Poverty’s a choice: not on the part of the impoverished person, but on the part of society.
And society is failing in addressing poverty.
Local authors Joanne Samuel Goldblum and Colleen Shaddox make that case in their new book, Broke in America: Seeing Understanding and Ending U.S. Poverty.
They made that case as well during an interview Wednesday with host Babz Rawls-Ivy on WNHH FM’s “LoveBabz LoveTalk” program. (Watch the episode above.)
Authors Colleen Shaddox and Joanne Samuel Golblum.
“When white folks talk about poverty, people notice,” Rawls-Ivy said of her hope that the book might start creating change.
Each author described to Rawls-Ivy a formative experience that changed how they thought about class in America.
For Goldblum, starting a diaper bank in New Haven (which has grown into a national organization) showed her how much forgiveness she was afforded as an “upper middle-class white woman” — but how that same forgiveness was not extended to parents in poverty.
“People around the country have kids sitting in a dirty diaper,” she said. “Are we going to blame the parents? That can’t be your answer. That’s not how humans should behave towards each other.”
For Shaddox, poverty was personal: Her mother was a waitress who came home in “serious pain every night.”
She remembered thinking that, if people knew how hard her mother’s life was, “they would do something.”
Shaddox became a journalist, intending to tell the story of poverty in America. Her editor at one newspaper told her she wrote too much about poor people. She quit the job and turned to book-writing.
During the interview. Goldblum, described a town in Alaska that completely lacks indoor plumbing. Residents collect waste in bags that they carry to a dump in town. She recalled one mother describing how her children can’t play outside when the weather is good because there is so much waste on the street.
“That’s the United States,” Goldblum emphasized.
Shaddox recalled a man who owned his own house and still needed to buy bottled water in order to flush his own toilet. Some people she spoke to are currently paying for three cars at once. Some who are living in a homeless shelter are still paying rent.
“In poverty, there is no good decision,” she added. “Good decisions aren’t open to people.”
The two saw a “silver lining” in the current epidemic: a newly widespread awareness of poverty, reflected in how the Biden-Harris administration is prioritizing poverty policy. The $1.9 trillion stimulus bill passed this week, for instance, extends unemployment benefits, increases the amounts of food stamps, makes purchasing health care cheaper, and is estimated to lift tens of millions of American families out of poverty through, in part, increased child credits.
“So many people have realized that they’re really close to not living the life they think they’re living,” Goldblum said of how Covid-19 has impacted the conversation regarding poverty. “You could be in a food line really, really easily.”
The authors said they want to push back against the still prevalent idea that poverty is a personal failure.
Often, Goldblum said, she’ll read stories in the news of a man who would walk two hours to work, until somebody bought him a car.
“It’s a sin that that man had to walk two hours to work,” she added. “It is a systemic problem, and we respond with a feel-good story.”
Shaddox added that the fight to end poverty needs everyone’s involvement.
“It’s an existential threat to our country.”
Their book can be bought here.