America's Apartheid and the Urban Underclass: The Social Service Review Lecture

Recent theories of the urban underclass have systematically ignored racial segregation in American cities. As a result, they have not come to terms with one of the fundamental causes of urban poverty. African Americans are uniquely segregated among U.S. racial and ethnic groups. This segregation is not voluntary, but stems from white prejudice, institutional discrimination, and racist public policies. The segregation of African Americans blocks normal processes of socioeconomic mobility and leads to a concentration of poverty in black neighborhoods. This concentration of poverty creates a social environment within which socioeconomic disadvantage is created and perpetuated. Unless efforts are made to attack the forces of racial segregation, other efforts to improve the welfare of African Americans will fail.