So Rich, So Poor: Why It's So Hard to End Poverty in America

172 Pages·2012·1.06 MB·English

by  Peter Edelman

SO RICH, SO POOR
ALSO BY PETER EDELMAN
Reconnecting Disadvantaged Young Men
(with Harry J. Holzer and Paul Offner)
Searching for America’s Heart: RFK and the Renewal of Hope
Adolescence and Poverty (co-edited with Joyce Ladner)
SO RICH, SO POOR
WHY IT’S SO HARD TO END
POVERTY IN AMERICA
Peter Edelman
© 2012 by Peter Edelman
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, in any form, without written permission from the publisher.
Requests for permission to reproduce selections from this book should be mailed to: Permissions
Department, The New Press, 38 Greene Street, New York, NY 10013.
Published in the United States by The New Press, New York, 2012 Distributed by Perseus Distribution
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Edelman, Peter B.
So rich, so poor : why it’s so hard to end poverty in America / Peter Edelman.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-5955-8804-3 (hc. : alk. paper) 1. Poverty—United States. 2. United States—Social conditions
—21st century. 3. United States—Social policy—21st century. 4. Poor—Government policy—United
States. I. Title.
HC110.P6E34 2012
339.4'60973—dc23 2011052784
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Composition by dix!
This book was set in Electra LT Std
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For Ellika, Zoe, Levi, and Elijah
CONTENTS
Introduction
1. A Snapshot of Our Current Mess
2. What We Have Accomplished
3. Why Are We Stuck?
4. Jobs: The Economy and Public Policy Go South (for Most of Us)
5. Deep Poverty: A Gigantic Hole in the Safety Net
6. Concentrated Poverty: “The Abandoned”
7. Young People: Improving the Odds
Conclusion
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
INTRODUCTION
I had the privilege of working for Robert Kennedy in the U.S. Senate nearly half
a century ago. He was a man who—arguably unlike anybody at that level since
—was deeply committed to doing something very serious about poverty in this
country and the intersection of poverty and race. I had the opportunity to travel
the country with him, and to learn as he learned, by listening and talking to
people and witnessing their struggles.
We met children suffering from extreme hunger in Mississippi and
farmworkers struggling for a decent wage and the right to organize in the San
Joaquin Valley of California. We worked with people pursuing community
economic empowerment in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of New York
City, and we saw the enduring poverty of former coal miners striving against
feudal local politics in eastern Kentucky. We encountered Native American
children who had been shipped to white-run boarding schools thousands of miles
from their homes and migrant farmworkers living in abandoned buses in upstate
New York. I learned much more about what it’s like to be poor than I could have
ever learned from books.
There must have been something in me all along. I grew up Jewish in the
immediate aftermath of the Holocaust and in a Minneapolis that was very anti-
Semitic. I was proud that my father was appointed by then-mayor Hubert
Humphrey to the Human Relations Council that he created to address the
prejudice against Jews and others. And I am sure that the Holocaust shaped my
sense of the vulnerability of despised minorities.
After Kennedy died, I kept finding myself reconnecting to the issues I had
learned about from him and with him, especially issues about young people who
don’t have a fair chance. Becoming a vice president of the University of
Massachusetts in the early 1970s turned out to be an avenue from which to
broaden opportunities for young people. Running the juvenile corrections agency
under the newly elected governor of New York Hugh Carey continued the
pattern. Joining the faculty at Georgetown Law Center allowed me to teach
about poverty and offer my thoughts on the written page. Going to work with
Donna Shalala in the Clinton administration was a chance to work on poverty-
related issues. And when I resigned from the government in protest over
President Clinton’s signing of the welfare law in 1996, the commitment became
even more of a mission.
All along, one thing has led to another. What it adds up to is that for more
than forty years I have been trying, in one way or another, to make some small
difference toward reducing American poverty. Had I been part of the exodus
from ancient Egypt, I would have made it to the promised land by now.
As things are, I am still at it. The purpose of this book is to look anew at why
it is so hard to end American poverty and how we might do better. I write just
now because poverty has steadily grown worse over the past decade, and it is
more important than ever to place it on the front burner of our national concern.
I don’t write with any feeling of futility. Of course, anyone who cares would
wish that we had made more of a dent, but, as I’ll explain, we have
accomplished a lot. The idea that “nothing works” is a canard. The policy gains
outweigh the policy losses by a considerable measure even with the recent
deterioration of the situation. The problem is that the policy gains have been
nullified by economic trends that eroded the earnings of millions while
simultaneously enriching a super-elite whose wealth and income have reached
unprecedented levels.
This cannot stand: “America” and “poverty” are words that should not appear
in the same sentence. We are the wealthiest country in the world; that we should
have poverty at all is oxymoronic, and that we have the highest child poverty
rate in the industrialized world is downright shameful.
It is not because we are not a generous nation. Americans volunteer time and
donate dollars enthusiastically. They help at homeless shelters and soup kitchens;
they mentor and tutor low-income children; they fund scholarships; and on and
on. We have a nonprofit sector that is unequaled in the world.
But at the moment public policy is another matter entirely. Liberal members
of Congress say that, just now, approaching more conservative colleagues (and
not just Republicans) with a proposition that contains the word “poverty” is an
immediate red flag. Homeless veterans? Maybe. Poverty? No way. And
“welfare”—in the lexicon of many today, it’s a pejorative.