Lemann, Wilson and Anderson: Marking the Synonymical Rise and Fall of the "Culture of Poverty" Conceit
by David W. Boles

This essay will examine the “culture of poverty” conceit created and perpetuated by scholars and economists and the effect of that conceit on the urban Black population over time using Lemann’s The Promised Land, Wilson’s When Work Disappears, and Anderson’s Code of the Street as an argumentative core. This essay will also argue how the “culture of poverty’s” presumed putative values, beliefs and have mislabeled the Black experience in America and that the conceit of the “culture of poverty” as an intellectual argument is falling in popular scholarship even though the underlying theme of the phrase survives untouched. To understand the present one must first briefly frame current experience against the context of what has already been argued in the “culture of poverty” timeline....

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