William Julius Wilson

Sociologist

• Born: December 20, 1935
• Birthplace: Derry Township, Pennsylvania

Educator, sociologist, and writer

Wilson’s work as an educator, researcher, scholar, and writer has generated spirited discussions of racism and urban poverty that have raised widespread awareness of these issues. His ideas have energized and expanded research efforts to better understand these complex social phenomena.

Areas of achievement: Education; Scholarship; Social sciences

Early Life

William Julius Wilson was born in Derry Township, Pennsylvania, on December 20, 1935, to Pauline and Esco Wilson. He spent his early childhood there before moving to Blairsville, Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh. Wilson’s family was of very modest means, and he grew up in a small house in which he and his five siblings shared one bedroom. His parents were high school dropouts who instilled the values of hard work and education in their children, all of whom earned college degrees. Esco Wilson was a coal miner and steelworker, and when Wilson was twelve, his father’s death from black lung disease plunged the family into abject poverty, forcing them to live on public assistance until his mother found relatively stable work cleaning houses. Wilson later characterized his childhood as having been happy with no real sense of deprivation, in spite of his family’s economic hardships.

Wilson’s aunt Janice Wardlaw, a psychiatric social worker in New York City, was an important influence and mentor. During the summers that Wilson spent with her, she introduced him to New York’s cultural amenities and insisted that he be well-read and excel academically. She also assisted him financially when he attended Wilberforce University in Ohio on a scholarship. Wilson earned a bachelor’s degree in sociology at Wilberforce in 1958. After spending two years in the military, he earned a master’s degree in sociology from Bowling Green State University in 1961 and a PhD in sociology and anthropology from Washington State University in 1966.

Life’s Work

Wilson had developed an interest in race relations and poverty at Wilberforce, but neither his master’s thesis nor his doctoral dissertation dealt with these topics. He joined the University of Massachusetts faculty after earning his PhD in 1966; by 1971, when he left to teach at the University of Chicago, race had become the focus of his work. At Chicago, he advanced quickly and became chair of the sociology department in 1978. Based on his Urban Poverty and Family Life Survey in 1987, Wilson established and became the director of the Center for the Study of Urban Inequality in 1990. His teaching and research-based publications examined race, urban poverty, and social stratification.

Wilson’s numerous books and articles have been widely read and influential within and outside of academia. He was critical of the methodology and conclusions of much of the race-oriented research done in the 1960s and 1970s, and his studies, which employed an empirical data-analysis approach, sometimes produced controversial findings. One of Wilson’s most controversial books, The Declining Significance of Race: Blacks and Changing American Institutions (1978), concludes that Black Americans’ life chances were affected more by class than race, leaving poor Black Americans in a nearly hopeless cycle of impoverishment, while their middle-class counterparts’ prospects were good. Wilson openly resented conservative academics and politicians using these findings, and even his own life, to support their assertions that government poverty-assistance programs should be eliminated. In a 1987 publication, Wilson disavowed any conservative connections by proposing that large-scale race-neutral government programs were needed to provide assistance and create educational and career opportunities for the impoverished. In subsequent publications, such as the 1996 book When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor, he expanded these proposals to include calls for universal health care and New Deal–style public job programs instead of welfare stipends.

Over the years Wilson has both acknowledged the significant role of culture in the cycle of urban poverty and continued to stress the impact of structures and institutions on the poor. In When Work Disappears (1996), Wilson identifies globalization as the cause of joblessness among low-skilled workers, which in turn has given rise to crime and social dissolution. There Goes the Neighborhood (2006), a collaboration between Wilson and Richard P. Taub, analyzes the effects of residents' social networks in urban neighborhoods on integration and de facto segregation in the early 1990s. In More than Just Race (2009), as in earlier works, Wilson advocates for race-neutral government assistance programs and expanded mainstream employment opportunities in an effort to change ingrained cultural attitudes and behaviors of the urban poor.

Another theme that has emerged in Wilson's writings is the need for interracial cooperation in order to combat economic disparity. In both The Bridge over the Racial Divide: Rising Inequality and Coalition Politics (1999) and There Goes the Neighborhood (2006), Wilson argues for united action across racial and ethnic lines around such class-related policy issues as improvements in education and stronger unions.

In 1996, Wilson joined the faculty of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, where he became the director of the Joblessness and Urban Poverty Research Program. He also became a member of the Department of African and African American Studies. Wilson has earned the highest honors and awards in his field, including becoming the Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor at Harvard, being elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1991, and receiving a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Grant in 1987 and the National Medal of Science in 1998. He has testified before congressional committees and advised powerful political leaders, including Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. In 2019, Harvard held a three-day symposium focused on Wilson's works and career.

Significance

Through his career as a teacher, author, public speaker, and political activist, Wilson has shown that sociology can provide valuable insights into social problems and uncover ways to address them. By challenging various ideological positions regarding the causes and possible solutions for poverty, Wilson has shown that scientific evidence belongs in the public forum and the political arena. His work has pushed studies of race and poverty to the forefront of sociology’s research agenda and has been a major force in directing the work of a new generation of scholars in these areas.

Bibliography

Italie, Hillel. "At 80, W.J. Wilson, Scholar of Race and Class, Looks Ahead." AP: The Big Story. Assoc. Press, 29 Dec. 2015. Web. 21 Apr. 2016.

Simon, Clea. "Symposium Celebrates Career of William Julius Wilson." The Harvard Gazette, 12 Sept. 2019, news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2019/09/symposium-celebrates-career-of-william-julius-wilson/. Accessed 21 July 2021.

Venkatesh, Sudhir. "How to Understand the Culture of Poverty." Slate. Slate Group, 16 Mar. 2009. Web. 21 Apr. 2016.

Waldinger, Roger David. Still the Promised City? African-Americans and New Immigrants in Postindustrial New York. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1999. Print.

Wilson, Frank Harold. Race, Class, and the Postindustrial City: William Julius Wilson and the Promise of Sociology. New York: New York State UP, 2004. Print.

Wilson, William Julius. The Bridge over the Racial Divide: Rising Inequality and Coalition Politics. Berkeley: U of California P, 2001. Print.

Wilson, William Julius. More than Just Race: Being Black and Poor in the Inner City. New York: Norton, 2009. Print.

Wilson, William Julius. "William Julius Wilson: Ending Poverty Is Possible." Interview by Michel Martin. Tell Me More. NPR, 13 Sept. 2012. Web. 21 Apr. 2016.