Dark ghettos

"Why do ghettos persist?" Tommie Shelby asks in Dark Ghettos. Today, ghettos are widely seen as social problems that public policy should aim to solve. Shelby calls this the "medical model" because it portrays ghettos as sick patients in need of treatment. In his view, this model ignores the political agency of the ghetto poor and the underlying social structures that perpetuate disadvantage in black communities. Shelby argues that we should conceive of ghettos within a "justice paradigm" instead. Adopting a Rawlsian framework, he considers the existence of ghettos as a sign of deeply…