Joel Blau wrote:
>Yes. Even William Julius Wilson, who legitimized the term in The
>Truly Disadvantaged renounced its use in an American Sociological
>Association presidential address circa 1990. Popularized by Ken
>Auletta in his 1982 book The Underclass, the term originally
>described 4 categories of people: 1) long welfare recipients; 2)
>violent street criminals; 3) hustlers; 4) drunks, released mental
>patients, and homeless individuals. No one on the left should use
>it; it just gives a fancy social science cover to a long tradition
>of terms describing the "unworthy poor." For anyone who is
>interested in this whole subject, see a fine book called The
>Underclass Debate, edited by Michael Katz (Princeton Univ.Press,
>1993).
Adolph Reed also has a fine essay on the topic in Class Notes.
Doug
