The Rise and Fall of the 'Underclass': An Exploration of Ideology and the Legal Arena

Abstract:     
This article explores the rise and fall of the "underclass" as an ideological construct between roughly 1980 and the present. The emergent understanding of the 10-12% of the population living in impoverished center-cities as an "underclass" carried with it a pronounced sympathy for the urban poor and also a preference for welfare and job programs that could aid them. Not surprisingly, the overall ideological construct made its presence felt in the legal arena, a discursive setting in which the organizational force of ideology is especially evident. In particular, some courts attempted to stop exclusionary zoning, a practice especially common in new, outlying suburbs. As the twentieth century drew to a close, meanwhile, attention to the "underclass" declined precipitously, and notions of an "underclass" virtually vanished from policy-making, political discourse, and the legal arena. The courts concomitantly lost interest in condemning exclusionary zoning, and the urban poor were denied a potentially valuable conceptualization which might have contributed to their political self-awareness and strengthened demands for an end to their debilitating oppression.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 31

Keywords: underclass, ideology, urban poor

working papers series