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The longest of odds: Searching for respect in the midst of institutional abandonment
Abstract
This dissertation is a critique of current scholarship on the urban underclass, based upon the lives of impoverished minority youth who reside in Springfield, Massachusetts. My ethnography illustrates that the range of behaviors and lifestyles that characterize these youngsters and their families defy over-simplified generalizations of an urban underclass. I argue that the failure to provide a more accurate description of the lives of the urban poor has, in effect, reinforced the victim-blaming tendencies inherent in American culture and has likewise diminished the quality of public services the poor receive. To this end, I emphasize the need for a conceptual framework that overcomes monolithic characterizations of the urban poor and instead captures the complexity that underlies the behaviors and the identities of the urban poor (particularly street youth) as they struggle to acquire the resources necessary to the survival of their families and their communities.
Subject Area
Social structure|Individual & family studies|Public policy
Recommended Citation
Black, Timothy Scott, "The longest of odds: Searching for respect in the midst of institutional abandonment" (1994). Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest. AAI9434456.
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations/AAI9434456