Are We Living in Separate Societies?

The recent mob panic over Section 8 housing allocations points to a pretty clear problem: people in the U.S. are desperate. Class stratification is only getting worse as the recession continues, and those unaffected by the economic downturn may not be safe for long. There are surely people who were genuinely surprised to hear that tens of thousands of people showed up on the first day that the public housing waiting list was opened in East Point, Georgia. Those folks simply don't understand that we live in separate societies, segregated by class.

One of the most comprehensive histories of urban poverty, a second edition of Edward Blakely and William Goldsmith's award-winning Separate Societies: Poverty and Inequality in U.S. Cities was recently revised with information on how the recession has further exacerbated class divisions in the last several years. The book's thesis is disturbingly simple, even for people who aren't aware of our current state of economic segregation: government policies are no longer enough to combat poverty, nor are they all that effective. Citing the country's turn towards conservatism in the last several decades, our political forces and economic policies have begun to actually exacerbate poverty, pushing the poor further into the margins of society. Originally published in 1992, the new edition of the book thoroughly deconstructs the problems of the poor that so many others are willing to ignore or are simply ignorant about: depleted public services, the loss of industrial jobs and the Wall Street meltdown have all aggravated the already desperate working poor in America.

The book's foreword by former President Bill Clinton sheds some initial light on how things have gotten so bad. In the last decade, much of his administration's work to increase the median wage, create new jobs and improve access to housing and education have been reversed. The Obama administration is working hard, but they're making up for lost time and fighting back against eight years of regressive policies.

Separate Societies not only names the problem we're starting to see play out in long Section 8 waiting lines. The authors provide a blueprint for change. Focusing on breaking the cycle of poverty with the help of both grassroots activists and federal anti-poverty programs and agencies, as well as local changes at the city level, Blakely and Goldsmith are anything but overly optimistic. There is still much work to be done and as strange as it might seem that anyone — even conservatives — would push back against mitigating poverty, there remains significant opposition to ending poverty in the United States. But if the Section 8 crisis last week hasn't been a wake-up call, I'm hard pressed to imagine what will be. It's appalling that the situation must reach a crisis level before people start acknowledging our stratified existence and work to create a more equitable nation for us all.

Photo credit: D.C.Atty