Quotes from William Julius Wilson

But the person who scored well on an SAT will not necessarily be the best doctor or the best lawyer or the best businessman. These tests do not measure character, leadership, creativity, perseverance.

During hard economic times, people become more receptive to simplistic ideological messages that deflect attention away from the real and complex source of their problems. Instead of associating their problems with economic and political changes, these divisive messages encourage them to turn on each other—race against race.

Their analysis clearly revealed the existence of a color line that effectively blocked black occupational, residential, and social mobility. They demonstrated that any assumption about urban blacks duplicating the immigrant experience had to confront the issue of race.

The environment embodies both structural and cultural constraints and opportunities. In order to fully appreciate and explain the divergent social outcomes of human groups, we must take into account the exposure to different cultural influences.

I argue that the disappearance of work and the consequences of that disappearance for both social and cultural life are the central problems in the inner-city ghetto.

When victims are murdered by strangers, young people are more likely to be the perpetrators. "During 1976–1991, only 20 percent of all homicides were between strangers, whereas 34 percent of those committed by male juveniles were between strangers

Prior to 1940, the affluent and the middle class began to converge, but after 1979, the economic gap between the middle class and affluent widened significantly.

During the Great Depression, African Americans were faced with problems that were not unlike those experienced by the most disadvantaged groups in society. The Great Depression had a leveling effect, and all groups really experienced hard times: poor whites, poor blacks.

But the person who scored well on an SAT will not necessarily be the best doctor or the best lawyer or the best businessman. These tests do not measure character, leadership, creativity, perseverance.

Black professors make more than white professors. That's because we are in demand. I'll tell you, give me two blacks in institutions of higher learning, one has a Ph.D. from an elite institution and has a certain publication record. You give me a white scholar with the same credentials, and I will take that black scholar.

There are many positive things to say about the black community. No question about it.

I maintain that the period during the first half of the 1990s, the period in which rising inequality reached its peak, was a period in which we came very, very close to a demagogic immobilization of racism in this society.

I don't think we should stop emphasizing race because I think, you know, race is still very, very important, and we have to recognize that and continue to introduce programs to address racial inequities. But we have to widen our vision and also address the growing problems of economic class.

A lot of joblessness in the black community doesn't seem to be reachable through fiscal and monetary policies. People have not been drawn into the labor market even during periods of economic recovery.

Black employers are just as negative as the white employers concerning inner-city workers.

The worst thing we could do is impose time limits and then expect people to sink or swim once they move off welfare.

Certain people are just saying, 'Look, I'm a businessperson and I have to run a business effectively and I want people who are going to do the job, who have the training and the education and the personality traits - the soft skills.'

There is a tendency to want to treat blacks as a monolithic socioeconomic group.

The middle class has just fallen further and further behind the rich.

Liberals were intimidated by the Reagan administration and did not want to appear naive by talking about programs that called for government support. I just said, 'The hell with that. I'm out there.'

Crime, family dissolution, welfare, and low levels of social organization are fundamentally a consequence of the disappearance of work.

My research clearly reveals that if we want to put inner-city workers to work immediately, we just can't rely on the private sector. They don't want to touch them; they don't want to hire them.

If you're not working, over time you're much more likely to develop attitudes and orientations and behavior patterns that are associated with casual or infrequent work. And then when you open up opportunities for people, you notice that these attitudes, orientations, habits and styles also change.