Karen's Reviews > White Poverty: How Exposing Myths About Race and Class Can Reconstruct American Democracy

“We made the world we’re living in, and we have to make it over.” – James Baldwin

Senator Bernie Sanders described the author as a “leader in our country working to take on poverty and economic injustice. He knows that we can bring about great change by building a multi-racial, multi-generational coalition of working-class people. Building a mass movement of ordinary people is how we end today’s unprecedented levels of greed and economic inequality.”

So, how do we make people want to do that, especially if there is a faction out there that may only be concerned about their own interests to get rich?

I’m not sure there is an easy answer, other than to open our minds to books like this one. Where authors that care, and do the hard work also take time to study the problem.

The author opens with…

“This is a book by a Black man about white poverty in America. I’ve written this because I believe the racist images of Black mothers on welfare that have dominated the imaginations of Americans are not merely demeaning to Black people; they are also based on a myth that obscures the poverty of tens of millions of white people. Until we face the reality of white poverty in America, we cannot comprehend what is truly exceptional about the inequality that persists in the richest nation in the history of the world.”

The author has quite the extensive resume. He preached at President Biden’s 2020 inaugural prayer service. He has held a lot of prominent positions that gave him the opportunity whether on the pulpit or at the podium, to denounce injustice and economic disparity with righteous indignation. People have described his penetrating stare as someone looking into America’s soul.

And, this book is him in action doing just that, looking into America’s soul.

The author provides through this book a well-documented and informative discussion on poverty in the United States. He takes on the racial myths and he puts greed front and center.

“We are pitted against one another by politicians and billionaires who depend on the poorest among us not being seen…by cable news and social media memes and politicians who depend on tired narratives to rally their base against imagined enemies of their ‘values.’”

Even as he shares that white supremacy is a myth “as poisonous to white people as it is to people of color,” he is also letting us know that “it dehumanizes the people it claims to elevate; it uses the very people it claims to champion.”

But he doesn’t leave us hanging with this, he wants us to move on through understanding so that we can mitigate it. This comes through in his well-researched chapters.

His thoughts are compelling and insightful. He showcases personal stories that are heart-felt and inspiring. But mostly, he just doesn’t put it out there and leave it, he presents an action plan to help guide us, through uplifting chapters like, “why we must lift from the bottom,” and “rediscovering the ties that bind us.” He gives us hope that we can have meaningful change. Finding humanity. The potential to unite a movement for genuine change.