Poverty, by America by Matthew Desmond

Author:Matthew Desmond [Desmond, Matthew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Crown
Published: 2023-03-21T00:00:00+00:00

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Lift the floor by rebalancing our social safety net; empower the poor by reining in exploitation; and invest in broad prosperity by turning away from segregation. That’s how we end poverty in America. And if we do, what will it look like?

Things would change, and sometimes that change would be uncomfortable or even painful—for all of us. It would be dishonest to suggest otherwise. There are costs to the status quo, terrible costs, and there would be costs to weaning ourselves off our addiction to poverty and segregation. There would be political costs, for one thing: vitriolic backlash by homeowners and parents who view integration as a menace. There would be challenges for schools that previously didn’t have to think much about providing free lunch or counseling students through trauma. Neighborhoods previously insulated from anything close to poverty might have to install a bus stop or boost social services or find a way to deal with public disorder. At first, everyone would encounter more friction in their daily life: more slights, missteps, and awkward moments of misunderstanding that arise when not everyone in your community has gone to college or to the ballet or to St. Barts.

“Any real change,” writes James Baldwin, “implies the breakup of the world as one has always known it, the loss of all that gave one an identity, the end of safety. And at such a moment, unable to see and not daring to imagine what the future will now bring forth, one clings to what one knew, or thought one knew; to what one possessed or dreamed that one possessed.” Ending segregation, at last, would require affluent families to give up some things, but what we’d gain in return would be more valuable. We would have to give up the ways we hoard opportunity and public safety, but in doing so we’d also give up the shame that haunts us when we participate in the evil business of exclusion and poverty creation. We’d have to give up some comforts and familiarities of life behind the wall and give up the stories we’ve told ourselves about that place and our role in it, but we’d also be giving up the loneliness and empty materialism that have come to characterize much of upper-class life, allowing ourselves, in Baldwin’s words, to reach “for higher dreams, for greater privileges.”[22]

The best place I ever lived was a neighborhood in Madison, Wisconsin. It was a mixed-race, mixed-income community on the South Side called Bram’s Addition. My neighbors across the street were a couple who had migrated from South America. A neighbor a house over was an older Black veteran who wore copper bracelets around his wrists. You could find him at the local farmers market, playing a drum for tips. The neighborhood definitely had issues, including some open-air drug dealing. I remember a police column in a community newsletter that read something to the effect of: Some people use Penn Park to play and exercise. Unfortunately, other people use the park for shooting.

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