After spending nearly 50 minutes touting the main points of his latest controversial book, renowned sociologist William Julius Wilson finally got to the part of his lecture he had been most excited about: the question-and-answer session.

And even though Wilson was supposed to be the one taking the inquiries — about a dozen people had lined up at microphones to pose questions to him — the Harvard University professor couldn’t help but ask the first one.

“Do you think the book will get nailed?” Wilson asked an audience member. The inflection in Wilson’s voice hinted that he wanted the book to create a stir.

So when the woman standing before a microphone answered Wilson’s question with a “maybe,” it prompted a wave of laughter from both the scholar and the crowd of about 400 in the Rackham Auditorium Friday afternoon.

Echoing the central theme from his new book, Wilson told attendees that even though discrimination limits the progress of the inner-city poor, people from that social class need to shoulder some of the responsibility for their place in society. The book, “More Than Just Race: Being Black and Poor in The Inner City,” hits bookstores today.

Wilson, arguably the nation’s most prominent black academic, said he favors President Barack Obama’s nuanced stance on race and social policy. Simply blaming racism without looking at a group’s troubling statistics — soaring high school dropout and teenage pregnancy rates — is naïve, Wilson argued. Likewise, the author said one must consider the discrimination that impoverished inner-city residents face daily.

He praised the president’s speech on race from last summer, saying it struck a balance between the two ideologies.

“Unlike Bill Cosby or the talk show hosts you see on TV, Barack Obama does not isolate structure from culture,” he said. “Obama sees that they are very much tied together.”

The 73-year-old, who was named one of Time magazine’s 25 Most Influential People in 1996, has consulted the Obama administration frequently, prescribing solutions for the problems plaguing America’s cities.

Wilson, who holds 41 honorary degrees including doctorates from Columbia University, Dartmouth College, the University of Pennsylvania and Princeton University used lofty rhetoric during his talk. Rather than talking freely, he read from a 40-page stack of papers and cited 15 books and studies. Many in the crowd — largely comprised of graduate students and professors — had pens and notebooks out, writing down Wilson’s key points.

About midway through his lecture, Wilson said the government should implement policies specifically aimed at helping impoverished blacks. The statement marked a departure from Wilson’s previous philosophy, which favored programs that benefited all poor people.

“Some of these problems (in the black community) have gotten so severe now that it would be in our nation’s best interest to have specific, targeted programs to deal with them,” Wilson said in an interview while signing books for a line of fans. “Even if the programs don’t necessarily apply to everyone, it’s in our best interest.”

He said such government assistance would be necessary in Detroit, a city that is more than 80 percent black and has an unemployment rate of nearly 11 percent. Wilson said the area’s situation is even more dire because of the sputtering auto industry. Two of the Detroit Three automakers, Chrysler LLC and General Motors Corp., have both raised the specter of bankruptcy in recent weeks.

“If that happened, it would have a devastating effect on the black community,” he said.