chicken or the egg?

"Is the twenty-first-century American urban ghetto simply an open-air prison in which the most stigmatized and demonized are confined? Some observers think that the urban ghetto of today is an outcast ghetto, comprised of those that society has no use for. As Marcuse notes, 'Those in today's black ghettos are not productive for their masters; their masters get no benefit from their existance. As far as the dominant society is concerned, they are only a drain on public and private resources, they are a threat to a social peace, and they fulfill no useful social role. They are outcasts....'
Since urban ghetto dwellers have no role in U.S. society, the population at large simply sees no reason to provide for their continued reproduction. In this light, current welfare and public housing policies are mainly attempts to reduce the social expense of the poor. Will the outcasts remain quiescent? Or will the U.S. experience another round of urban rebellions that once again threaten to destroy social order?"

---Jeff R. Crump "Producing and Enforcing the Geography of Hate" p. 241


If today's "social order" is about oppressing the poor and underprivileged, it's goddamn time somebody starts destroying it.