The Politics Of Poverty "In The Richest, Wealthiest Nation In The World"
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The elderly pick up groceries and other items from a Food Bank For New York City event at the Barclays Center on September 10, 2020
John Minchillo/AP/Shutterstock
As one of the country’s preeminent advocates for the poor, Reverend William Barber has a term to describe Americans' willful obliviousness to the poverty in our midst.
“We’ve had such
Barber said this attention violence can’t be separated from American history.
“Sometimes what gets in the way of it is this notion of American exceptionalism.”
For years, poverty was something that existed elsewhere. In the 1980s and 90s, television viewers often encountered ads for the Christian Children’s Fund, with actress Sally Struthers describing the “God-awful misery” and “vile odor” of what she called the “Third world.”