DATE: 4 p.m. to 5:30 p.m., March 6, 2009.

EVENT: William Julius Wilson, a University Professor at Harvard University, will discuss his new book, “More than Just Race: Being Black and Poor in the Inner City.”

Wilson applies a new analytic framework to three social problems: the persistence of the urban ghetto, the plight of low-skilled black males, and the fragmentation of the African American family. Wilson considers both institutional and cultural factors as causes of the persistence of racial inequality. He reaches the controversial conclusion that, while structural and cultural forces are inextricably linked, public policy can change the racial status quo only by reforming the institutions that reinforce it.

Wilson, president emeritus of the American Sociological Association, is director of the Joblessness and Urban Poverty Research Program at Harvard.

Time magazine selected Wilson as one of America’s 25 Most Influential People in 1996. He is a recipient of the 1998 National Medal of Science, the highest scientific honor in the United States, and was awarded the Talcott Parsons Prize in the Social Sciences by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2003. Wilson has written many books, including the award-winning “The Declining Significance of Race,” “The Truly Disadvantaged,” and “When Work Disappears.”

The lecture is free and open to the public. Nicola’s Books will sell copies of Wilson’s book before and after the lecture.

PLACE: Rackham Auditorium, 915 East Washington St., Ann Arbor. University of Michigan Central Campus. Map: http://www.umich.edu/news/Maps/ccamp.html

SPONSORS: National Poverty Center, Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, Department of Sociology, School of Social Work, Center for Afroamerican and African Studies and Horace Rackham School of Graduate Studies Interdisciplinary Workshops.

National Poverty Center event site