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

Challenging the definition of who is poor in America, in White Poverty, William J. Barber II writes about the lies that prevent us from seeing the pain of poor white American families who have been offered little more than their “whiteness” and angry social media posts to sustain them in an economy where the costs of housing, healthcare and education have skyrocketed while wages have stagnated for all but the very rich. White Poverty, lifts the hope for a new “moral fusion movement” that seeks to unite people “who have been pitted against one another by politicians (and billionaires) who depend on the poorest of us not being here.” One of the most empathetic and visionary approaches to American poverty in decades, Barber braids poignant autobiographical recollections with astute historical analysis, contending that tens of millions of America’s poorest earners have much in common.