White Poverty – How Exposing Myths About Race and Class Can Reconstruct American Democracy : How Exposing Myths About Race and Class Can Reconstruct American Democracy

An explosive work with far-ranging historical implications, White Poverty promises to be one of the most influential books of the 2024 US election cycle

When most Americans think of poverty, they imagine Black faces. As a teenager, Reverend William J Barber II recalls seeing Black mothers interviewed on television whenever there was a story on food stamps or unemployment; poverty, then as now, was depicted as an essentially Black problem. In a work that promises to have lasting repercussions, Barber—now a leading advocate for the rights of America's poor and the “closest person we have to Dr King” (Cornel West)—addresses white poverty as a hugely neglected subject that might just be the key to mitigating racism and bringing together the tens of millions working-class and impoverished whites with low-income Blacks. Recognising that angry social media posts have replaced food, education and housing as a “salve” for the white poor, Barber contends that the millions of America’s lowest-income earners have much in common, and together with Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, provides one of the most sympathetic and visionary approaches to endemic poverty in decades.