In his withering dissection of the origins and misuse of the term underclass" to stereotype and stigmatize the poor, Herbert J. Gans shows how this ubiquitous label has relegated a wide variety of people,welfare recipients, the working poor, teenage mothers, drug addicts, the homeless, and others,to a single condemned class, feared and despised by the rest of society. Probing the deep psychological, social, and political reasons why Americans seek to indict millions of poor citizens as undeserving," Gans calls for a cease-fire in the undeclared war against the poor. He concludes with a set of innovative, job-centreed policy proposals and a multifaceted educational plan to stop the endless flow of new recruits into America's untouchable caste.

Prizes

Winner of Choice Magazine Outstanding Reference/Academic Book Award 1996

Herbert J. Gans, author of Levittowners and The Urban Villagers, is professor of sociology at Columbia University and the former president of the American Sociological Association.