thumb|The term underclass is employed by sociologists such as [[Dennis Gilbert (sociologist)|Dennis Gilbert to describe the most disadvantaged socio-economic demographic with the least access to scarce resources. In this chart constructed by Gilbert, the American underclass is estimated to constitute roughly 12% of U.S. households (in 1998).]]
The underclass is the segment of the population that occupies the lowest possible position in a class hierarchy, below the core body of the working class. This group is usually considered cut off from the rest of the society.
The general idea that a class system includes a population under the working class has a long tradition in the social sciences (for example, lumpenproletariat). However, the specific term, underclass, was popularized during the last half of the 20th century, first by social scientists of American poverty, and then by American journalists.
The underclass concept has been a point of controversy among social scientists. Definitions and explanations of the underclass, as well as proposed solutions for managing or fixing the underclass problem have been highly debated.
History
Gunnar Myrdal is generally credited as the first proponent of the term underclass. Writing in the early 1960s on economic inequality in the U.S., Myrdal's underclass refers to a "class of unemployed, unemployables, and underemployed, who are more and more hopelessly set apart from the nation at large, and do not share in its life, its ambitions, and its achievements". However, this general conception of a class or category of people below the core of the working class has a long tradition in the social sciences, such as through the work of Henry Mayhew, whose London Labour and the London Poor sought to describe the hitherto invisible world of casual workers, prostitutes, and street-people.
The specific concept of an underclass in the U.S. underwent several transformations during the decades following Myrdal's introduction of the term. According to sociologist Herbert Gans, while Myrdal's structural conceptualization of the underclass remained relatively intact through the writings of William Julius Wilson and others, in several respects the structural definition was abandoned by many journalists and academics, and replaced with a behavioral conception of the underclass, which fuses Myrdal's term with Oscar Lewis's and others' conception of a "culture of poverty".
Definitions
Various definitions of the underclass have been set forth since the term's initial conception; however, all of these definitions are basically different ways of imagining a category of people beneath the working class. The definitions vary by which particular dimensions of this group are highlighted. A few popular descriptions of the underclass are considered as follows.
Focus on economics
Marxian sociologist Erik Olin Wright sees the underclass as a "category of social agents who are economically oppressed but not consistently exploited within a given class system". The underclass occupies the lowest possible rung on a class ladder. According to Wright, the underclass are oppressed. He believes this is because they are generally denied access to the labor market, and thus they cannot rise above their status easily but also thus are "not consistently exploited" because the opportunity for their economic exploitation is minimal for the classes above.
Unlike the working class, which he believes is routinely exploited for their labor power by higher classes, the underclass in Wright's view, do not hold the labor power worthy of exploitation. Wright argues his highly doctrinaire opinion of class malevolence that:
Auletta's three typologies of solutions
Ken Auletta closes his book, The Underclass (1982), by highlighting three typologies of solutions: "the wholesale option", "the laissez-faire option", and "the retail option".
The "wholesale option" includes both conservatives and liberals who are optimistic that government action can solve the underclass problem. According to Auletta, left-wing wholesale proponents call for increased public aid while right-wing wholesale proponents call for government to reduce taxes to increase jobs (inspired by trickle-down economic theory) and charge the government to "get tough" on underclass crime and welfare dependency.
The "laissez-faire option" is pessimistic and its proponents are extremely wary of proposed solutions to a problem they see as unsolvable. Proponents of this perspective call for a drastic withdrawal of public aid for the underclass and are concerned with "quarantining the patient" instead of hunting for what they believe is an imaginary cure. In other words, the laissez-faire option assumes that the underclass is generally hopeless, and thus the only public effort given to them should be the bare minimum.
The "retail option" includes those in between optimism and pessimism, what Auletta calls "skeptics". The retail option advocates for targeted efforts, recognizing the limits of government intervention, but is also aware of the positive impact social policy can have on efforts to fix specific problems of the underclass. This middle ground perspective requests that aid be given to members of the underclass considered to be deserving of aid, but withheld from members considered to be undeserving. However, proponents of the retail option often disagree on which members of the underclass are considered deserving and which are not. This appears to be the approach embraced by Auletta as he closes his book with reflections on some of the people he interviews throughout preceding pages. He says, "I have no difficulty giving up on violent criminals like the Bolden brothers or street hustlers like Henry Rivera. But knowing how a government helping hand made it possible for Pearl Dawson and William Mason to succeed, would you be willing to write them off?"
Journalism
Social scientists often point to journalism as a primary institution conceptualizing the underclass for a mass audience. Many suggest that the underclass terminology employed by American journalists in the last quarter of the twentieth-century were partial to behavioral and cultural—as opposed to a structural—definitions of the underclass. Auletta is arguably the most read journalist of the underclass and many of his ideas, including his definition of the underclass, are included in this Wikipedia entry.
Another notable journalist is Nicholas Lemann who published a handful of articles on the underclass in the Atlantic Monthly during the late 1980s and early 1990s. His 1986 writings on "The Origins of the Underclass" argue that the underclass was created by two migrations, the great migration of Southern blacks to the North and West during the early to mid twentieth century and the exodus of middle class blacks out of the ghetto during the 1970s through the early 90s. In 1991 Lemann also published an article titled "The Other Underclass", which details Puerto Ricans, and particularly Puerto Ricans residing in South Bronx, as members of the urban underclass in the US.
Critiques of the concept
Following the popularization of the underclass concept in both academic and journalistic writings, some academics began to overtly criticize underclass terminology. Those in opposition to the underclass concept generally argue that, on the one hand, "underclass" is a homogenizing term that simplifies a heterogeneous group, and on the other hand, the term is derogatory and demonizes the urban poor.
Derogatory and demonizing language
Many who reject the underclass concept suggest that the underclass term has been transformed into a codeword to refer to poor inner-city blacks. For example, Hilary Silver highlights a moment when David Duke, former Grand Wizard of the KKK, campaigned for Louisiana Governor by complaining about the "welfare underclass". Many sociologists suggest that this latter rhetoric – the right-wing perspective – became dominant in mainstream accounts of the underclass during the later decades of the twentieth-century. And, although the underclass concepts is homogenizing, Wacquant argues that underclass imagery differentiates on gender lines, with the underclass male being depicted as a violent "gang banger", a physical threat to public safety, and the underclass female being generalized as "welfare mother" (also see welfare queen), a "moral assault on American values".
Homogenizing a heterogeneous group
The concept of 'the ghetto' and 'underclass' has also faced criticism empirically. Research has shown significant differences in resources for neighborhoods with similar populations both across cities and over time. This includes differences in the resources of neighborhoods with predominantly low income and/or racial minority populations. The cause of these differences in resources across similar neighborhoods has more to do with dynamics outside of the neighborhood. To a large extent the problem with the 'ghetto' and 'underclass' concepts stem from the reliance on case studies (in particular case studies from Chicago), which confine social scientist understandings of socially disadvantaged neighborhoods.
Proposed replacement terms
The charges against underclass terminology have motivated replacement terms. For example, William Julius Wilson, sympathetic to criticisms brought against underclass terminology (particularly those criticisms posited by Gans), begins to replace his use of the term underclass with "ghetto poor" during the early 1990s. For Wilson, this replacement terminology is simply an attempt to revamp the framing of inner-city poverty as being structurally rooted. He states, "I will substitute the term 'ghetto poor' for the term 'underclass' and hope that I will not lose any of the subtle theoretical meaning that the latter term has had in my writings."