Dark Horses

What, exactly, is a “social problem”? What distinguishes it from a human condition? Some people seem to believe that it is anything in society that is narsty, or that they personally don’t like. My opinion is that a social problem is something the politicians have a solution to; or, if you prefer, that it is the politicians’ solution to a human condition.

In May 1980, William J. Baroody Jr. of the American Enterprise Institute convened a forum composed of himself and Robert L. Woodson, also of AEI, sociologists Peter and Brigitte Berger, and a group of former gang leaders plus a Puerto Rican nun. For two days they held rap sessions devoted to the issue of criminal behavior among urban youths of the minority persuasion, and how government policy can, or cannot, ameliorate it. AEI’s guests were involved in community organizations which sought to do the job that no government at any level, and none of the traditional “mediating structures” (YMCA, Boy Scouts, etc.), had succeeded in doing: turning young hoodlums from lives of crime to prosperous and law-abiding citizenship.

CW

About the Author

Chilton Williamson Jr.

What, exactly, is a “social problem”? What distinguishes it from a human condition? Some people seem to believe that it is anything in society that is narsty, or that they personally don’t like. My opinion is that a social problem is something the politicians have a solution to; or, if you prefer, that it is the politicians’ solution to a human condition.

In May 1980, William J. Baroody Jr. of the American Enterprise Institute convened a forum composed of himself and Robert L. Woodson, also of AEI, sociologists Peter and Brigitte Berger, and a group of former gang leaders plus a Puerto Rican nun. For two days they held rap sessions devoted to the issue of criminal behavior among urban youths of the minority persuasion, and how government policy can, or cannot, ameliorate it. AEI’s guests were involved in community organizations which sought to do the job that no government at any level, and none of the traditional “mediating structures” (YMCA, Boy Scouts, etc.), had succeeded in doing: turning young hoodlums from lives of crime to prosperous and law-abiding citizenship.