Ghetto-Related Behavior

Poverty, of course, is a result not only of societal structures but also of individual shortcomings. Poor persons can make poor choices and those choices can aggravate poverty. Living in the highly individualistic American culture, most of us tend to lay the blame for poverty on those individual choices. "Well, that person who is still stuck in poverty came from the same social background as this person who made it out," we think to ourselves, "so individual differences must be more important!" It's easy to slide over the structural causes of poverty. But there are important relationships between structural and individual causes.

Certainly many, usually most, residents of ghetto neighborhoods continue to work steadily at whatever work is available despite the disadvantages of their environments. They have high aspirations and substantial initiative. Most poor people are not addicted to alcohol or other substances, they do not engage in criminal behavior or drug trafficking. Most poor people are not on welfare. They take good care of themselves, their families and their property. They ascribe to the same values as the rest of us: hard work, self-reliance, sacrifice, and respect for others. They are simply poor.

At the same time, one finds in the ghetto disturbingly high rates of unemployment and welfare dependence, addiction and poor motivation, drug trafficking and other forms of criminal behavior. These behaviors seem to be so self-reinforcing that observers have talked of an "underclass" existing in the ghetto, a group of people whose behavior is virtually incorrigible; neither they nor their children have much chance of escaping poverty. It is tempting to look at these behaviors, shrug, and say to ourselves, "Well, no wonder they're poor!"

But where do these behaviors come from? Why do we find them more frequently in the ghetto than in other places? As mentioned above, the behaviors that we commonly associate with the contemporary black ghetto (which sociologist William Julius Wilson has named "ghetto-related behaviors") were not part of black ghetto life through the first century after Emancipation. (Even single-parenthood-which has always been higher among African Americans than European Americans-was "only" 17% among blacks in 1950, less than the current rate of single-parenthood among whites.) And, as we have seen, forces far beyond the control of individual African Americans led to high rates of joblessness, high concentrations of poor people living in close proximity, inferior education, poor health, and discrimination against poor black people. In this context, ghetto-related behaviors can be seen as understandable behavioral responses to environmental conditions, some of which evolve into cultural patterns. "This is not to argue," writes Wilson,

that individuals and groups lack the freedom to make their own choices, engage in certain conduct, and develop certain styles and orientations, but it is to say that these decisions and actions occur within a context of constraints and opportunities that are drastically different from those present in middle-class society.16

Unfortunately, these responses also perpetuate and aggravate the poverty of the poor in a vicious cycle that currently shows few signs of abating.


Footnotes
¹⁶ Wilson, When Work Disappears, p. 55