Equal Opportunity and the Estranged Poor

This article is concerned with people who so lack marketable skills and material resources that they are excluded from mainstream society, and who lack faith that they can succeed through conventional means. They are usually poor, but they are a small subset of the poor and are not necessarily poor throughout their lives. Most are excluded because the American rhetoric of equal opportunity for all is belied by political choices that deny to some any chance of success. Programs to enable the estranged poor to enter mainstream society must provide skills, a starting place, and faith in the possibility of achievement. Such programs are long-lasting, intensive, and comprehensive—thus costly. To ensure that estrangement is not reproduced in the next generation, programs to aid the poor must, furthermore, eliminate gender biases in their prescriptions and must change the structural conditions that create the gap between the promise and practice of equal opportunity. These programs should not necessarily be targeted on minorities or the poor, but should build on Americans' support for social policies that give everyone a chance for at least some success.