#407: “I Don‘t Find Despair Useful”
#407: “I Don‘t Find Despair Useful”
An interview with Matthew Desmond, author of “Why Poverty Persists in America”
Appears in this episode
Welcome, new subscribers, and welcome back, loyal readers! I’m happy you’re here.
Today’s issue is dedicated to an interview with Matthew Desmond, the author of “Why Poverty Persists in America,” August’s article of the month.
Originally published in The New York Times Magazine in April, the piece is an excerpt from Prof. Desmond’s bestselling book, Poverty, by America. If you haven’t read it yet, I urge you to do so — and join our discussion on August 27, if you’re moved.
Fellow Article Clubber Melinda and I got a chance to interview Prof. Desmond a few weeks back, and it was an honor. I won’t give everything away, because it’s better to listen, but we discussed a number of topics, including:
how poverty is about having a lack of choice, not just money
how exploitation is at the center of poverty
what it means to be a poverty abolitionist
Most of all, it became abundantly clear in our conversation that Prof. Desmond doesn’t find despair useful. Even though poverty is a result of harmful policies, shame won’t solve the problem. Rather, Prof. Desmond wants us to do something about the issue — not just talk about it. There’s too much “informed sophisticated passivity,” he said.
For the past half-century, we’ve approached the poverty question by pointing to poor people themselves — posing questions about their work ethic, say, or their welfare benefits — when we should have been focusing on the fire. The question that should serve as a looping incantation, the one we should ask every time we drive past a tent encampment, those tarped American slums smelling of asphalt and bodies, or every time we see someone asleep on the bus, slumped over in work clothes, is simply: Who benefits? Not: Why don’t you find a better job? Or: Why don’t you move? Or: Why don’t you stop taking out payday loans? But: Who is feeding off this?
As someone who sometimes likes to read and think and discuss, yet remain on the sidelines, I appreciated Prof. Desmond’s call to action. In the interview, he offers five ways we can be poverty abolitionists. Let’s stop debating people and sighing about how bad things are, he says. Let’s stop trying to change other people’s beliefs. Calling himself a “pragmatic writer,” he said, “I want my work to do things.”
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#407: “I Don‘t Find Despair Useful”
One point: it wasn’t about many Americans coming together in small ways that brought about the Civil Rights Act of 1964. By early spring of 1963, the movement was faltering; people could no longer afford to take off work for peaceful protest, and a couple of nights in jail--even when no charges were filed--often meant losing employment altogether. So MLK and his organization recruited children as protesters. It was on my 13th birthday, May 2, 1963, that the Children’s Crusade held its first protest--a thousand kids ages 7 to 17 took to the streets. The very next day, Birmingham’s sheriff, Bull Connor, did what he had only threatened, before--turning high pressure fire hoses and attack dogs against protesters, this time just children. The whole world was shocked to see such brutality aimed at children, their little arms and legs bloodied, their bodies blown against buildings like so much street detritus. It made JFK a supporter of the Act for the first time, and his assassination in November cemented it as a forgone conclusion.
The world is now turning against democracy, towards fascism. France has just recently smacked down protests, against raising the retirement age there, with violence. The EU has, since 2014, made Libyan militias wealthy, who imprison and traffic refugees--to prevent people fleeing extremist regimes from reaching any European shore. No one bats an eyelash that Putin may have executed Yevgeny Prighozhin with a bomb in his private jet; instead, they wonder why it took him so long. Here, some GOP states are making legal to hit peaceful protesters with cars. Tx is willing to let migrants die by refusing them water in triple-digit heat, or hang themselves up on water booms encased in razor wire.
We don’t even seem to care that our own children are being killed with AR-15s by the thousands, even in their schools.
I agree that each of us must vitally contribute to make this nation more equitable and inclusive. But the problem is worse now than before, when the USA still had some sense of collective conscience.
My local bookstore was featuring a few picks from Obama's must read books with "Poverty, by America" being on the list. I just listened to your interview with Matthew Desmond (great job! very insightful) and had to pick up a copy. I'm really looking forward to digging in further.