Book Review: Separate Societies: Poverty and Inequality in U.S. Cities
Abstract
JPEspjpeJournal of Planning Education and Research0739-456X1552-6577SAGE PublicationsSage CA: Los Angeles, CA10.1177/0739456X1143187210.1177_0739456X11431872ReviewsBook Review: Separate Societies: Poverty and Inequality in U.S. CitiesScallyCorianne P.University at Albany, State University of New York62012322251252GoldsmithWilliam W.BlakelyEdward J.Separate Societies: Poverty and Inequality in U.S. Cities, 2nd ed.Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2010. pp. $79.50 (hardback); $30.95 (paperback). ISBN 978-1-43990-291-2 (hardback); 978-1-43990-292-9 (paperback)© The Author(s) 20122012Association of Collegiate Schools of PlanningAmerica’s inner cities were still smoldering when the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (1968), or Kerner Commission, reported its findings on the cause of the series of riots that devastated the nation’s urban centers. They found that the United States was “moving toward two societies, one black, one white—separate and unequal” (p. 1). Active racial discrimination and unrelenting poverty were dividing the nation into those privileged by skin color and wealth and those locked out of opportunity. To address this increasing polarization, the Kerner Commission recommended a series of federal interventions to eliminate discrimination and equalize education, employment, and housing opportunities for blacks. Barely twenty years later, William Julius Wilson (1987) identified a persistent underclass concentrated in U.S. urban neighborhoods: racially segregated, socially isolated and disorganized, unskilled and unemployed, and cut off from a deindustrializing economy