The White Underclass
Does the rise in out-of-wedlock babies and white slums foretell a social catastrophe
It may be that South Boston's lower end--parochial, wary of outsiders and still very Catholic--is an anomaly. But even beyond South Boston, there is good reason to question Murray's prediction that the white underclass may soon eclipse its black counterpart. Poor whites, for instance, do not face entrenched housing discrimination. That means poverty among them is less concentrated and they are less likely to live in slums that dominate vast tracts of a city. Mincy's census analysis shows that in 1990, 30 percent of poor blacks lived in extreme-poverty areas; only 7 percent of poor whites did. The absence of discrimination also makes it easier for poor whites than poor blacks to leave the slums behind and harder for the white underclass to calcify for generations.
The search for answers. Liberals account for the rise in white out-of-wedlock births by pointing to the dwindling number of blue-collar jobs for men, while conservatives tend to stress the impact of perverse welfare policies and feminism. Clearly, though, one nonideological factor--a societywide change in attitudes--has weakened the stigma against out-of-wedlock childbearing. Twenty years ago, two thirds of white Americans opposed the idea that "it should be legal for adults to have children without getting married." Five years ago, whites were just about evenly split on the issue.
Whatever the cause, policy makers know next to nothing about how to reduce unwed motherhood. Charles Murray's plan to end welfare benefits for single mothers and place poor children, where necessary, up for adoption or in orphanages would likely reduce out-of-wedlock births, but its side effects could be horrific. Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala calls Murray's plan "a 1994 version" of Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal--which suggested, satirically, that the best way to deal with food shortages and overpopulation was to eat the babies of the poor.
Michael Patrick MacDonald, who saw those severed fingers many years ago, is searching for solutions, too. The courts overturned his little brother's manslaughter conviction in the shooting of his 13-year-old friend, and after the violent deaths of three brothers, the MacDonald family fled their South Boston project. MacDonald moved to the racially mixed Jamaica Plain neighborhood; he now works on juvenile justice issues for a community group and helps run a gun buyback program.
One morning a few months ago, MacDonald went back to the old 'hood and drove slowly around the projects, pointing out the spots where tragedy had befallen his family. Suddenly, he turned wistful. "There is not a victim mentality here," he said. "It's just the opposite. Maybe it was a false sense of security, but it always felt like people watched your back here." Several mothers lounged on the stairs of a project entryway as their toddlers splashed about in a small inflatable pool. "I'm thinking of moving back," MacDonald announced abruptly. "I miss the neighborhood." The ghosts, he said, were tugging at him to return, and several weeks later he did in fact move back. "You've got to understand," he explains. "This is where all my memories are now, good and bad." Where the white underclass lives White slums are concentrated in the Midwest and Northeast, usually in areas of manufacturing decline
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