Dark Ghettos: Injustice, Dissent, and Reform

by Tommie Shelby

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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

Format:Paperback

Language:English

ISBN:0674984072

ISBN13:9780674984073

Release Date:July 2018

Publisher:Belknap Press

Length:352 Pages

Weight:1.06 lbs.

Dimensions:0.9" x 5.7" x 8.9"

Related Subjects

Philosophy Social Science Social Sciences

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Dark Ghettos: Injustice, Dissent, and Reform

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