Editing Underclass (section)

==Critiques of the concept==
Following the popularization of the underclass concept in both academic and journalistic writings, some academics began to overtly criticize underclass terminology. Those in opposition to the underclass concept generally argue that, on the one hand, "underclass" is a homogenizing term that simplifies a heterogeneous group, and on the other hand, the term is derogatory and demonizes the urban poor.<ref name="outcasts">{{cite book|last=Wacquant|first=Loïc|title=Urban Outcasts: A Comparative Sociology of Advanced Marginality|year=2008|publisher=Polity Press|location=Malden, MA|isbn=978-0-7456-3124-0}}</ref><ref name="Silver">{{cite book|last=Silver|first=Hilary|title="Culture, Politics and National Discourses of the New Urban Poverty" in Urban Poverty and the Underclass (edited by Enzo Mingione)|year=1996|publisher=Blackwell Publishers|location=Cambridge, Massachusetts|isbn=0-631-20037-1|pages=[https://archive.org/details/urbanpovertyunde0000unse/page/105 105–138]|url=https://archive.org/details/urbanpovertyunde0000unse/page/105}}</ref>

===Derogatory and demonizing language===
Many who reject the underclass concept suggest that the ''underclass'' term has been transformed into a codeword to refer to poor inner-city blacks.<ref>{{cite book|last=Wacquant|first=Loïc|title=Urban Outcasts: A Comparative Sociology of Advanced Marginality|url=https://archive.org/details/urbanoutcastscom00wacq|url-access=limited|year=2008|publisher=Polity Press|location=Malden, MA|isbn=978-0-7456-3124-0|pages=[https://archive.org/details/urbanoutcastscom00wacq/page/n49 89]}}</ref> For example, Hilary Silver highlights a moment when [[David Duke]], former [[Grand Wizard]] of the [[KKK]], campaigned for Louisiana Governor by complaining about the "welfare underclass".<ref name="Silver" /> The underclass concept has been politicized, with those from the political left arguing that joblessness and insufficient welfare provided are causes of underclass conditions while the political right employ the underclass term to refer to welfare dependency and moral decline.<ref name="Morris">{{cite book|last=Morris|first=Hilary|title="Dangerous Classes: Neglected Aspects of the Underclass Debate" in Urban Poverty and the Underclass (edited by Enzo Mingione)|year=1996|publisher=Blackwell Publishers|location=Cambridge, Massachusetts|isbn=0-631-20037-1|pages=[https://archive.org/details/urbanpovertyunde0000unse/page/160 160–175]|url=https://archive.org/details/urbanpovertyunde0000unse/page/160}}</ref> Many sociologists suggest that this latter rhetoric – the right-wing perspective – became dominant in mainstream accounts of the underclass during the later decades of the twentieth-century.<ref name="Morris" />

[[Herbert Gans]] is one of the most vocal critics of the underclass concept. Gans suggests that American journalists, inspired partly by academic writings on the "[[culture of poverty]]", reframed ''underclass'' from a structural term (in other words, defining the underclass in reference to conditions of social/economic/political structure) to a behavioral term (in other words, defining the underclass in reference to rational choice and/or in reference to a subculture of poverty).<ref name="Gans" /> Gans suggests that the word "underclass" has become synonymous with impoverished blacks that behave in criminal, deviant, or "just non-middle-class ways".<ref name="Gans" />

[[Loïc Wacquant]] deploys a relatively similar critique by arguing that ''underclass'' has become a blanket term that frames urban blacks as behaviorally and culturally deviant.<ref name="outcasts" /> Wacquant notes that underclass status is imposed on urban blacks from outside and above them (e.g., by journalists, politicians, and academics), stating that "underclass" is a derogatory and "negative label that nobody claims or invokes except to pin it on to others".<ref>{{cite book|last=Wacquant|first=Loïc|title=Urban Outcasts: A Comparative Sociology of Advanced Marginality|url=https://archive.org/details/urbanoutcastscom00wacq|url-access=limited|year=2008|publisher=Polity Press|location=Malden, MA|isbn=978-0-7456-3124-0|pages=[https://archive.org/details/urbanoutcastscom00wacq/page/n28 48]}}</ref> And, although the underclass concepts is homogenizing, Wacquant argues that underclass imagery differentiates on gender lines, with the underclass male being depicted as a violent "gang banger", a physical threat to public safety, and the underclass female being generalized as "welfare mother" (also see [[welfare queen]]), a "moral assault on American values".<ref>{{cite book|last=Wacquant|first=Loïc|title=Urban Outcasts: A Comparative Sociology of Advanced Marginality|url=https://archive.org/details/urbanoutcastscom00wacq|url-access=limited|year=2008|publisher=Polity Press|location=Malden, MA|isbn=978-0-7456-3124-0|pages=[https://archive.org/details/urbanoutcastscom00wacq/page/n26 44]}}</ref>

===Homogenizing a heterogeneous group===
The concept of 'the ghetto' and 'underclass' has also faced criticism empirically. Research has shown significant differences in resources for neighborhoods with similar populations both across cities and over time.<ref>Small, Mario. L., & McDermott, Monica. (2006). The presence of organizational resources in poor urban neighborhoods: An analysis of average and contextual effects. Social Forces, 84(3), 1697-1724.</ref> This includes differences in the resources of neighborhoods with predominantly low income and/or racial minority populations. The cause of these differences in resources across similar neighborhoods has more to do with dynamics outside of the neighborhood.<ref>Logan, John, and Harvey Molotch. 1987. "Urban fortunes." The Political Economy of Place. Berkeley, University of California</ref> To a large extent the problem with the 'ghetto' and 'underclass' concepts stem from the reliance on case studies (in particular case studies from Chicago), which confine social scientist understandings of socially disadvantaged neighborhoods.

===Proposed replacement terms===
The charges against underclass terminology have motivated replacement terms. For example, [[William Julius Wilson]], sympathetic to criticisms brought against underclass terminology (particularly those criticisms posited by Gans), begins to replace his use of the term underclass with '''"ghetto poor"''' during the early 1990s.<ref name="dislocations">{{cite journal|last=Wilson|first=William Julius|title=Studying Inner-City Social Dislocations: The Challenge of Public Agenda Research: 1990 Presidential Address|journal=American Sociological Review|year=1991|volume=56|issue=1|pages=1–14|doi=10.2307/2095669|jstor=2095669}}</ref> For Wilson, this replacement terminology is simply an attempt to revamp the framing of inner-city poverty as being structurally rooted. He states, "I will substitute the term 'ghetto poor' for the term 'underclass' and hope that I will not lose any of the subtle theoretical meaning that the latter term has had in my writings."<ref name="dislocations" />