Searching for the White Underclass

‘EVERY ONCE in a while the sky really is falling,” Charles Murray wrote in the October 29, 1993, Wall Street Journal in a guest editorial, “The Coming White Underclass.” The sky was falling because whites, who make up more than fourfifths of the American population, were developing social pathologies at a fearful pace; whites might well wind up where blacks are today, and not too many years down the road either.

A decade earlier, Murray’s book Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950-1980 brought new thinking to the issue. The poor were made worse off by the very “anti-poverty” measures designed to improve their lot. Beginning around 1965, social pathology, from crime to drug abuse to illiteracy, took a sharp turn for the worse. It did so because we redrew the ground rules to bring out the worst in the poor—and potentially in all of us. Murray wrote:

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Carl F. Horowitz

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‘EVERY ONCE in a while the sky really is falling,” Charles Murray wrote in the October 29, 1993, Wall Street Journal in a guest editorial, “The Coming White Underclass.” The sky was falling because whites, who make up more than fourfifths of the American population, were developing social pathologies at a fearful pace; whites might well wind up where blacks are today, and not too many years down the road either.

A decade earlier, Murray’s book Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950-1980 brought new thinking to the issue. The poor were made worse off by the very “anti-poverty” measures designed to improve their lot. Beginning around 1965, social pathology, from crime to drug abuse to illiteracy, took a sharp turn for the worse. It did so because we redrew the ground rules to bring out the worst in the poor—and potentially in all of us. Murray wrote: