With a title like White Poverty, I didn’t expect the author to be a Black pastor and a fairly famous activist and NAACP board member. But that was kind of the point.

This book made three arguments:
▪️ most poor Americans are white, by a lot
▪️ race and racism play a central role in American poverty—by making white poor people think they have more in common with their white wealthy exploiters than with their fellow POC poor people, politicians are able to push policies that hurt all poor people (poor white people included)
▪️ poor people of all races must work together to fight inequality (with examples from his own work in white communities with the NAACP)

This book was Christian socialism, Civil Rights movement revivalism, plus the argument that poverty trends in the US have got to change. Love all that.

43% of Americans are ‘poor’—which, seriously, wtf?? You guys are the only wealthy country to have a stat even close to that. And you’re not just a wealthy country, you’re ✨the wealthiest✨ country in the world. Sooo, you’re massively F-ing it up. Just saying.

The only thing that kept this book from being perfect was its moderation. Barber pushes boundaries with his activism, but not so much so that he doesn’t regularly get invited to the White House and I feel like we could have gone further.