Winner of the Spitz Prize, Conference for the Study of Political
Thought
Winner of the
North American Society for Social Philosophy Book Award
Why do American
ghettos persist? Scholars and commentators often identify some
factor--such as single motherhood, joblessness, or violent street
crime--as the key to solving the problem and recommend policies
accordingly. But, Tommie Shelby argues, these attempts to "fix"
ghettos or "help" their poor inhabitants ignore fundamental
questions of justice and fail to see the urban poor as moral agents
responding to injustice.
"Provocative...[Shelby]
doesn't lay out a jobs program or a housing initiative. Indeed, as he
freely admits, he offers 'no new political strategies or policy
proposals.' What he aims to do instead is both more abstract and more
radical: to challenge the assumption, common to liberals and
conservatives alike, that ghettos are 'problems' best addressed with
narrowly targeted government programs or civic interventions. For
Shelby, ghettos are something more troubling and less tractable:
symptoms of the 'systemic injustice' of the United States. They
represent not aberrant dysfunction but the natural workings of a
deeply unfair scheme. The only real solution, in this way of
thinking, is the 'fundamental reform of the basic structure of our
society.'"
--James Ryerson, New
York Times Book Review
