Paradox and the City: Why the Working Class Has Political Power

The first paradox of New York City politics is that the city with the country’s greatest gap between rich and poor is also the city with the largest and perhaps most politically potent labor movement. The working class and poor have real access to political power.

New York’s extreme levels of inequality are not news, and have less to do with concentrated poverty—which New York shares with other big American cities—than with concentrated wealth, where it is truly in a league of its own. But the exodus of middle and working–class families from much of the city, especially Manhattan, is also a factor, as housing prices have risen and industrial and blue–collar jobs have disappeared.

The 2007 Annual Meeting theme, “Is Another World Possible? Sociological Perspectives on Contemporary Politics,” is an invitation to serious discussion of “economic globalization” and its consequences. Since Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher came to power more than a quarter century ago, the pace of economic globalization has intensi–fied.

As part of its mission to promote sociological research findings that can benefit society, the American Sociological Association (ASA) has spoken on various occasions about the ways in which racial prejudices and stereotypes as well as individual and institutional discrimination are socially created phenomena that are harmful to people of color.