But if you think shooting an 18 year old in her bedroom is a manly thing to do, then we have to reconsider this idea of initiation in africa and circumcision.

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Alma1
Wait until that very same 18 year old female thug ambushes you in your bedroom with a gun when you are sleeping. That's the day you and your manly initiated and circumcised ass will crap your pants.

The Truly Disadvantaged told a different tale. It explained the rise of "a new type of urban poverty," as Sharkey calls it. Wilson described how the erosion of manufacturing drove up joblessness. Cities transformed from "centers of goods processing to centers of information processing." Their growth industries required workers with more education. And the jobs that required less learning were sprouting up in suburbs and exurbs, according to one study cited by Wilson, "far removed from growing concentrations of poorly educated urban minorities."

Wilson also stressed a social shift: the desertion of inner-city neighborhoods by working- and middle-class black families. Their exodus weakened a "social buffer" that could "deflect the full impact" of economic hardship, he argued. It eroded local institutions like churches, schools, and stores. And it removed "mainstream role models" who could reinforce the value of education, work, and family.

The result "was a concentration of poverty in the urban ghetto that was associated with an array of social problems, including violence, homelessness, joblessness, rising rates of families headed by single women, and welfare receipt," as Sharkey summarizes it in his book. "Whereas the ghetto of the 1940s was a place where all classes of African-American families were forced to live, the ghetto of the 1980s was a place where the most impoverished African-Americans had been abandoned."

In its capacity to spawn multiple interpretations, Wilson's book was "like the Bible," writes the urban historian Thomas J. Sugrue. It resonated with "liberal advocates of equality and conservative critics of the black family." It influenced policies to deconcentrate poverty by tearing down projects and offering vouchers to escape ghettos.