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AbstractGunnar Myrdal's 1963 notion of the bottom of society is now over fifty years old and we still know virtually nothing about of the people living at that bottom or the people living there on incomes far below the federal poverty line. Since Blacks are, as always, proportionally the prime victims, the dreadful possibility of a Black population permanently at the bottom of society cannot be ruled out. This article discusses some of the questions researchers must answer to obtain an informed understanding of their problems and needs, as well as of the policies and politics, if any, that could help them.

I appreciate Herbert Gans's discerning comments, and in essence am in agreement with all he says. The one point I'd like to underscore, though, is that architecture, whatever else it is (or isn't), is a form of symbolic representation. Although buildings change ownership and get put to varied ideological uses by different regimes (there are many notorious examples of this kind of "reuse," for example, in the context of Nazi Germany, where modernist buildings by some of the most progressive architects of the twenties were appropriated for nefarious purposes in the thirties), they also belong to their historical moment and have real cultural effects along with the spatial ones. Because the leading architects today are public figures (in a few cases with the status of lower-echelon rock stars), the claims they make, even if spurious, need to be taken with some seriousness.

AbstractAs a result of the increasing number of biracials and multiracials, and White reconstructions of previously non-White skin colors, the Whitening of selected immigrants and especially their children appears to be proceeding. Although there are many studies on the racial identity of biracials, too little research exists on how Whites identify them and light-skinned monoracials, which of these they Whiten, how, and why. Enough is known to suggest that if current trends continue, our picture of the country's racial hierarchy has to be revised. While Whites will likely remain on top and poor African Americans and other Blacks at the bottom, what happens in the middle cannot now even be guessed at with any hope of accuracy. For that reason alone, empirical and policy-oriented research on White identification patterns is badly needed.