A Way Out

by Fiss, Owen M.

• ISBN13: 9780691088815
• ISBN10: 0691088810
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-02-03
• Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr

Summary

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.

Table of Contents

Preface	ix
Joshua Cohen
Jefferson Decker
Joel Rogers
PART I
What Should Be Done for Those Who Have Been Left Behind?	3	(44)
Owen Fiss
PART II
Down by Law	47	(4)
Richard Ford
Communities, Capital, and Conflicts	51	(6)
Tracey L. Meares
Better Neighborhoods?	57	(3)
Robert Coles
Beyond Moralizing	60	(8)
J. Phillip Thompson
Creating Options	68	(6)
Jennifer Hochschild
Exit and Redevelopment	74	(5)
Gary Orfield
Relocation Works	79	(6)
James E. Rosenbaum
Unlikely Times	85	(7)
Alexander Polikoff
Against Social Engineering	92	(10)
Jim Sleeper
If Baldwin Could Speak	102	(11)
Steven Gregory
PART III
A Task Unfinished	113	(14)
Owen Fiss
Notes on the Contributors	127	(2)
Index	129