Two books on poverty in the United States are separated by 50 odd years.
Michael Harrington's The Other America, can be contextualized in the powerful words of Martin Luther King Jr.: "The Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of affluence." Back then, during the pre-civil rights era, the "Other" America would have been identified with Black America.
The American poor in Sasha Abramsky cut across color lines and the causes behind poverty are diverse and complex.
The dictum "give them freedom and they will earn their bread" may have between the 1960s and today have morphed into "There is no freedom without bread."
Oh, how the world has changed!
ReplyDeleteIt's almost as if it's flipped over. The North Pole fell to the bottom of the Earth, and the South Pole, rose to the top.
The South Pole is also falling to the bottom, I hear. Instead of poles, economic power is being talked about in terms of clusters that cut across national borders.
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