For the first time in the history of America, an entire group of people has been told that there is no hope for them, that society has so oppressed them that they are unable to climb the ladder of economic success and are so irretrievably mired in poverty that the state must and should support them. This group is today's underclass, overwhelmingly urban, dismayingly minority. Such a view has been imposed upon it by a mainstream culture whose reinterpretation...