Tally's Corner: A Study of Negro Streetcorner Men

xvii, 260 pp. A sociological classic, the first compelling response to the culture of poverty thesis--that the poor are different and, according to conservatives, morally inferior--and alternative explanations that many African Americans are caught in a tangle of pathology owing to the absence of black men in families. The debate has raged up to the present day. Yet Liebow's shadow theory of values—especially the values of poor, urban, black men-—remains the single most parsimonious account of the reasons why the behavior of the poor appears to be at odds with the values of the American mainstream.