From the introduction of “The Origins of the Urban Crisis” by Thomas J. Sugrue:
No one social program or policy, no single force, whether housing segregation, social welfare programs, or deindustrialization, could have driven Detroit and other cities like it from their positions of economic and political dominance; there is no single explanation for the inequality and marginality that beset the urban poor. It is only through the complex and interwoven histories of race, residence, and work in the postwar era that the state of today’s cities and their impoverished residents can be fully understood and confronted.
Also:
Economic and racial inequality constrain individual family choices. They set the limits of human agency. Within the bounds of the possible, individuals and families resist, adapt, and succumb.
Nora Bonner 