Thanks for Nothing

WILLIAM BENNETT and others have insisted that the principal cause of persistent poverty, dependence, and lawlessness in our inner cities is not any lack of economic opportunity; it is a cultural deficiency—an absence of belief in such values as the worth of work and the importance of personal responsibility. In The Dream and the Nightmare, Fortune magazine’s Myron Magnet seconds this position, then goes on to set forth a theory about how that cultural deficiency came about. Magnet argues that the condition is not inherent in the black poor themselves, as some would say, nor is it the product of economic discouragement and racial humiliation, as liberals commonly maintain. Nor is it due to capitalist exploitation, as the Left claims.

The Dream and the Nightmare: The Sixties’ Legacy to the Underclass, by Myron Magnet (Morrow, 256 pp., $20)

RW

About the Author

Richard W. White Jr.

WILLIAM BENNETT and others have insisted that the principal cause of persistent poverty, dependence, and lawlessness in our inner cities is not any lack of economic opportunity; it is a cultural deficiency—an absence of belief in such values as the worth of work and the importance of personal responsibility. In The Dream and the Nightmare, Fortune magazine’s Myron Magnet seconds this position, then goes on to set forth a theory about how that cultural deficiency came about. Magnet argues that the condition is not inherent in the black poor themselves, as some would say, nor is it the product of economic discouragement and racial humiliation, as liberals commonly maintain. Nor is it due to capitalist exploitation, as the Left claims.

The Dream and the Nightmare: The Sixties’ Legacy to the Underclass, by Myron Magnet (Morrow, 256 pp., $20)