Abstract
In Poverty, by America, Matthew Desmond challenges conventional approaches to understanding poverty by turning the spotlight away from the lived realities of poor individuals and shining it squarely on everyone else. The book exposes the quotidian ways that our current social and economic arrangements protect and sustain wealth inequality while directly exploiting and limiting opportunity for the poorest among us, and Desmond illustrates just how complicit most Americans are in upholding a system that unfairly limits access to resources and allows so much suffering. “Private opulence, public squalor” is a refrain used throughout the book.
The evidence presented in Poverty, by America paints a damning picture of many commonplace beliefs, social norms, and seemingly innocuous practices that undergird contemporary American society, and social workers will benefit from the fresh perspectives that the book provides. Desmond walks readers through a survey of cultural paradoxes and thinly-veiled contradictions that can be found lurking just beneath the surface of everyday life in America, building the argument that “our institutions have socialized us to scarcity, creating artificial resource shortages and then normalizing them” (p. 172).
Desmond requires us to rethink our understanding of who really benefits from our government systems—from taxes and welfare to housing and education. Rather than focusing entirely on problems and solutions at the policymaking level, though, the book's central argument relies on readers’ capacities for moral sensitivity and honest self-reflection about our own complicity in perpetuating systemic inequality and how a manufactured “scarcity mindset” may have seeped into the corners of our own worldviews. Desmond calls for both individual and collective action aimed at abolishing the norms, attitudes, and everyday decisions that help to maintain the abject inequality that's characteristic of our current status quo. It is a book that ought to be read by anyone who lives, votes, or works in America, and especially by those who make the rules.
One of the book's more original and important features is its direct and conversational tone, aimed at a middle- and upper-class audience, which Desmond uses to implicate regular, everyday Americans clearly and convincingly in upholding and maintaining the life-limiting unfairness and inequality that ravages our nation. Desmond is cautious to not rely too heavily on using blame and shame to convince readers that they are morally involved in the current state of affairs, and this was likely a strategic choice for several reasons. First, recurring themes throughout the book include the idea that widespread accountability and participation at the individual level (especially among those with wealth) will be required in order for meaningful change to happen, and the idea that even small wins are worth celebrating in the quest for poverty abolition. Desmond's motivational and hopeful tone helps demonstrate the attitude he aims for and gives readers an example of how to “practice what you preach.”
But with this approach, Desmond also reveals an acute awareness of the reactivity and polarization that characterizes politically-inflected discussions in the United States. His choice of tone seems to cater slightly to this environment, lest he risk alienating parts of the audience for whom his message is most relevant. Throughout the book, Desmond keeps the anecdotes friendly and his accusations mild, which threatens to diminish the potency of the messages he articulates.
Luckily, the book's overarching impact does not succumb entirely to the stultifying forces of political neutrality, and it consistently prioritizes useful action over idealism. Desmond frequently and constructively returns to the notion that “[w]hen your power comes from people, you need a lot of them. The movement must grow, which means we can't afford to write anyone off” (p. 186). This inclusive call to action encourages readers to join the fight and become poverty abolitionists in their own neighborhoods and communities. And yet, perhaps a firmer, more directive tone would give even greater emotional power to the book's message, fortifying the takeaway that the problem is, at least partially, the reader's own unique responsibility, as is the urgency to take action.
The profession of social work is well-positioned to amplify the argument that Desmond introduces. Social workers who read his book will find inspiration for new, tangible ways to challenge the deep injustice of contemporary wealth inequality by underscoring the structural issues identified in the book and reflecting on social work's potential to influence and enact meaningful change through our professional activities across a variety of contexts.
