William Julius Wilson - Criticism of His Work

Criticism of His Work

Beginning with The Declining Significance of Race, Wilson's work has attracted a great deal of controversy and criticism. (See, e.g., Willie's The Inclining Significance of Race)

In his book Still the Promised City? African-Americans and New Immigrants in Postindustrial New York, Roger Waldinger, a professor of Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles, provides a critique of arguments advanced by Wilson in The Truly Disadvantaged. In particular, Waldinger challenges Wilson's argument that the labor market problems African Americans face today are largely due to deindustrialization and consequent skills mismatches. Waldinger argues that, on one hand, African Americans never were especially dependent on jobs in the manufacturing sector, so deindustrialization in itself has not had a major impact on African Americans, and that, on the other hand, the relative labor market success of poorly-educated immigrants suggests that in the postindustrial era shows that there is no absence of jobs for those with few skills. (See Anthony Orum's review of the book for an assessment of how thoroughly Waldinger rebuts Wilson.) One crucial limitation to the full credibility of Waldinger's study, however, is that it is based entirely on research in New York City and, therefore, its findings are difficult to generalize to cities like Detroit, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Cleveland, and others where blacks were indeed concentrated in the manufacturing sector.