<< To make the case, I return to three indicators I first selected in the late
1980s to track the course of the underclass: criminality, dropout from the
labor force among young men, and illegitimate births among young women.
Then and now, these three seemed to me key outcroppings of what we mean by
the underclass: people living outside the mainstream, often preying on the
mainstream, in a world where the building blocks of a life--work, family
and community--exist in fragmented and corrupt forms.
>>
This article probably deserves ten articles in rebuttal, but I am just going to address the "illegitimate births among young women." First of all, it never ceases to amaze me when young women bearing babies out of the state of 'wedded bliss' are lumped in with criminals, drop outs and the underclass. In short, this criminalization of women is fucking sexist as hell and drives me up the fucking WALL. "illegitimate" is in the eyes of the beholder.
Second of all, murray only refers to out-of-wedlock births by young, black women. How many of you know how the statistics on these births are collected? Well, the hospital has the woman write down if she is married or not. O.k. how many of you think this is particularly reliable? Hell no, many middle- class white suburban young women write down that they are married, regardless of their legal state! Inner city young black women come from a culture where women are expected and frequently proud of being single mothers -- murray forgets that his view of out of wedlock births is no wheres near universal! So, to begin with, the stats are really, really, really, unreliable.
Anyhoo, keeping that in mind, numerically the largest growth of reported out- of-wedlock births in the last few decades has been to caucasian women. According to the 1990 census, somewhere around 40% of white women are bearing children in an unwedded state. Since whites are the majority of the population nationwide, it doesn't take a great deal of math to come to the conclusion that most babies born to single mothers are probably white. ALSO, there has been an increase of babies born to OLDER single mothers. If we are to believe murray, that "illegitimate" births are part of an underclass, then some huge proportion of women are guilty of underclassing. Hmmm, underclassing what I wonder?
oh shit, i could go on and on and on about this, but is it really worth it? maggie coleman mscoleman at aol.com