Dark Ghettos

Winner of the Spitz Prize, Conference for the Study of Political ThoughtWinner of the North American Society for Social Philosophy Book AwardWhy 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

Tommie Shelby’s Dark Ghettos is, in a word, brilliant! His thoughtful philosophical discourse on issues of race and urban poverty will engage and inform not only his fellow philosophers, but social scientists and educated lay readers as well...This book sets a standard that will be hard to equal., [Shelby] doesn’t lay out a jobs program or a housing initiative...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.’, Dark Ghettos will not let us forget that racial discrimination has not been eradicated and inequality is now greater and more entrenched. Shelby has issued a timely reminder that the status quo in the United States is unacceptable., If you have ever bristled at discussions of marriage promotion strategies, the cultural roots of urban poverty, or the pointlessness of so-called political rap, only to decide that the real disagreement was buried too far under too many myths about Black humanity or assumptions about fairness and justice to unravel in one lifetime, then this book is for you. For anyone who hopes to engage productively with the assumptions and claims circulating among our most influential policymakers and ‘thought leaders,’ this book represents philosophy at its most helpful and edifying., This bold and incisive book reframes the racial justice debate roiling the United States today…The gestalt shift Shelby’s systemic-injustice perspective invites and supports constitutes a frontal assault on ‘personal responsibility’ and ‘politics of respectability’ approaches to the plight of poor blacks, according to which problems that disproportionately afflict blacks (such as crime and racialized mass incarceration) must be attributed to their bad choices, lack of personal responsibility, and moral deficiencies rather than to social oppression…Dark Ghettos drives a stake through the heart of this diehard but wrongheaded perspective on black criminals.

Tommie Shelby is Caldwell Titcomb Professor of African and African American Studies and of Philosophy at Harvard University. In addition to Dark Ghettos he is the author of We Who Are Dark: The Philosophical Foundations of Black Solidarity and coeditor with Brandon M. Terry of To Shape a New World: Essays on the Political Philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr.