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The Bridge Over the Racial Divide: Rising Inequality and Coalition Politics, by William Julius Wilson. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999. 163 pp. $19.95 cloth. ISBN: 0-520-22226-1.
William Julius Wilson has been writing about the class position of African Americans since his 1979 book, The Declining Significance of Race, a work that might have been less controversial had he titled it "The Increasing Significance of Class." Wilson argued that, in the aftermath of the Civil Rights movement, class analysis rather than caste analysis had become the better way to understand the economic situation of black America. He maintained that perspective in his 1987 book, The Truly Disadvantaged, in which he popularized the concept of an underclass, somewhat akin to Marx's lumpenproletariat, as the key to understanding black poverty. By the time he wrote When Work Disappears in 1996, he had abandoned the term "underclass" as too close to blaming the victim and opted for "ghetto poor" instead. But his argument was still recognizable: A socially-isolated, African American, lower class had been cut-off from all but the least rewarding and least stable employment.
Friendly critics such as Douglas Massey have charged that Wilson underestimates the extent to which racial discrimination and racial segregation still constrain the economic opportunities of African Americans. It is true that Wilson seems to underplay these factors compared to other prominent scholars of race. But the difference is mainly one of degree. Wilson would...