In “More Than Just Race: Being Black and Poor in the Inner City”, Wilson considers institutional and cultural factors as causes that reinforce racial inequality. These two factors also intersect to produce poverty in Black communities. Three major points are developed in the book that I agree with, which are: forces contributing to the concentrated poverty in Black communities, the limited economic opportunities available to inner city Black males; and the fragmentation of the poor and low- income Black family. These three issues support his arguments by illustrating how it is unfair to blame people who have limited resources. These arguments serve as a way to challenge both social structure and culture forces in order to create adequate policies.
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Culture matters but he argues that it does not matter as much as social structure. He demonstrates that structural forces are the primary causes of poverty in the black community. Even though he recognizes that cultural forces and structural forces interact in producing poverty, he pays more attention to non –racial changes such as impersonal changes in the economy. Wilson pinpoints that the impact of changes in the economy negatively affect a lot of black people. Technological changes from mechanical to advances in information technology have created conditions whereby a lot of black people could not assimilate to the changes (Wilson, 2009, Pg.7). Wilson explains such vulnerability as a legacy of racism. For instance, forces such as prejudicial hiring practices has excluded unskilled workers jobless, having put black people in their economic place. In his opinion structural forces have contributed to inner city inequality, because black people tend to be educated in poorly performing public school, low skilled black males enter the job market lacking some of the basic tool (Wilson, 2009,
Culture matters but he argues that it does not matter as much as social structure. He demonstrates that structural forces are the primary causes of poverty in the black community. Even though he recognizes that cultural forces and structural forces interact in producing poverty, he pays more attention to non –racial changes such as impersonal changes in the economy. Wilson pinpoints that the impact of changes in the economy negatively affect a lot of black people. Technological changes from mechanical to advances in information technology have created conditions whereby a lot of black people could not assimilate to the changes (Wilson, 2009, Pg.7). Wilson explains such vulnerability as a legacy of racism. For instance, forces such as prejudicial hiring practices has excluded unskilled workers jobless, having put black people in their economic place. In his opinion structural forces have contributed to inner city inequality, because black people tend to be educated in poorly performing public school, low skilled black males enter the job market lacking some of the basic tool (Wilson, 2009,