The poorest neighborhood in the U.S. is not an isolated southern mountain hollow or a midwestern farm county blasted by drought, but a four-block stretch of public housing on the South Side of Chicago. Most of the residents are black, on welfare, and living in dysfunctional families. But as woebegone as that neighborhood is, the pattern is repeated on block after block in city after city. The problems of our inner cities have been growing worse with each year; some policymakers and scholars question whether these problems can ever be solved. In this program with Bill Moyers, Dr. William Julius Wilson, author and sociologist, argues that the time to throw up our hands in despair has not yet arrived; he believes that most inner-city blacks stay poor not because they are black, but because they live in the wasteland of the inner city. (30 minutes)