White Poverty

How Exposing Myths About Race and Class Can Reconstruct American Democracy

A generational work with far-ranging social and political implications, White Poverty, promises to be one of the most influential books in recent years.

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 our nation'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.

Recognizing 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.

12 black-and-white illustrations