The discussion of race and inequality in the U.S. currently centers around the concept of a growing underclass polarizing the Black community. Questions of social inequality, the American stratification system, and structural aspects of the "underclass" will be examined. In addition, current perspectives on race and inequality will be surveyed in order to establish whether or not America has broken new ground in understanding and rectifying systems that perpetuate racial inequality. Finally, past and current theoretical perspectives, as well as the future direction of the race and ethnic inequality debate, will be discussed.
One of the fundamental problems facing researchers today is the term "underclass" itself. To acknowledge that America has a class system to begin with is disconcerting to those dedicated to American principles of egalitarianism. The fact that a class system has existed in the U.S. since its inception should not be a revelation to either serious academic researchers or non-academics, yet to acknowledge class warfare in this country is comparable to declaring that one is a socialist.
For the above reason, among others, liberal academics have tended to shy away from even using the term, "underclass." Amidst a sweeping tide of conservatism, liberal academics have perhaps seen the liberal label as compromising their careers--that is to say, tenure. Another reason that liberal researchers have avoided discussions of America's underclass, particularly its African American underclass, is that "researching any behavior that could be construed as stigmatizing or unflattering to inner-city minority residents" (Wilson, 1993, p. 2) could be interpreted as harmful to that very class of people liberals would like to assist. Wilson stops just short of labelling liberal scholars as academic lightweights when he asserts, "The vitriolic attacks and acrimonious debate that characterized the [examination of the undercla...