I think it is difficult to achieve a meaningful political coalition if you have race-based programs that divide members of the coalition. The problem I have, however, is that white people assume an either/or position: Either we have race-based programs or we don't. What I see is comprehensive social reform that includes race-based and race-neutral programs.

William Julius Wilson

But the person who scored well on an SAT will not necessarily be the best doctor or the best lawyer or the best businessman. These tests do not measure character, leadership, creativity, perseverance.

William Julius Wilson

perseverance creativity character

There is a tendency to want to treat blacks as a monolithic socioeconomic group.

William Julius Wilson

treats groups want

Crime, family dissolution, welfare, and low levels of social organization are fundamentally a consequence of the disappearance of work.

William Julius Wilson

levels organization work

Racism should be viewed as an intervening variable. You give me a set of conditions and I can produce racism in any society. You give me a different set of conditions and I can reduce racism. You give me a situation where there are a sufficient number of social resources so people don't have to compete for those resources, and I will show you a society where racism is held in check.

William Julius Wilson

racism giving people

My research clearly reveals that if we want to put inner-city workers to work immediately, we just can't rely on the private sector. They don't want to touch them; they don't want to hire them.

William Julius Wilson

research cities want

The middle class has just fallen further and further behind the rich.

William Julius Wilson

rich middle class

During the Great Depression, African Americans were faced with problems that were not unlike those experienced by the most disadvantaged groups in society. The Great Depression had a leveling effect, and all groups really experienced hard times: poor whites, poor blacks.

William Julius Wilson

african-american hard-times groups

If you're talking about the narrow issue of public assistance, I would like to see us move to a more healthy system. But until we come up with certain guarantees - for example, guaranteed jobs where mothers move off welfare - I support welfare very strongly. The worst thing we could do is impose time limits and then expect people to sink or swim once they move off welfare.

William Julius Wilson

mother people moving

There are many positive things to say about the black community. No question about it.

William Julius Wilson

positive-things black community

Black professors make more than white professors. That's because we are in demand. I'll tell you, give me two blacks in institutions of higher learning, one has a Ph.D. from an elite institution and has a certain publication record. You give me a white scholar with the same credentials, and I will take that black scholar.

William Julius Wilson

white giving two

A lot of joblessness in the black community doesn't seem to be reachable through fiscal and monetary policies. People have not been drawn into the labor market even during periods of economic recovery.

William Julius Wilson

recovery community people

A lot of joblessness in the black community doesn't seem to be reachable through fiscal and monetary policies. People have not been drawn into the labor market even during periods of economic recovery. Employers would rather not hire a lot of workers from the inner city. They feel people from the inner city are not job-ready, that the kids have been poorly educated, that they can't read, they can't write, they can't speak.

William Julius Wilson

recovery writing kids

Prior to 1940, the affluent and the middle class began to converge, but after 1979, the economic gap between the middle class and affluent widened significantly.

William Julius Wilson

gaps economic class

I maintain that the period during the first half of the 1990s, the period in which rising inequality reached its peak, was a period in which we came very, very close to a demagogic immobilization of racism in this society.

William Julius Wilson

rising half racism

Black employers are just as negative as the white employers concerning inner-city workers.

William Julius Wilson

black cities white

If you're going to compare a middle-income black kid with a middle- income white kid, and, say, you control for family background, family education, and family income, and if this middle-income black kid doesn't score as well as the white kid on the test, then I say, look, you haven't taken into consideration the cumulative effect of living in a segregated neighborhood and going to a de facto segregated school. You're denying a position at Harvard or some other place to a kid that really could make it. That's why I support affirmative action that's based on both class and race.

William Julius Wilson

taken kids school

If you're not working, over time you're much more likely to develop attitudes and orientations and behavior patterns that are associated with casual or infrequent work. And then when you open up opportunities for people, you notice that these attitudes, orientations, habits and styles also change.

William Julius Wilson

opportunity attitude people

Liberals were intimidated by the Reagan administration and did not want to appear naive by talking about programs that called for government support. I just said, 'The hell with that. I'm out there.'

William Julius Wilson

support government talking

Over the years, black leaders have been slow to recognize the need for a very, very progressive agenda. Anytime someone has talked about putting America back to work, blacks should have said yes, but they didn't. They were so preoccupied with affirmative action that they didn't provide the kind of leadership that would help some of the other progressive folks. Only now are black leaders beginning to realize the impact of economic issues.

William Julius Wilson

black leader helping

If we could create the conditions that make racism difficult, or discourage it, then there would be less stress and less need for affirmative action programs. One of those conditions would be an economic policy that would create tight labor markets over long periods of time. Now does that mean that affirmative action is here only temporarily? I think the ultimate goal should be to remove it.

William Julius Wilson

stress mean thinking