After decades of hand-wringing and well-intentioned efforts to
improve inner cities, ghettos remain places of degrading poverty
with few jobs, much crime, failing schools, and dilapidated
housing. Stepping around fruitless arguments over whether or not
ghettos are dysfunctional communities that exacerbate poverty, and
beyond modest proposals to ameliorate their problems, one of
America's leading experts on civil rights gives us a stunning but
commonsensical solution: give residents the means to leave.
Inner cities, writes Owen Fiss, are structures of subordination.
The only way to end the poverty they transmit across generations is
to help people move out of them--and into neighborhoods with higher
employment rates and decent schools. Based on programs tried
successfully in Chicago and elsewhere, Fiss's proposal is for a
provocative national policy initiative that would give inner-city
residents rent vouchers so they can move to better neighborhoods.
This would end at last the informal segregation, by race and
income, of our metropolitan regions. Given the government's role in
creating and maintaining segregation, Fiss argues, justice demands
no less than such sweeping federal action.
To sample the heated controversy that Fiss's ideas will ignite,
the book includes ten responses from scholars, journalists, and
practicing lawyers. Some endorse Fiss's proposal in general terms
but take issue with particulars. Others concur with his diagnosis
of the problem but argue that his policy response is wrongheaded.
Still others accuse Fiss of underestimating the internal strength
of inner-city communities as well as the hostility of white
suburbs.
Fiss's bold views should set off a debate that will help shape
urban social policy into the foreseeable future. It is
indispensable reading for anyone interested in social justice,
domestic policy, or the fate of our cities.
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