If we as a nation are to break the cycle of poverty crime and the growing underclass of young people ill equipped to be productive citizens we need to not only implement effective programs to prevent teen pregnancy but we must also help those who have already given birth so that they become effective nurturing bonding parents.

The historical basis for the gap between the black middle class and underclass shows that ending discrimination by itself would not eradicate black poverty and dysfunction. We also need intervention to promulgate a middle-class ethic of success among the poor while expanding opportunities for economic betterment.

Since my retirement I've spent a lot of time trying to help the School of Social Work at the University of North Carolina. A society like this just can't afford an uneducated underclass of citizens.

Throughout this country's history there have of course been systematic efforts to create an official underclass.

I went to England in the '70s and I was in my early 20s. There was still a residue of that era of being an underclass or colonial. I assume it must have been a more aggressive and prominent attitude 40 years before that because Australia internationally wasn't regarded as having much cultural value. We were a country full of sheep and convicts.