverty but the courage to keep on for years should gain him a wide readership as the economic crisis is making the poverty situation worse. It is true that the existing spatial of black Americans is as a result of decades of federal and public policy and that the state of the inner city will not change much without real and substantial policy proposals that will address the difficult situation faced by the blacks in the inner city. Works Cited Conley, Dalton. Being Black,Living in the Red:Race. Wealth, and Social Policy in America. london: University of California Press, 1999. Print. Harding, David, Small, Mario and Lamont, Michele. Reconsidering Culture and Poverty. london: SAGE Publication, 2010. Print. Wilson, William J. More than Just Race: Being Black and Poor in the Inner City. New York: W.W Norton &Company, 2010. Print. Wilson, William J. The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy Chicago: the university of chicago press, 1987. Print. Read More