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.

Keywords: underclass, ideology, urban poor