I think it will come as no surprise to you if I'm took the opposite side. Of the Paradigm did Mickey Kaus developed until the politics really is Central to changing the culture? I think that what we must do with the beginning really is to debrief. the book the end of equality because most profiting about not only the book but its pretensions to be a liberal home. Is a fact that it all too often, I think represents the liberality of this age, which is some of us is patently conservative. Do I think that when when my looks at some of the key concepts of the book? It considers very early at the beginning the capitalism for example cannot be disciplined. I cannot be disciplined in order to bring about greater money equality. I think the focus on money equality and the book is really a very narrow cylinder. For what it is. We have tried to do with a philosophy of liberalism and social change and therefore the dispensation of Justice to the oppressed. It is not and never has been just a question of money equality. So I think at the heart of this book really is a fictitious division between on the one hand the question of money equality and something called social liberalism. They really have always gone hand-in-hand. What happens at courses? That one has to look very hard at the social liberalism. And what one will see really are the footprints of the new neoconservatism. The very position the capitalism cannot be changed. Is most troubling because what it does is to say that we must at all ends, except the status quo. More fundamentally what it says is that social equality is possible without resource the quality of material equality. That I would suggest is a recipe for certain kind of paternalism that is sort of a new kind of noblesse oblige liberalism. How is it in fact possible to have social equality? among the races between the races Without having the resources with which to make people equally mobile and therefore make it possible for them to participate in all areas of American society. How suggest that one of the ways that you could do this is to bring back some of the social opportunities things like the draft or so for where you would be able to participate in the sort of social equality. Well that always was really a forced air quality. It never was a real equality because part of fact what happens when you got through with your experience in the Army, and this was a mythical to call today that was waiting at the end of that term a different economic political and cultural realities for the people in it. And therefore we can't really hold up. These are the momentary social experiences as any Paradigm afford the kind of equality that the dispossessed have been seeking in this country at all. The book is disturbing in many other ways. The first for example with a genetic concept which has been uploaded propounded by harinstein which suggests that genetic determinism may be increasing. It suggests that. One of the things that I think is not discussed. And that is that racism as a viable factor and why it is that you continue to have the diversions of experience between blacks and whites and Hispanics in the urban areas. as a factor. examen unexplained in this book What we have is a substitute which settles were sort of economic determinism money will always win. And then of course we come to the the fact that I think which is at the basis of the book that isn't the question to welfare. welfare Being material to a so-called underclass is as erroneous today as it was when Daniel Patrick Moynihan propounded uses 20 years ago. The fact that welfare has a relationship. a24 people is not a relationship for welfare maintains the poverty. The welfare of course is a result of the poverty. One must then ask. How is poverty maintained? Well Poverty of course is maintained as a result of the functional veganomics system. in effect the twin dynamics of not only the function of the economically system, but also the powerful impact of the redistributed function of government in that process and one doesn't really deal with that when one talks about the immutable power of capitalism, the unchangeable factor capitalism if that were so Then the people that I see in this room. Whose parents would largely lifted out of poverty in the last 50 years. Do not only a combination of the economically forces, but also the powerful effect of government benefits and the redistributive aspect of that. You wouldn't be sitting here at Hamlin today. If that were not self. If capitalism, we're mutable. If the political power of government to redistribute benefits, we're not Material in fighting poverty. So I think they're what we do is to draw much too fine a concept here with respect to what it is is at the base of this book with respect to the function of money. And the centrality of welfare. and seeing welfare really as a generator of some sort of culture some sort of a burn culture rather than seeing it as a recipient of not only economic forces but governmental forces and then finally, A closure a fundamental economic and political and social opportunity. I think that that basic proposition therefore is flat wrong. And that is supported by a number of Scholars. did the people like Bernard boxill a philosopher who has looked at William Julius Wilson Paradigm of the so-called underclass by the way, Professor Wilson University of Chicago has stopped using that term underclass and you substituted for what he calls the ghetto por social institutions I have the power. to create social equality only if the individuals who are a part of our social institutions come out of groups that are fundamentally undergirded but equal resources. but we have loose in the land is a philosophy of rugged individualism, which really Distorts the notion and sociology 101 of how it is an individuals gain social mobility in American society. The individuals who would have you believe and of course, this is the concept which is at the base of the New communitarian Philosophy propounded by professor amitai etzioni. That individuals should accept the responsibility commensurate with that the government gives to them or that Society gives to them. Well, that's fine. If they have the ability to do it as individuals, but we know from sociology 101 that individuals emerge from primary groups. The family of course is the basic primary groups, but the family is not the only group that is important to the socialization and development of individuals. In fact, we mature or through a whole network of group structures. And each of those groups churches social organizations extended families educational institutions Civic and social organization economic organizations are all important to developing the individual and therefore if the poverty I'm one of those groups is reflected. And the way in which they react 1/2 or the other they will not be able to socialize individuals and the individuals who come through them then we'll be poor as a result. So if there is any poverty, it is a Poverty of resources in the institution that immaterial the socializing individuals. It is not in here in the culture of the individuals themselves. house believes That the consensus between conservative blacks such as Glenn Lowry and liberal black such as Rodger Wilkins on the essentiality of black strategies. Are they I think therefore that this raises the question of who will lead who will determine the strategies for the oppressed so-called underclass. If not, the professionals liberals and conservatives in the African American Community for seized of the question on a daily basis. Recite the thing is autonomy. There is such a thing as a strategy which is lead by the leaders of that individual group. Not that others cannot participate. But that leadership certainly is important to the solution to the problems. The Dilemma of underclass blacks is important to discuss the question of racism. One of the ways that we can show this. Is a fact that upper-class backs. have succeeded materially both as individuals and as groups. But many of them have not been assimilated into the parallel racial class. Even though they have achieved by many of the standards of American society. This continues to be a powerful incentive to the black middle class to provide that leadership the fact that they have not all escaped, even though they have moved their demographic residence in many cases to the suburbs are the post and suburbs of the edge cities. Is there a call This continues to provide powerful incentive to the African American middle class to provide social cultural political economic leadership. Finally Bernard boxer also says that the view that reform must always serve the interests of the majority. Is an immoral suggestion? Are we haven't talked about morality? In fact, one of the things that count suggestion is book. Is that morality and I think what he's talking about his morality based upon guilt. Is the wrong resource for long term integration long term assimilation long-term social equality. And some extent I would agree with that, but we don't want to rest. Our case on the question of guilt. We also want to see in the majority. Strategies which have at the basis of it. their own self-interest it is to the interest of the majority you see to it that poverty in the inner cities. Is eliminated because increasingly your sons and daughters will come to live in the world. Where this country? Will be made up of diverse individuals who will contribute disproportionately Economic Security in the military security to their well-being. And that's reason enough for you to be concerned about the quality of Education in the inner city area is reason enough to be concerned about how to eliminate poverty in the inner city areas. Because there really is no Escape. Suburban civilization was created after the second world war as an escape for many of those challenges. But also a sort of a Mythic Utopia for individuals to functions. I think what we're coming to understand increasingly is that there really is no Escape. Really has no separate Paradise where people are divorced from problems of drive-by shootings and carjacking and Drug deals and many of the things that played Urban intensity America because those things are beginning now to find a way into the comfortable suburbs of the white middle-class and deed. They're already there. So there is no Escape. There is one country until the task of true liberals is to share the vision of the oppressed rather than to seek the leadership of their movement. The task of true liberals is to hear the historical timing of the oppressed concerning when the amelioration regimes that I put been put into place. When it's time for them to be over. this whole debate this whole dialogue about when we can get rid of affirmative action when these things have run their course and changing around the social conditions to soup. Anyone other than the people who are affected by them that has to end. Because those same people then come back and say well why can't we fix it? We messed it up every 10 years. Why can't we fix it? It is at the timing does not belong to you. The timing belongs to the oppressed. The timing of when it's over when it's finally settled when it is enough belongs to the people who have been wrong. That's why. So where the focus thing I would say. Is that there is a substantial progress by the black middle class, and we don't need to to go into that. Black businesses for example growth group tremendously in the 1980s from turn 24000 to about a half a million black education grew or a million young African-Americans in college today poised to enter the middle class. And I could go on to talk about the success. But there's additional in a city needs urgent help because of the things that Mickey Kaus mentioned in the resulting social disorganization. And the violent crime that has been spawned. I disagree with the fundamentally on the question of what the result of the social disorganization has been and the increase in poverty has rock. Basically, it is Rock the social disorganization. Where the official economy which is left has been substituted by a drug economy. Now we don't look at it like that, but I see young man going to work every day and every evening on the street corners of the inner city. Justice righteously as they would if they had a real job. Are they getting killed for it the killing each other for? But the fact is that this is an economy. And that economy will be there as long as the legitimate economy is absent. Which one to talk about immutable facts ladies and gentlemen, that is an immutable fact. And we cannot deal with that through popgun programs like weed and seed. We can't deal with that by pretending the welfare was the central problem in the inner city area. We can't deal with the absence of an economy. By looking at the results. And so we've been feeling around the edges of this question really not coming to grips with the basic problem. Poverty is concentrated among children. 40% of them overall black and white 14.4 million children 60% of those in one of the kids until poverty Paul The Stereotype of a single mother. May be connected to the welfare system what we ought to see past is to the children. Because they are growing up poor and if they grow up or they will seek the kind of economic Alternatives that will not be palatable to anyone and that is certainly what is happening. Therefore it is evident that people are not sustained in poverty and profit is not expand. Simply by welfare, but welfare is the result. Bobby kaname performance a racism in the opportunity structure of decisions made by politicians and government the magnitude of the problem has been defined by number of organizations. The National Urban League has suggested that we spend 50 billion dollars a year. us Conference of Mayors 34 billion the Congressional Black Caucus 30.9 billion Quentin 20 billion and the current bill that's in Congress sponsored by Bush ministration the Democrats 10 billion. most of this focuses on jobs We're we're trying to integrate the dynamic forces back into the community that will make it self-sustaining. And we can talk about that later. It's an interesting experiments going on. I would say finally. That we must repair since we're going to church to the philosophical notion. Other people who were very much involved in the civil rights movement and we saw this question of the relationship between Justice and poverty and a time when they were immersed in the struggle to attain it. We're step back historically from that and we have a different perspective and many of our allies now have gone over to the right and still frantically trying to hang on to the mantle of being liberals. But other forces are pulling them farther and farther away from the Genesis of the problem. Martin Luther King jr. In the middle of the problem said this White America must recognize and justice for black people cannot be achieved without radical changes in the structure of our society. This particular dictum. It seems to me run smack up against make it couses feeling. That capitalism cannot be changed. That money is a beautiful. And that the deal with the problem from the bases and the Paradigm of a status quo orientation. As far as I'm concerned if it's the solution. Even then King was focused on the economically agenda. You said many whites who conceived that Negroes should have equal access to public facilities. And the untrammeled right to vote? Cannot understand that we do not intend to remain in the basement of America's economic structure. That is why it seems to me that it is nice to talk about social equality. But I passed it again that social equality without equal material resources is fictitious and indeed Halo. And finally you said when I speak of integration, I don't mean a romantic mixing of the colors. I mean a real sharing a power and responsibility. Unquote it seems to me that that is the message was really defined as a relationship between poverty. and justice and where we have to go. We cannot share power and responsibility. as oppressed people of color unless we deal with the question of radical change. We cannot simply accept these truths as immutable. And then proceeded to Bill Falls houses on them. This generation must challenge those immutable truths. And if they do those will be the real liberals.