The Injustice of Place: Uncovering the Legacy of Poverty in America

by Kathryn J. Edin, H. Luke Shaefer, Timothy J. Nelson

A sweeping and surprising new understanding of extreme poverty in America from the authors of the acclaimed  $2.00 a  Living on Almost Nothing in America.  “This book forces you to see American poverty in a whole new light.” (Matthew Desmond, author of Poverty, by America and Evicted )  Three of the nation’s top scholars ­– known for tackling key mysteries about poverty in America – turn their attention from the country’s poorest people to its poorest places. Based on a fresh, data-driven approach, they discover that America’s most disadvantaged communities are not the big cities that get the most notice. Instead, nearly all are rural. Little if any attention has been paid to these places or to the people who make their lives there. This revelation set in motion a five-year journey across Appalachia, the Cotton and Tobacco Belts of the Deep South, and South Texas. Immersing themselves in these communities, poring over centuries of local history, attending parades and festivals, the authors trace the legacies of the deepest poverty in America—including inequalities shaping people’s health, livelihoods, and upward social mobility for families. Wrung dry by powerful forces and corrupt government officials, the “internal colonies” in these regions were exploited for their resources and then left to collapse.  The unfolding revelation in  The Injustice of Place  is not about what sets these places apart, but about what they have in common—a history of raw, intensive resource extraction and human exploitation. This history and its reverberations demand a reckoning and a commitment to wage a new War on Poverty, with the unrelenting focus on our nation’s places of deepest need.  

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics, History, Sociology, Social Justice, Social Science, Audiobook

352 pages, Paperback

First published August 8, 2023

About the author

Kathryn J. Edin is Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Public Health at Johns Hopkins University.

Reviews

[Emma Deplores Goodreads Censorship · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of those books that was a long time coming, to the point that you read it and think “why did no one write this before 2023?” A longstanding frustration of mine with nonfiction about poverty in America is how often even the best books focus exclusively on cities (most often New York City), although these authors have a history of doing better than most. Two of the three coauthors, Edin and Shaefer, previously wrote the fantastic $2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America, which featured remarkable geographic diversity for a book of its type.

But when Edin and Shaefer plus their third coauthor, Nelson, got together and created a formula to determine the places of greatest disadvantage, to their surprise none of them were cities. As someone who has worked in poor rural areas I have to say it didn’t surprise me a bit. Cities have everything, all kinds of resources and nonprofits and pilot programs and the transportation to access them. In rural areas you have none of that, rent is still too high, and if you’re in a depressed area, people still routinely get shot. And also there is nothing to do.

The formula the authors developed combines poverty rate, deep poverty rate (number of people whose income is less than half the poverty threshold), life expectancy, rate of low birth weight (a major contributing cause to infant mortality, and closely linked to maternal health), and the rate of social mobility. By these metrics, and analyzing the U.S. on a county- and city-wide basis (rather than by state, or conversely, by neighborhood), they found the most disadvantaged places were all rural: Appalachia, the Cotton and Tobacco Belts in the South, South Texas, and a handful of Native American reservations. The authors and their students spent substantial time in all these places except for the reservations, and quickly realized how many commonalities they had.

This led them to develop—or, more accurately, rediscover, as it had fallen out of fashion—a theory of “internal colonies”: places marked not just by poverty but by wealth disparities, with a long history of resource extraction and labor exploitation, driven by outside investors and with the profits going elsewhere. From Appalachia’s history of mining and company towns, to the Cotton and Tobacco Belt’s history of slavery and sharecropping (the map of the South’s most disadvantaged places today overlaps closely with the map of enslavement in 1860), to South Texas’s history of intensive farming with the use of migrant labor, all of these places have a history of wealth in the hands of a few and the exploitation of the many. And they share other commonalities too: segregated schools, in those areas where the many are non-white; a loss of social infrastructure as industries moved out, often leaving “nothing to do here but drugs”; a history of violence perpetrated on the laboring class and revolt against oppression (both often glossed over today) as well as continuing high levels of violence; and government corruption, as a small group of elites monopolize power and use programs and institutions to benefit themselves.

The book largely turns into a history of the last century or so of local history, alongside some interviews of community members. It certainly rang true to my experience, particularly the chapter about the aftermath of Hurricanes Matthew and Florence in Marion County, South Carolina: the very slow pace of aid and high rates of denial causing many to not even apply for assistance; the way richer communities can wind up better-off after a disaster while the poor get poorer; the heirs’ property and title complications that stop homeowners from receiving aid; right down to the way poor people call every single government program related to disaster “FEMA” whether it has anything to do with the agency or not. That was definitely interesting to see in a book (and I am encouraged that the authors got it right).

That said, I did find some of the history a bit tedious. I also thought the chapter on revolt and retribution could’ve been better—there was really no need to argue, the facts speak for themselves. And the final chapters felt perhaps too optimistic, in their attempt to avoid reducing communities to a pathology—yes there are good people working to make a difference, but aren’t there always? The book also traces a history of reform candidates winding up engaging in corruption themselves, perhaps because it is so baked in to the institutions they’re now involved with.

At any rate, while written for a general audience, this is definitely more big-picture and less human-interest than $2 a Day, and thus it can be less immediately compelling. But it is a readable and important book with a valuable framework for understanding America’s most disadvantaged places.

[Vanessa · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Injustice of Place is an incredibly well-researched book, drawn out over five years of studies. The researchers study deeply disadvantaged places in the United States, and the results are stunning. I have taken classes and learned about inequities of space, but this book took it to a whole other level and really goes into how politics, federal and local government, corporate America, racism, and historical policies have exploited places in America and now they are just a shell of a place, where people sometimes subside on just $2 a day to survive. And then comes the opioid crisis!
Edin, Shaefer, et al. tell the story of how these places came to be, and who has always been the winner in them-- slaveowners, property owners and corporations. Spinach and onions farmers if you owned the land in Texas; coal mine owners in Appalachia; cotton/plantation/slave owners in Antebellum South. They describe these and other areas as "America's Internal Colonies" what the researchers uncover and describe left me speechless.
The Injustice of Place is well-written, well-researched and is an a very interesting read. I think my review makes it sound almost academic, but it is a good read for those interested in the history of America and how often we have built it on the backs of the disadvantaged, and also on the backs of a place and not looked back. One place in America is not the same as another, and sadly some of those places have more obstacles for prosperity than others, and getting out of the place can be just as difficult as surviving in it.
I received The Injustice of Place as an ARC for my honest opinion. This illuminating book is a really good read, and I highly recommend!

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hmm, apparently I never posted this. Glad goodreads saved my draft.

Note: this review is scattered, but I don't have time to clean it up, and I don't want too much time to pass between finishing and reviewing.

I'll definitely be thinking about this deep dive into rural poverty for a long time. I have a relative that grew up in the Pee Dee region that is discussed in this book, and it definitely provides some context for how they move through the world.

My moderate heart is always on the lookout for books that tackle heavy issues in ways that could appeal to both sides of the aisle, and this one comes pretty close (though it does skew left a bit, as many books about poverty do). When poverty based on systemic racism comes up in discussions, I frequently hear the comment, "it is a class issue, not a race issue," and I think the way this book zooms in on places of entrenched poverty in various ethnic backgrounds (Latinx in South Texas, white in Appalachia, primarily black in regions of the South) could be a way to start the conversation from that point and then move forward. The book does a good job of showing what these groups have in common (areas with a history of exploitation of workers to maximize profits from once resource-rich areas, highly corrupt government, unscrupulous providers of various forms of addictive substances), but also shows what different challenges these groups face based on their race. It feels like a book that can still acknowledge the influence of class in America, while also providing context for the historical forces that shape the present of people in our country. Also, the author is not afraid to call a spade a spade when politicians on both sides of the aisle enact policies that make life harder for people in areas of entrenched poverty.

All in all, I think looking at places of entrenched poverty, rather than specifically on impoverished individuals themselves, provides a productive framework. I especially appreciated the focus on deep disadvantage, rather than strictly income-related metrics. The other factors they measure when determining disadvantage, such as life expectancy, low birth rate, teen pregnancy, access to healthcare and social services, potential for upward mobility, labor force participation rates, etc, provide a more robust picture of poverty in America. I also think their framework of talking about these regions having been created as internal colonies within the US gives readers a different perspective on these places. I definitely recommend this one.

[Morgan · Rating 4 out of 5]

When people usually write about poverty, people are usually the focus. The Injustice of Place focuses on the poorest places and what they all have in common. The authors tackle the legacy of segregation (and the use of private schools to get around Brown vs Board of Education), lack of social infrastructure, violence, political corruption, as well as what we can do to fix it. The injustice of Place is a great read for anyone interested in the topic or a fan of Matthew Desmond's Poverty, By America.

Thanks to Netgalley and Mariner Books for the e-arc in exchange for an honest review.

[Kate Naranjo · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book really illuminates the deep, systemic, enduring generational nature of poverty both with data and with insightful stories. It shows how deep disadvantage was intentionally made by the “haves” in this country and how the people who live there strive for better and are thwarted at every turn. AND it somehow manages to teach a lot without being dry or preachy!

[Cynthia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had very mixed feelings about this book. It was extensively and impressively researched. It brought an impressive number of important issues to light. However, it was heavily slanted against the capitalist system. In the introduction, the authors state clearly that there's a lot to be said for the entrepreneurial spirit and capitalism, but this is not a book about that.

As someone whose parents were born in Appalachia and grew up as some of the poorest people in the United States, I wanted to like this book. But I didn't. My parents had the wherewithal to get out of that situation. Yes, they had help. There is help available, from all kinds of sources. My problem with the book is that dire poverty is not the complete deadened and hopeless situation portrayed by the authors. As someone who is very well educated and very well off - one generation from the poverty described in this book - I know this for a fact. Yes, poverty exists in this country. But the possibility of getting out of it exists as well.

[LaShanda Chamberlain · Rating 5 out of 5]

“The Injustice of Place” doesn’t hold back in exposing America’s most neglected and exploited regions, and as a native Mississippian, I couldn’t avoid the harsh truth it reveals. The book dives into how systemic racism, corruption, corporate greed, and disastrous policies have torn apart entire communities, leaving them in shambles, with the opioid crisis further deepening the devastation. It’s a sobering wake-up call that does more than highlight flaws—it uncovers the disturbing reality of how the powerful profit while the vulnerable are left to suffer.

The authors expertly connect the dots between politics, economics, culture, and history, showing that these issues aren’t isolated but part of a larger, nationwide crisis. While the topic is undeniably heavy, “The Injustice of Place” remains surprisingly engaging and easy to follow. It’s more than just an academic analysis; it’s a call to action, urging us to confront these uncomfortable truths and demand real change.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to understand the roots of inequality in America—it's an essential read. Big thanks to NetGalley, the authors, and the publisher for the opportunity to review this ARC—it was absolutely worth it!

[Andy]

DNF. "Internal colonies" rhetoric doesn't seem helpful for convincing people beyond the choir. The data decisions seem odd, like making health part of wealth; this seems circular to me. The solutions at the end vaguely make sense, but it would have been more convincing to give examples of current places in the US that have successfully increased upward-mobility, e.g.

[Chloe Decker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Live love place-based policymaking

[Tyler Brown · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I picked up this book, hoping to learn from experts on poverty about the way geography and location impact the experience of the poor in the US. That's not quite what this book is doing. Rather, the authors developed a more holistic definition of "advantage" and "disadvantage" than income levels to measure poverty (taking into account things like social mobility and health). Based on their metric, they found three regions that are uniquely disadvantaged: the Cotton Belt, Appalachia, and Southern Texas near the Mexico border (6). The majority of the rest of the book is an analysis of these three places from the lens of their history of racism (chapter 2), drug use (chapter 3), Violence (chapter 4), political corruption (chapter 5), and natural disasters (chapter 6). They also document the history of protest and response in these places (chapter 7) and chart a way forward (chapters 8-9). While it wasn't exactly what I was hoping for, it was fascinating nevertheless.

I was reminded that the metrics of advantage and disadvantage are too often urban-centered, leaving rural communities overlooked and underserved. The history of racism was appalling and important to revisit. The "nothing to do here but drugs" theme was really eye-opening. As an aspiring church planter, I felt confirmation in the social good that comes from missional houses of worship. They did offer this warning: Despite their role in building social capital, we found that these institutions-consciously or not- can also function in a way that inhibit social cohesion across the community. Klinenberg acknowledges that institutions can ‘set boundaries that define who is part of the community and who is excluded. They can integrate or segregate, create opportunities or keep people in their place” (85).

[Jamie Park · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is what I look for when I need some nonficiton. This is real and painful. I loved the history of each region, especially the history of the eugenics movement. People forget American's did it first. It was the "science" of the day in the 1920s. Women's social clubs gathered to talk about it. It was "classy" to believe these things.
We forget these things. Who we are now started centuries ago.
I HIGHLY recommend this one.

[Ken · Rating 5 out of 5]

The authors used poverty, health, and social mobility metrics to rank all US counties and the 500 largest cities, then visited, studied, and met with community leaders in the places of deepest disadvantage and highest advantage. The methodology brings a deeper understanding of well-being and opportunity that can depend greatly on where you live in the United States, dives into the historical and present day reasons for why areas ended up where they are, and explores methods for improving outcomes. By directly comparing counties and cities, they found that "America's most disadvantaged communities are not the big cities that get the most notice. Instead, nearly all are rural."

[Allison Orr · Rating 5 out of 5]

“As we pored over our regions’ past, we began to realize that what they shared in common was a history of extensive resource extraction and profound human exploitation not seen to the same degree elsewhere in the United States. In these places, it was not enough to be comfortably profiting from one’s enterprise. The goal of the landowning class was to build vast wealth on the backs of those laboring on the land.”

Just a really good, informative read. This book was so well-researched and shed light on a very interesting subject; how and why some of the most rural areas in America are considered the most deeply disadvantaged. Found myself drawing a ton of parallels to my small rural Texas hometown lol (not that I’m disadvantaged, but the similarities in the places, themselves, was insane). Highly recommend!

[Hannah · Rating 4 out of 5]

More like a 4.5. Shy of a five because the solutions recommended are too idealistic. They are actually great solutions, but they done eradicate the actual root cause of White supremacy. Otherwise, a felt thoughtful assessment that rings true for me at every turn.

[Robin Cooper · Rating 4 out of 5]

A history of the south, poverty, and inequality of this area. It is the history of these places, that continues to perpetuate the issue of deep poverty. Overall, it is a very informative book that gives insight into the problems of poverty.

[Jason Bednar · Rating 5 out of 5]

So much important information in this book. I appreciate the depth of analysis and clear writing to show the inequality of place to be more significant than I first thought.

[Manisha]

Listened to the audiobook.

DNF @ 27%

Normally, I would eat this type of book up! But I think I'm in a sort of reading slump right now

[Alex Knipp · Rating 5 out of 5]

Easily the best book I’ve read on place-based disenfranchisement.

[Julia Deziel · Rating 4 out of 5]

good and interesting but I wish it talked about indigenous communities and also the audiobook reader pronounced Appalachia wrong so many times 😭

[Anna Murray · Rating 4 out of 5]

really insightful with a lot of new background information for things I’ve learned about before - really shows how various systems keep folks in one place (sometimes even deliberately)

[Marc Motter · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book had a couple of interesting theoretical interventions, but the details weren't really anything surprising. The authors construct an index of disadvantage (combining factors like life expectancy, poverty rate, social mobility, etc.) on a county level. Their first observation is that a heat map of disadvantaged counties has considerable overlap with a heat map of slave population in the 19th century. Their second observation is that areas of greatest disadvantage are a) not without wealthy people, and b) usually located in an area that was a prominent exporter of some valuable resource (cotton, spinach, coal). This leads them to label some of these areas of disadvantage as "internal colonies", which is a useful theoretical tool. But much of the book is spent discussing how areas of deep disadvantage are characterized by poor and segregated schools, violence, drug use, low social mobility, etc. Which is not a new discovery and felt like a poor way to use the majority of the book. 3.9/5

[Ruby · Rating 4 out of 5]

"What becomes abundantly clear as we travelacross the country to see America's most deeply disadvantaged places firsthand is that they are often home not only to desperate poverty but also to considerable wealth."

"In 2008, life expectancy for highly educated white males was eighty years, but only sixty-six for low low-educated Black men, whose average life span resembled numbers seen in Pakistan and Mongolia. In 2011, the infant mortality rate for Black mothers in the United States was comparable to that in Grenada and just a bit better than that in Tonga. The rate for non-Hispanic whites was much closer to that in Germany and the Netherlands. Meanwhile, a tidal wave of new research was showing that a person's health is shaped more by their context-their income, family circumstances, and community characteristics, for example-than by their genetic profiles or the medical care they receive."

"It seemed clear to us that to measure the depth of disadvantage in a community, it would be important to include the rate of mobility from one generation to the next."

"Apart from predominantly Native American communities, the places that our index identified as "most disadvantaged" most often are found in three regions-Appalachia, South Texas, and the vast southern Cotton Belt running across seven states."

"As we pored over our regions' pasts, we began to realize that what they shared in common was a history of intensive resource extraction and profound human exploitation not seen to the same degree elsewhere in the United States. In these places, it was not enough to be comfortably profiting from one's enterprise. The goal of the landowning class was to build vast wealth on the backs of those laboring on the land."

"Using terminology such as "nation within a nation" or "colony" to describe the exploitation of communities of color within the United States has a long history among Black scholars and activists (notable proponents have included Frederick Douglass, Kenneth Clark, Stokely Carmichael, and Malcolm X), among others."

"Residents of every place we got to know for this book can recount stories of local government corruption: the FBI storming City Hall to arrest nearly every member of city government; local officials imprisoned for buying votes and collaborating with drug dealers; corporations getting sweetheart deals to bring a new factory to town but never delivering. Yet when leaders are asked to name the biggest challenges facing their communities, government corruption rarely comes up. Instead, they usually focus on the flaws of the poor."

"To understand the challenges facing a place of deep disadvantage, the first step is to learn about its past."

"Read one way, the stories of America's internal colonies are ones of American innovation, ingenuity, and entrepreneurship. Great wealth was extracted from these regions in the form of raw materials that fueled not only national but global markets. Yet from the start, these were also the places in the nation with the most inequality, severe poverty, ill health, and limited mobility. They remain so today."

"...county governments paid for the construction and maintenance of white schools, while it was up to Black parents to provide spaces-often in churches-for Black parents to provide spaces-often in churches-for Black students to learn."

"White attitudes about the education of Black children were rooted in the belief that educated Black people "were less amenable to the caste sanctions, less deferential, submissive, and dependent, and therefore a danger to the efficient working of the caste system..."

"As late as 1961, three states-Mississippi, Alabama, and South Carolina-had not one integrated classroom."

"Segregation academies were supported (and sometimes financed), as we've seen, by the Citizens' Councils, once described as the "uptown Klan." White churches as well, from a variety of denominations but especially the Southern Baptists, rushed to lend support."

"Fuquay found, the reacism of white families meant that children ended up going to worse schools than they would have if their parents had supported integrated public schools."

"Today, America's schools remain sharply segregated by ethnicity and especially by race. As economist Rucker Johnson powerfully illustrates in his book Children of the Dream, American schools have been rapidly resegregating while academic performance has been falling, which suggests how profoundly the two may be linked."

"Segregation is a key mechanism whites have used to undercut the chance that Black and Hispanic children can do better than their parents."

"Lynchings were built into the very fabric of Cotton Belt society, serving an explicit goal of racial subjugation."

"Lynchings are often associated with the history of Black Americans, but they are equally fundamental to the history of white Americans. Nearly always, it was whites who made the accusations of Black transgressions. Whit epeople gathered the mobs and pursued the victims, while white law enforcement either turned a blind eye or was actively involved. White people committed these murders in brutal and heinous ways, and whites made up stories in the aftermath with the goal of absolving themselves of guilt. It was white perpetrators who almost always escaped blame."

"Legal scholars Nick Peterson and Geoff Ward have found that violent opposition to the civil rights movement is related both to the lynchings that preceded it and to elvated homicide rates in subsequent years."

"Resistance in the face of repression is not the exception. It is emblematic of each of the regions where the deepest disadvanrage in our nation is felt. But resistance has been costly..."

"Corruption is a common theme across America's internal colonies and is a key mechanism through which the sins of the past continue to wreak havoc on these places today."

"...he explain to us that as "freindly as people are, when you're an outsider, you're an outsider...Our people are our people." Another prominent scholar of rural poverty, Cynthia Duncan, refers to this state of mind in rural American as one of "good rich people" and "bad poor people."

"Corruption is a seldom recognized form of exploitation in which an elite few are allowed to live off the spoils of public office and to preserve the status quo. Under these conditions, it is nearly impossible for a community to improve."

"Most scholars place the peak of Black farm ownership somewhere between 1910 and 1920, nearly all of it in the Cotton Belt, where so many had toiled as enslaved people. Over the course of the twentieth century, these trends reversed sharply, as the cast majority of this farmland was lost."

"The amount of aid FEMA will provide is directly pegged to the market value of a home, part of why higher-income families claim the bulk of the resources as a general rule. FEMA may also deny aid if an applicant misses an inspection appointment. The process and language used to communicate these procedures and rules is itself a barrier to success."

"Data bear out the perceptions of Marion County residents. A New York Times investigation by Christoper Flavelle concluded that "a growing body of research shows that FEMA...often helps white disaster victims more than people of color, even when the amount of damage is the same." In one study, white families in places where FEMA aid was distributed saw their wealth increase relative to similar white families in unaffected communities. In contrast, Black families in places that received FEMA aid saw their wealth decrease compared to similar Black families in other places. Put simply, in the long run a natural disaster was a financial boon for white families, on average. For Black families, it was more often a financial catastrophe."

"The structural racism that permeates the regulations of federal agencies such as FEMA is built on decades or even centuries of discriminatory practices. Importantly, as Vann Newkirk concluded in his Atlantic article mentioned earlier in this chapter, this need not be the result of a grand conspiracy. It is instead a toxic alchemy of government policy, market forces, good and not-so-good intentions, and preexisting differences in wealth and other resources. When combined, these pressures-what might be called the invisible hand of structural racism-all push in one direction: toward the deepening of inequalities."

"America's internal colonies are marked by unequal schools, violence, a dearth of social infrastructure, public corruption, and the invisible hand of structural racism. In the face of these challenges, and in places where those who are subjugated vastly outnumber those inc ontrol, you maky ask: why don't they-the majority-revolt? Truth be told, periodic revolt is in the very DNA of these places. So, we will see, is violent retribution by those desperate to retain power."

"Inspired by news of civil rights activism in the Cotton Belt, a group of Mexican Americans in Crystal City decided they wanted more say in the community. In their minds, they started at the ballot box....The efforts proved to be a spectacular sucess. For first time in history, Mexican Americans became the majority of registered voters in Crystal City-1,139 of 1,681."

"The Chicano takeover "brought bitterness to many white people," who, in response, opened their own private school; others moved elsewhere. Many Anglo parents, according to one source; were unwilling "to subject their children to Chicano dominance and bilingual education."

"Elena, whose family has called Crystal City home for generations, remembers being told by her elders as a kid about the 1950s and '60s, when Mexican Americans were not allowed on Lake Street, one of the main commercail thoroughfares..."they had a separate theater for the Mexicans. And the theater that used to be downtown was only for whites. And then of course the Mexicans weren't allowed to be in the band. They were not allowed to be cheerleaders...So it was bad back in the day."

"Revolt and retribution can be seen as a stage in the life cycle of every internal colony we discuss in this book. Those who lead revolutions are as human and imperfect as the rest of us, as the historical record of any revolt shows."

"Yet state leaders, from the governor to the Texas Classroom Teachers Association to the middle-class Mexican American establishment, were actively working against the new leaders, hoping to bring them down. The whit ebusiness leaders who pulled out, the state government that blocked resources from the town, the federal government that swooped in during moments of crisis only to retreat when things calmed down-none of them have been called to account."

"Meanwhile, the State of Mississppi has assured employers that they will have a ready supply of cheap labor in another way-through its imprisoned population, as it has done for more than a century, now through so-called restitution centers."

"Welfare is not likely to be keeping workers away from jobs at Milwaukee Tool or any other employer in Mississippi. The state has the lowest benefit levels in the nation, a record it has maintained since the 1930s, when the program began."

"What if employers are overstating their inability to find workers as a way to divert attention away from low wages they provide, or to undermine social welfare programs that might be seen as discouraging employment? If worker supply were truly a barrier to production, wouldn't the employers just leave?"

"Could it be that one additional motivation for employers is that these workers, far from home, are simply more exploitable than Mississippi's Black Americans, who have finally achieved a minimal set of protections since the end of Jim Crow?"

"...as is true in many other parts of the country, there is the high tolerance for the racial separation-in schools, neighborhoods, churches, and nearly every other community institution-that many people believe is at the root of the region's woes. No one we spoke with seemed hopeful about tackling that problem."

"One cannot fully understand the advantages enjoyed in America's most advantaged places, however, without considering the historic (and ongoing) exploitation of migrant labor that has gone on in them, mostly drawn from the US border regions (especially South Texas) and Mexico."

"There are instances where the parallels with history run even deeper, as in the wealthy, mostly white Atlanta neighborhood of Buckhead, which is threatening to secede from the city and its schools. Vigilance is required in naming the wrong when new forms of segregation in schools emerge."

"the ultimate cure for violence can come only when the social and economic barriers between the haves and the have-nots, which have been maintained by, and for the benefit of, the haves, are breached. while the Americna Dream has been more myth than reality for many people throughout our nation's history, it must nonethless be our goal, particularly in places where a history of internal colonialism has left such profound human scars."

"Tach found that the strongest predictor of funding was the number of nonprofits in a county-a rough proxy of how many skilled grant writers there are. Due to this fact, Boston-a rich city by any measure-received a disproportionate share of funding, while many of the places that rank high on our index got little to none."

"Confronting structural racism means rooting it out anywhere and elsewhere. A necessary part of anti-racist reforms must be an audit of policies, programs, and regulations in federal, state, and local government to identify disparate racial outcomes; to delve deep into history to understand what factors have led to these outcomes; and to devise concrete solutions to address disparities. In all cases, such a structural racism audit would probably find hat the devil is in the details. Indeed, it is impossible to ferret out structural racism without being deeply ensconed in those details."

"The nation must confront the fact that policy makers on both sides of the aisle have endorsed trade policies that have crushed the South's nascent efforts to industrialize and diversify its economies after the vast internal colonies that dominated these places began to break down."

"While the repugnant history of the World War II internment camps in the united States is well-known, few have heard the story of the only camp built expressly for the purpose of interning Japenese, German, and Italian American families with children. This occurred in Crystal City, Texas, on the grounds of a former government owned migrant labor camp, where the town's high school sits today."

[Ethan Wells · Rating 2 out of 5]

The first who, having circumscribed a plot of land, took it into his head to say “This belongs to me” and found people simple enough to believe him, was the true founder of civil society. How many crimes, wars, murders, how many miseries and horrors might the human race have been spared by the one who, tearing down the stakes or filling in the ditch, cried out to his fellow men [semblables] : Beware of listening to this imposter! You are lost if you forget that the fruits of the earth belong to everyone, and the earth to no one.
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality Among Men

One of the great merits of both Matthew Desmond’s Poverty, by America and Kathryn Edin, H. Luke Shaefer and Timothy Nelson’s The Injustice of Place: Uncovering the Legacy of Poverty in America is their shared concern with the intractability of poverty in the United States - its persistence in specific places and through the generations. Each casts, in his or her own way, an unsparing gaze on how the exploited are exploited more, how racism and poverty are hopelessly imbricated one with the other, especially through the persistence of segregation in schools (Edin et al.) and housing (Desmond), and how the affluent feed off of the impoverished even while lamenting their plight. “I sit on a man’s back, choking him and making him carry me,” writes Tolstoy in a passage from What Then Must We do? that is quoted by Desmond (though Edin et al. also find reference to Tolstoy indispensable), “and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means - except by getting off his back” (119). For Desmond, Edin, Shaefer and Nelson, it’s high time to get off his back! And they do not content themselves with abstract championing of what is, by itself, a mere figure of speech; each provides detailed analyses of how we force the impoverished to carry us, thereby setting the stage for the detailed proposals that follow concerning how we might finally dismount from these, our all-too human steeds.

A precursor to all of their proposals is that we take a hard look in the mirror: “There is so much poverty in this land not in spite of our wealth,” writes Desmond, “but because of it. Which is to say, it’s not about them. It’s about us” (120). It is up to us - the haves as opposed to the have-nots - to end poverty. That we have not ended poverty is something that both Desmond and Edin et al., seem to think has not been accomplished largely because of our unwillingness to accept our own responsibility for it, a responsibility we prefer instead to displace onto the impoverished, if only to give ourselves a better conscience. The poor are poor because they refuse to work, we tell ourselves despite massive evidence to the contrary, or because they waste their money satisfying animal appetites with abandon (they don’t), or lack the mettle to stand on their own two feet like the rest of us. None of this is true, these two books demonstrate; it is not true that the poor are lazy and it is even less true that the rest of us stand on our own two feet. “The most recent data,” writes Desmond,

compiling spending on social insurance, means-tested programs, tax benefits, and financial aid for higher education show that the average household in the bottom 20 percent of the income distribution received roughly $ 25,733 in government benefits a year, while the average household in the top 20 percent received about $ 35,363. Every year, the richest American families receive almost 40 percent more in government subsidies than the poorest families (99).

The principle difference between rich and poor in this country is not who receives government assistance and who doesn't, but rather what form this assistance takes: for the poor, it's more visible (eg. SNAP cards, cash payments), while for the rich, more invisible (tax deductions). "We could,” however, as Desmond underscores, “flip the delivery system to achieve the same ends, extending welfare to the poor by cutting payroll taxes for low-income workers (as France has) while replacing the mortgage income deduction with a check mailed out to homeowners each month. (...) You can benefit a family by lowering its tax burden or by increasing its benefits, same difference" (98). The implication is clear enough: the poor and the affluent are not distinguished from each other in terms of their own accomplishments (or lack thereof); they’re distinguished by the privilege from which they wittingly or unwittingly benefit, or of which they are unjustly deprived.

All of this would seem to suggest that there is, finally, no necessity to poverty: “The United States could effectively end poverty in America tomorrow” (120-21) writes Desmond, simply by enforcing its own tax laws and funding anti-poverty programs with the money that should have been collected in the first place. “We can at least imagine a world,” writes Edin et al., speaking at a more general level than Desmond, “in which the reaction to this original sin [of slavery and other less extreme forms of human exploitation] would be to repudiate exploitative practices rather than embrace them” (258). If poverty persists, it would seem to be because we choose it - whether knowingly or not. We choose it each time we pay as little as possible for the commodities we insist on having. We choose it when we allow just 22 cents of every dollar allocated to the poor to actually end up in their pockets (Desmond, 28), or when we reject 98% of those who apply for these dollars in the poorest state in the country - the same state, as it happens, that gave $ 1.1 million of these same dollars to former NFL quarterback Brett Favre for speeches he never gave (Edin et al., 122-24). We choose it when we dodge as much as possible our tax obligations. We choose it through our zoning laws or by deciding to live in gated communities whose gates are not meant to keep us in so much as to keep the riffraff out. We choose it when we incarcerate a higher percentage of our population than any other country on earth with the exceptions of Rwanda and El Salvador - thereby dooming those who have been incarcerated - who are disproportionately Black and Hispanic - to low-paying jobs once they get out, if they can get a job at all. We choose it when we send our kids to schools that are almost as segregated today as they were when segregation was the law of the land. We choose it, in short, through so many choices we make every day without wondering about their consequences for those we share this world with now and for those who will inherit it later. Poverty, like climate change, is the sum of countless choices we make all the time with nary a thought at all.

And yet. Without excusing in any way this thoughtlessness, and without blunting the justified anger that each of these books expresses as they confront, in their own ways, the indisputable fact that it doesn’t have to be like this, that the wealthiest country in the world doesn’t have to be home to some of the world’s most impoverished people, that other countries are doing far better fighting poverty with far fewer resources, without disputing any of this, I nonetheless have to ask: is it a priori certain that it’s possible to have a non-exploitive relationship to the other? Put otherwise, is it certain, on non-empirical grounds (since the empirical grounds are anything but encouraging), that poverty can be ended?

To pose this question seriously requires one to confront the origins and foundations of poverty or - more broadly - of inequality. Bearing witness to poverty, as both these books do, is important, indeed, indispensable. But, as Desmond himself notes, these necessary tasks do not in themselves constitute “a fundamental theory of the problem” (3). Speaking of the many books on poverty, Desmond notes that “these kinds of books help us understand the nature of poverty. They are vital. But they do not - and in fact cannot - answer the most fundamental question, which is: Why (7)? But it is with respect to this question that both books not only are most disappointing, but also at odds with themselves. On the one hand, both demonstrate again and again that wealth and poverty are hopelessly entwined. It is not just that the “concentration of affluence breeds more affluence, and the concentration of poverty, more poverty” (120), as Desmond writes, but also, that these two concentrations are each other's reflections. “[W]e create prosperous and exclusive communities. And in doing so, we not only create neighborhoods with concentrated riches but also neighborhoods with concentrated despair - the externality of stockpiled opportunity” (120). In a world of finite resources, hoarding in one place implies deprivation somewhere else. Isn’t this the story Edin et al. also tell via the notion of the “internal colony” - those regions of the country that are increasingly impoverished even as they generate enormous wealth for other people in other places? “Read one way,” they write, “the stories of America’s internal colonies are ones of American innovation, ingenuity, and entrepreneurship. Great wealth was extracted from these regions in the form of raw materials that fueled not only national but global markets. Yet from the start, these were also the places in the nation with the most inequality, severe poverty, ill health, and limited mobility. They remain so today” (38). If poverty is the “externality” of affluence, then as soon as there is one, there will always be the other. The man who throws up a fence and says “mine” not only enriches himself; he dispossesses everyone else - even if this is a rather peculiar dispossession, insofar as what one loses one never quite had, properly speaking, in the first place.

On the other hand, however, both books not only flee from this insight, but follow the same flight plan. No sooner does Desmond raise the “fundamental question” pertaining to poverty, namely “Why?” then he qualifies it: “Why all this American poverty” (7 - my emphasis)? Like Edin et al., Desmond’s concern is exclusively with poverty in the United States, and his solutions, like Edin and her co-authors’, are aimed solely at the United States. But this precludes in advance a rigorous consideration of the origins and foundations of poverty as such. Instead, they mistake what occasions poverty (or, more broadly) inequality in the United States with its cause. This allows them to address why poverty in the United States outpaces poverty in much of the rest of the world, but prevents them from asking why poverty nonetheless persists in every country on earth, and has since time immemorial. One consequence of this mistake, however, is that it prohibits in advance that either Desmond or Edin et al., are, properly speaking, “poverty abolitionists” (Desmond, 171). They do not dream so much of “the end of poverty” (Desmond, 178) as its displacement outside of the United States. Whence a certain protectionism that both books embrace when they argue, for example, that jobs need to be “reshored” back to the United States, despite the fact that offshoring jobs from the United States and other wealthy countries has, whatever else it has also done, incontestably raised hundreds of millions out of abject poverty. An abolitionist who doesn’t care what happens in the south is no abolitionist at all - something that is true whether one is talking about the ante bellum South of the 19th century or the Global South of today. If, after all, the “externality” of concentrated wealth is concentrated poverty, then ending poverty only in the United States repeats, in displaced form, “ending” poverty in well-funded, and well-policed, gated communities. Far from “tear[ing] down the walls,” to borrow a chapter title from Desmond’s book, what one is actually advocating is their relocation to the nation’s borders. All of which suggests that the act of throwing up walls in the first place may well be far more complicated than it might at first appear.

What neither Desmond nor Edin et al. are willing or able to think is the possibility of inequality at “the” origin. Edin et al. are quite explicit in their rejection of this possibility, one that they rightly associate with the traumatic. As quoted earlier, they are adamant that “[w]e can at least imagine a world in which the reaction to this original sin [of slavery and other less extreme forms of human exploitation] would be to repudiate exploitative practices rather than embrace them and” - and this part I did not previously quote - “inscribe them” (258). Yet if there is inequality “at” the origin, so to speak, then it is by no means certain in advance that we can do anything but inscribe, or rather reinscribe, elsewhere and otherwise - endlessly - what we call "poverty." This is, after all, what Desmond and Edin et al. end up actually doing, however unwittingly, when they take their protectionist turns; Edin, like Desmond, does not in fact imagine a world where exploitative practices are repudiated so much as a sort of Candidesque garden in that world, an Eden, so to speak, whose exploitative practices would be hidden, as it were, outside its walls.

If this is indeed the case, if it is not in fact possible to imagine a world where exploitative practices are rigorously repudiated, well, then the task of the true abolitionist - if there are any - would necessarily be endless. It would be to read how poverty has been inscribed at any given moment in the most dominant configurations of our world, and reinscribe it elsewhere. Such a task doesn’t exactly promise a good conscience - but our desire for a good conscience might very well be, as Desmond suggests, part of the problem. It has the benefit, in any case, of actually transforming poverty in the world.

So: time to get to work.

[K. · Rating 4 out of 5]

First, I want to link to the full map of the Index of Disadvantage found at the University of Michigan Poverty Solutions center. I encourage you to take a look and compare your hometown to other places, I was (very unpleasantly) surprised by my own town’s standing at #127. Yikes.

The Injustice of Place uses social scientists’ ever-improving techniques for data gathering and organizing, to yield a portrait of American poverty that is unexpected and illuminating. As the authors Kathryn J. Edin, H. Luke Shaefer, and Timothy J. Nelson note, a typical American’s mental image of poverty evokes urban slums à la Jacob Riis’s How the Other Half Lives. But with the exception of some outliers like Detroit, these scholars found the most deeply disadvantaged places in America tend to be rural and semi-rural counties where manufacturing concerns come to dominate, and then leave bereft, the unskilled and semi-skilled local workforce.

If you take the two lane state highways on a drive from Charlotte to Savannah, or a drive from Birmingham to Tampa, you see countless examples of the deteriorated, lifeless towns that Edin, Shaefer and Nelson describe in the introduction to The Injustice of Place. The string of towns on SC-321 named Norway, Sweden and Denmark seems funny at first, but the bereft appearance of these places is somber. Houses with busted windows and rotting wood porches, no sign of life in the streets except at convenience stores and Dollar Generals, and a big abandoned factory somewhere nearby.

I was intrigued by the pattern of manufacturing concerns beginning in large Northeastern or Midwestern cities, only to flee to the South once workers in their original locales started to unionize and demand better treatment. After the 1990s made offshoring and outsourcing such appealing and financially prudent tactics, these same companies fled the country altogether. Corporations are inherently in a race to find the most exploitable workforce and this boom/bust cycle of unskilled job availability repeats itself throughout history. This book makes protectionism seem like a good idea, though of course (as Ethan Wells’ review insightfully argues) this may be good for Americans by effectively just “outsourcing” our poverty to developing nations.

The authors’ inclusion of Big Pharma and the exploitative nature of Oxycontin’s spread was a great insight. I have read quite a bit about the opioid crisis, and quite a bit about poverty, but this is the first time I saw the connection made explicit between the exploitation of Big Pharma and other major industries. It’s a similar pattern of ravaging a vulnerable part of America, then moving on to foreign shores, as Patrick Radden Keefe recounted in Empire of Pain- Purdue Pharma has exported the same deceitful marketing tactics it used on Appalachian patients and doctors, to burgeoning countries like India, Brazil, and China.

I was also fascinated by the discussion of segregation academies. To my unpleasant surprise, there’s a private school right here in Tuscaloosa that was begun in the 60s to escape the legal mandate for school desegregation, and the private high school my older sister attended in Savannah, GA was founded as a segregation academy. Not to get too personal, but this phenomenon of white middle class families going to great lengths to avoid having their child attend a school with black children, still exists. It happened to me in Savannah in the early 2000s.

The chapter on FEMA and natural disaster relief was also interesting. Reminiscent of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, but on a smaller scale and repeated many times. Often in discussions of global warming you hear comments from left-wingers along the lines of “Why did they choose to live in Florida? They should have known, they deserve it.” This book reminded me that so many Americans living in areas vulnerable to climate change certainly didn’t choose to be born poor in a part of the southeast that’s going to be underwater in a century or two. Most of the people whose lives are going to be upended are not people buying a second home in Miami Beach. We are going to need an entire new anti-poverty program to mitigate the effects of global warming on our most vulnerable, one that helps uneducated and impoverished people to relocate without even further reducing their precarious circumstances.

Finally, I was interested by the perhaps controversial implications of this book for immigration and residential de-segregation. The authors describe the negative effects of even legal immigration on the local job market for Americans, when large planters and corporations import cheap labor from South Africa. They don’t discuss immigration much in the context of South Texas, and it’s understandable they wanted to avoid that whole boondoggle which could fill many books of its own. But I would be curious how Crystal City’s native population finds itself affected by the constant inflow of desperate poor people who are easy to exploit. The authors also describe some of the most advantaged locales in America, and point out that they are racially homogenous. It doesn’t necessarily seem to be whiteness that confers advantage- the authors point out that places like West Virginia, Ohio, and Kentucky are disproportionately white, yet most of their counties don’t come close to making the “most advantaged” list. But this information was surprising to me and could lead to some uncomfortable conclusions. (Uncomfortable for me and my usual political beliefs, that is.)

I also very much appreciated the number of footnotes and the two (two!) appendices regarding method and data. Nonfiction books without at least footnotes, and preferably a description of the research process too, get an automatic side eye from me.

I just finished Factory Man by Beth Macy which is set in Bassett and Galax, VA, which are perfect examples of recent economic trends in rural America: decent quality furniture was manufactured here by Americans for decent (though never fully fair) wages, until NAFTA destroyed the local economy by encouraging outsourcing and cost cutting. This was actually a relative success story- not all the Virginia furniture workers were displaced- but now most of our furniture is made in China, and well paying manufacturing jobs are hard to come by. An example in my own county is the Mercedes Benz plant in Vance, Alabama, which employs 6,000 people for decent wages (for our low COL area) without requiring higher education or even a high school diploma for some jobs. But without the Mercedes plant and a few dozen maintenance/grounds jobs at the University of Alabama, all that exists for entry-level jobs in our county is retail and food service. And we have more opportunities than nearby counties like Hale, Greene, Pickens, etc.

I recently read this editorialby Roger Cohen at the NYT, and had it in mind as I started this book. Cohen’s piece was focused on the 2023 Israel/Hamas conflict, but his critique can be more generally applied to the use of the term “colonial.” Like most opinion pieces that discuss modern reforms that “started positive, but now it’s just gone too far”, I found Cohen’s ideas reactionary but with a nugget of truth within. Does The Injustice of Place fall into a similar trap of using a framework that isn’t a good fit? To some extent, perhaps. But overall I think the authors do a good job of addressing such concerns in Appendix A, and certainly the idea of intensive resource extraction/labor exploitation occurring within the country means you can’t help but draw parallels to similar situations where nations helped big industries pull similar maneuvers overseas.

This book is full of new information, it’s rigorously researched, and it presents an argument on behalf of impoverished rural America that represents a major change in how we should view poverty. I highly recommend it.

[Book Shark · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Injustice of Place: Uncovering the Legacy of Poverty in America by Kathryn J. Edin, H. Luke Shaefer, and Timothy J. Nelson

“The Injustice of Place” examines how places of poverty impacts human lives and what they have in common. Three social science scholars combine forces to assess extreme poverty in three key areas of America: Appalachia, the Cotton and Tobacco Belts of the Deep South, and South Texas. This revealing 352-page book includes the following nine chapters: 1. America’s Internal Colonies, 2. Separate, Unequal, 3. Nothing to Do Here but Drugs, 4. A Tradition of Violence, 5. Little Kingdoms, 6. The Invisible Hand, 7. Revolt and Retribution, 8. The Sins of Our Fathers, and 9. Healing America’s Internal Colonies.

Positives:
1. A well-written, well-researched book.
2. Excellent topic, American poverty with a focus on places.
3. Despite having three authors the book flows smoothly.
4. The book clearly identifies the areas of focus of their research. “Apart from predominantly Native American communities, the places that our index identified as “most disadvantaged” most often are found in three regions—Appalachia, South Texas, and the vast southern Cotton Belt running across seven states.”
5. Provides interesting perspective of how communities glorify their capitalist colonizers. “Yet in South Texas, the vast Cotton Belt, central Appalachia, and the Pee Dee region of South Carolina, these symbols celebrate a past that is fraught, to say the least. They commemorate the very industries that, for a century or more, spelled misery and hardship for thousands, if not millions, while profiting only a few. They memorialize the intensive resource extraction and resulting human exploitation that made these places America’s internal colonies.”
6. Interesting history throughout the book. “Though Pee Dee planters hailed bright leaf tobacco as their savior from the market swings of King Cotton, they soon found themselves subject to a new tyrant: Big Tobacco.”
7. Great use of research that sheds light on the issues such as the lack of quality education. “Our analysis of census data from 1950 indicates that across the nation that year, roughly a third of adults had completed high school. The same was true of only about 14 percent in eastern Kentucky.”
8. Discusses unjust systems. “He and other young leaders wanted to fight what they saw as an unjust system: unfair voter registration laws, unfair labor practices, systemic racism in all its forms.”
9. Drugs and poverty. “America’s internal colonies are some of the sickest places in the nation, but the sickest region of all is central Appalachia. The most disproportionate cause of death here compared to the nation as a whole is the sharp rise in mortality due to drug overdose over the past thirty years.”
10. Discusses the importance of shared spaces. “In his 2018 book, Palaces for the People, sociologist Eric Klinenberg argues forcefully that “the future of democratic societies rests not simply on shared values but on shared spaces: The libraries, childcare centers, bookstores, churches, synagogues, and parks in which crucial, sometimes life-saving connections are formed.””
11. Violence and poverty, shows how violence links the distant past to the present. “Johnson calculated that between 1900 and 1931, lynchings were most common in the Mississippi Delta, where “the plantation system still flourishes. . . . In these counties lynching or the possibility of lynching is part of a cultural pattern.”
12. An interesting look at corruption. “Welfare money was also funneled—again via New’s nonprofit—into a new volleyball stadium at Favre’s alma mater, the University of Southern Mississippi, where his daughter was on the volleyball team at the time. New’s nonprofit sent $5 million in TANF dollars to the project with the thin justification that the facility would host “activities that benefit the area’s underserved population.”
13. Use of metrics to define poverty and quality of life. “Measures of inequality such as the Gini Index can quantify the divide between the haves and the have-nots. The Gini Index is a metric used by the federal government to assess inequality in the United States and by the World Bank and United Nations to measure inequality worldwide.”
14. Issues such as heir’s property and how it impacts those residents. “In recent years, scholars, community advocates, and affected families alike have raised the issue of eligibility for disaster relief for those living on heir’s property. As a result of their work, starting in fall of 2021 FEMA now allows families to self-attest to their ownership of property.”
15. Stories of revolts in deeply disadvantaged areas. “The “mine wars” of West Virginia in 1897, 1912, and 1920 had featured the same plot and the same characters: militantly anti-union coal operators firing and evicting miners and their families, miners battling armed guards, county sheriffs and their deputies beating and intimidating union organizers, the governor sending in the National Guard.”
16. Explains why welfare isn’t keeping people away from working in Mississippi. “Welfare is not likely to be keeping workers away from jobs at Milwaukee Tool or any other employer in Mississippi. The state has the lowest benefit levels in the nation, a record it has maintained since the 1930s, when the program began. Due to a recent increase in benefit levels, it offers a maximum of $260 a month for a family of three with no other source of income—if, that is, the family can actually get approved for the benefit, a rare feat, as we showed…”
17. Crony capitalism at work. “In sum, the exploitation of whatever resources remain in these internal colonies continues, and poor people’s labor also continues to be extracted or, more commonly, is simply discarded.”
18. Looks at the places with the greatest advantage. “While the farmsteads are farther apart in the Dakotas than elsewhere, and the homes are more substantial in the rolling hills of Iowa and Nebraska than in southern Minnesota, these places of greatest advantage are mostly marked by a sheer lack of variety, perhaps reflecting the lack of inequality among them.”
19. The six principles of action to address poverty as an example, to end violence, spark mobility. “We have argued in this book that the extraordinarily high level of violence in many of our places of deepest disadvantage—especially in the Cotton Belt of the South, the Tobacco Belt of the Pee Dee, and the Coal Belt of central Appalachia—is rooted in a history of profound economic and social subjugation of the many by the few, relying on violence as the ultimate tool.”
20. Provides appendices that discuss methodology.

Negatives:
1. The book lacks panache. It’s dry and can come across as professorial.
2. There are far better books that discuss systematic racism.
3. Lack of visual supplementary materials.
4. The book focuses on American poverty but that shouldn’t stop the authors from considering solutions that have worked in other countries.
5. I would have elaborated more on the six principles of action.

In summary, this is an overall good book but I wasn’t as captivated by the topic as I was hoping to be. This book focuses on three areas and makes good use of research to make conclusions on what specifically is the cause of poverty in that area. It makes the case that said poverty is deeply rooted in its history and surprisingly shares that in common with other disadvantaged places. I recommend with the duly noted negatives.

Further recommendations: “Poverty, by America” and “Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City” by Mathew Desmond, “American Hunger” by Eli Saslow, “The New Jim Crow” by Michelle Alexander, “Slavery by Another Name“ by Douglas A. Blackmon, “$2.00 a Day” by Kathryn J. Edin, “Not a Crime to be Poor” by Peter Edelman, “Nickel and Dimed” by Barbara Ehrenreich, “The Working Poor” by David K. Shipler, “Nomadland” by Jessica Bruder, and “Poverty in America” by John Iceland.

[Donna Hines (The Secret Book Sleuth) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can attest to much of what the authors note in this newest work as the injustices are deep and poverty is deeper.
As a survivor of this state of despair what we have is the bottom feeders struggling against the powerful elites. The lack of advancement, the low pay, the inability to help every citizen excel without some connections is ad nauseum.
In small towns like my own it's God awful to move forward without having wealth, power, and prestige. As noted, It's not what you know but who you know and I'd add who you donate too.
The more you donate the better your chances. The more you show up and give the more they show up and help.
What we must not become is complacent in allowing this to become the new norm. By allowing robots to take away workers jobs, by allowing big corporations to pay peanuts and expect work to death mentality, by allowing those like myself with Masters education to be placed at the bottom gives no incentive to work hard and earn your keep.
After raising kids and a family upon divorcing in 2013 I found myself in dire straits. No income, alimony, child support, and 15k in arrearages for the support owed from my ex spouse in which he refused to pay. Our master judge awarded me 740 dollars to raise a family of four in an area in which a two bedroom goes for 1,200. I had a disabled (medically) son from birth with vater syndrome. My first payment after a year w/o income living on credit was $100. We eventually fought with 4 attorneys to achieve an increase of $1200 monthly but spent twice as much to obtain. I sought work with a dual Masters and over 20 yrs volunteer experience since 2010. It wasn't until Feb. 2023 that I finally acquired a $14 hr job (remote) with benefits from day one.
I'm blessed to have this job but I must note it's working as a resource navigator with 211 similar to 911 and helpline. I help others acquire what I myself couldn't find on my own. My job is to find the resources within the human service field. I love my job but the pay is quite low for masters and while the benefits are great and make up for the low wages along with the annual time earned to use free willy it's sad to see how the system is so broken.
We have individuals whom if they call after hours 9-4pm they can't be helped. We have no after hour homeless shelters especially on holidays.
While I tried to illicit change I was met with a write-up for wanting to help others. It's best to stay quiet and not lose the job you fought so hard to acquire.
What I've long learned is that the world and society today has drastically changed. There's people who will sit on cell phones recording before lending a hand to their fellow citizens.
There's something to say about a system that continues to penalize the impoverished. It costs more to be poor. Try to get credit and you'll find out. Living in extreme poverty is met with challenges.
Speaking upon experience to get a gift card because of having zero credit is maddening. To pay an activation fee $5 or more is nuts. To then not be able to use cash at facilities and continue to have to purchase cards is insanity. Since when is the American Dollar not acceptable?
To have to spend thousands in student loans to be able to receive a less paying salaried position is not only not fair it diminshes the point of higher education.
Why can't we help those with student loan debt forgiveness?
Why must we tell the disabled and poor that they can't get disability not because they're not disabled but because they own two vehicles (assets) that penalize the poor even if those assets are for their own kids to attend college to leave poverty behind.
This world is so ass backwards that the very definition of common sense is I'm afraid all but lost upon us.
I had the golden opportunity once to meet President Joe Biden. I mentioned to him this above comment, "Bring back common sense!"
Everything I'm seeing put into place by politicians is nothing more than an election grabber for the next cycle. They'll sell the community on the idea they'll bring in new jobs on the back of tax free land. They'll lay off more than they'll eventually hire. In the end, the factories go belly up while those dependent upon those jobs are left scrambling for new opportunity.
As a 50 yo woman I grew up with the American Dream in which you work hard to obtain what you need. I did just that! I worked for Lord and Taylor Distribution warehouse in Wilkes Barre. I was top producer in two departments and made a whopping $7.25 hr with a ten cent raise. I was then struck down literally when a 50 lb trolley hit me on the head knocking me to the ground. OSHA did nothing. We couldn't sue as they had top of the line attorneys. So, the little guy aka myself went home with an indented skull and left the company.
After the past 13 yrs seeking work and the past 29 raising my family I learned that it's nearly impossible to get employed with a gap even if you fill the gap with volunteering experience as a Points of Light recipient from our 41st President George H.W. Bush
While my community celebrated the white men who assisted over the years and provided them the key to the city and other recognition those of us on the front line received lil more than a "Thank you" for putting in more than 20 yrs for their tw0-six years. In fact the mayors of two of my local towns acted as if they didn't know I volunteered in serving yet, I was front and center at each community event.
What I can tell you is I never have served my community for applause but for a cause. It doesn't matter if they chase me out or help assist me because either way I'm here to stay.
As noted by others there's a treasure trove we could all write about in injustices in society today.
This is just the tip of this iceberg. As a white woman from a mid class background I was told to suck it up buttercup, to get a job, to stop sponging off the family. I was told I didn't want to work, I wanted hand outs, and that these welfare moms are lazy and or entitled.
I'd have given my right arm and then some for employment but we have to look into providing a living wage not a work to death wage.
I have medical issues that I needed to take two weeks off from work just to attend too. It's not right. It's sad. It's disgusting that we as Americans are treated so inhumanely.
When I was abused by my spouse who was arrested for violating his PFA I was told I deserved the abuse.
When I couldn't get employed I was told I wasn't sending out enough applications, I wasn't trying hard enough, I didn't do enough.
As a single mom left bankrupt, homeless, LT unemployed, without income/assets/savings/credit I can tell you this: I'll never give up and neither should our society at large.
God bless

[Sophie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very thoroughly researched - I learned a lot. Challenged many of my preconceived notions about areas of greatest disadvantage in the US. Excellent historical breakdown of the factors that continue to leave many places destitute of resources

[Jim Fabian · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had a lot of notes after reading this so I'm going to attempt to condense my thoughts in a coherent matter.

The main focal point of this book is extreme poverty in America and how it is often directly related to being former "internal colonies" that were essentially areas like cotton belt slave plantations. There is a lot that is described in this book that is irrefutable evidence that systemic oppression exists, but there are also points of contention I have where the authors do not consider certain things because of their "liberal" bias, for lack of a better term. For instance, I don't think it occurs to most people who vote Democrat that they are electing individuals into a corrupt institution that creates problems so they have something to run on, while many people aren't ever really helped in the ways that they need to be. Although this is a bipartisan phenomenon, claiming to be able to fix problems they've created, Democrats tend to be especially evil, in my view, because they portray themselves as the liberators while at the same time upholding plantation-like values; meaning they only care about minorities when they are voting for their side, or the "right" side. It's these same people who equate January 6th as an "attack" on democracy; the same people who equate nationalism and globalism with white supremacy when they cook up propaganda against an outsider candidate like Trump. Although the authors do at least acknowledge how Democrats created a terrible circumstance for minorities in America with disastrous trade policies that began in the 90s, they don't seem to connect the dots on certain things after that point.

Systemic prejudice is a direct result of government corruption, where global markets are prioritized and local markets forgotten; the wealth has been extracted from regions for their raw materials and then those communities are left to rot. Fast forward to today, these places have the highest inequality and severe poverty in the nation. With employment structures akin to feudal systems, the laborers are essentially subhuman servants who get paid two dollars a day. What hope is there for the people in this situation to have access to good education and access to opportunities for a better living standard? If you allocate resources appropriately and efficiently there wouldn't be any poverty. But we don't need government to do this; It's a matter of having the right people doing good things, and who won't enforce unlivable conditions.

Regarding education, the authors seem to ignore how bad a lot public schools really are. On one hand we shouldn't be comfortable relying on government funded public schools, but I guess it's the only option for many who can't afford private schools. But private schools still end up with government money somehow, which makes me wonder what the point of public school is if we can just make all schools "better." But maybe it still isn't much of a choice because apparently a lot of the private schools are worse than public education, and to this day there is apparently no way of really knowing how good some of the private schools are? Many might as well be getting away with the bare minimum in the name of segregation and freedom? What's the point of the department of education anyway if not to make sure all kids are getting a good education, wherever that may be?

I'm sure there are probably still schools that take pride in segregation, but just because some schools might be all white doesn't mean it's because the school is racist. I feel like the authors here are assuming racism is the culprit more often than not, and when black residents of certain counties or communities aren't complaining about their "racist" schools they attribute this to them not knowing any better. Lefties fall into this racism trap all the time where they end up the ones who are actually racist? They also repeatedly assert that wealthy white elites hate the expense of public education, based on their own prejudice I assume. Of course people can pick and choose which schools they donate to, but why would anyone in their right mind donate to a school with a crappy curriculum? Is racism really all that prevalent here? I call bullshit.

I'm not saying racism doesn't exist, and it obviously had a huge role in the rise of private schools, but for a large chunk of the book the authors are acting like segregation in school is the main cause for concern. I think it's clear that home life is more important. For instance, how would you expect all the Hispanic children to attend school when they were essentially forced to travel across the country to work with their parents while other kids were in the classroom? How is segregation undercutting these kid's education? Sure you can argue that it's a policy failure by the government to not make sure all schools are up to par so that they can accommodate any student based on their family situation, but for kids living in poverty, public school isn't going to do much for them anyway, because they are statistically unlikely to commit to an education, and that is not a failure of education, it's a failure of home life. They are stuck in their parent's situation and, more so in the 60s, had to work from a very young age to help support their family; and this wasn't just a characteristic of a single race. Knowing this, how can you say that segregation in schools is the main problem? I'd say the main problem is parents don't have the capacity to home school their kids. We would be much better off if everyone did.

At a certain point, I just don't know if I believe everything these people are pushing. I can't with a straight face acknowledge that America's schools today remain sharply segregated by race. Painting a broad brush over schools across the entire country like this seems like a huge stretch. There are a handful of proclamations made in this book that make me wonder if they actually believe what they are saying. Even if a small fraction of schools are segregated today, there is a difference between private schools being segregated AND undermining nonwhite public schools, these are two completely different accusations; a nuance that the authors do not consider. All kids should have equal access to good education, but let's not kid ourselves that any government-funded school is the answer.

Essentially the whole gripe against segregation is that people think inequality is a bad word. If everyone were equal, there would be no diversity. We just have to decide what kind of diversity we want. For instance, we don't want politicians unconstitutionally funneling money to certain schools over others and banning books for obscure reasons. That is not the diversity we want, and that is something that actually happens that creates unfair advantages that directly disadvantage other schools. Simply calling it racism seems too narrow though. Government corruption is more common than racism; class transcends race, if that makes sense.

So how do we create inter-generational mobility for kids who grow up in poverty and either can't afford to go to school because they have to support their family or only have access to schools that are just plain terrible? For starters, if this is even possible, we need people in government who will not be sucked into the uselessness of bureaucracy. We need people in the private and public spheres of the economy to step up, get things done, and improve public welfare. Secondly, we need to solve the problems at home. Anti-violence efforts and youth groups are good; give the kids things to do for their community. People are often afraid to get involved because it could mean their lives if they live in really terrible areas with a lot of gun violence. There cannot be collective efficacy when terrorists run amuck. We need formal social control in areas where there are really bad people, otherwise you are relying on and even encouraging vigilantism. Everyone should be able to protect themselves, but having a good, homegrown police force is a necessity for any stable society.

I agree that a lot of violence is a response from living in poverty and being excluded from many economic opportunities. But to call this white retaliation is a gross assumption the authors make. Somehow racism is making black people shoot other black people? At what point does a victim become the perpetrator? The authors also don't seem to make the connection that the violence is interconnected with drugs and that drug dealers are often (but not always) the ones causing the violence.

There is no hope for any barter system where violence is prevalent unless you take the necessary steps to protect people willing to do business and be civilized about it. If you give people opportunity, they will choose non-violence, unless they are too far gone. But simply throwing money at the problem will only feed the violence. It will feed the drug market too, if that's the primary market in a community. Lack of opportunity creates a need of fulfillment, a hunger to achieve at something; that void is often consumed by drugs as well as violence, often literally.

It really is a cliché to say you don't have anything to do with yourself, but not having certain community staples in your neighborhood can often seem like a good excuse for not actually doing anything except laying around being doped up. We can talk about the importance of schooling all day, but if kids have good parents, they will be busy with exercise and games, they will get into sports and learn to be part of a team. The primary thing keeping kids away from drugs is good role models, not just bowling alleys and movie theaters; places like these would just end up being hang outs to do drugs. But bad parents, and disenfranchised parents, are not completely to blame for kids getting into crime and drugs. Obviously it's an economic failure to not have any spaces at all to gather and be a community and conduct respectable business. This is what free market capitalism fixes. When everyone has a say and not just the government or the local drug lords (corporate or otherwise), that is when we prosper. Social connection is the cure to drug use, not government handouts.

Another way to prevent kids from pursuing crime or drugs is to invest in a stable social infrastructure across the country. Libraries can go a long way in bringing people together, as long as the people are comfortable enough to leave their homes. But I can't stress enough how important I think family is on our development, not just as kids but throughout our lives. Take for instance what the authors found out about the most advantageous areas in the country are where family owned farms are. But of course they turn this into a racism dilemma because they are all white owned farms. The most advantageous places "lack racial and ethnic heterogeneity that adds such richness to the American experience." But didn't you just prove that this doesn't matter in terms of economic prosperity? Obviously slavery, by it's definition, is a limitation of opportunity, and, even as freed slaves, many chose to stay in slavery because the alternative was starving to death. Would it have made a difference to their prosperity if white people were slaves too? The hurdles the authors jump through on the topic of race is stunning, but typical I suppose of white people trying to shed themselves of guilt, which is only my assumption.

I agree blaming poor people for community's problems is to not understand circumstances. But the problem is not simply "racism," it's government bureaucracy and corporate globalism. Sometimes they are able to help, but corruption always seems to get in the way, and that is because people are naturally self-interested. But on top of self-interest, you have psychopaths who seek out power and will do whatever they can to keep it. There will only be mass prosperity when local free-markets are the way of the land. There is no excuse to not have a full supply of clean, refurbished housing for everyone. Why are we paying taxes if government can't meet the bare minimum needs of the people it's suppose to serve?

"For the elites, the dividing line between the classes is defined as a moral - rather than racial, ethnic, economic, or political, divide." This is the liberal order that has hijacked our government. It is not a democrat vs republican thing; all career politicians are complicit. They are their own class, and serve the wealthiest of their donors. Rarely there will be individuals who attempt to work past the corruption do to some good, but government's job is to accumulate power, against our will; democracy is a tool for them to accumulate power. There are racist elements to this, but it is also an inclusive elitism that uses race to gaslight the public.

In a society free from the constraints of corruption, we would not need to rely on government for more than the bare minimum, if at all, but we would also not have to settle for the bare minimum because there would be easier ways to access wealth or the means to acquiring wealth. Of course there will always be agitators, those who see the evil and decide to fight fire with fire, but crime isn't always just a reaction to the corruption, violence and crime can also be a culture in itself. It can end up being a way of life, often a rebellion, the reaction to having a boot on your neck where both you and the boot feed off each other. This is why the dynamic of welfare programs and government corruption goes hand in hand, there isn't one without the other. As long as people need government, there will be welfare, and as long as there is welfare for the "benevolent" government to give, there will be abuse of power.

You can have all the right people in office but corruption will remain if we keep the same system in place. With technological advancements there is no excuse to upgrade our grid, upgrade everything and properly account for what our government is spending money on. Do we really need representatives if the government is made to be trustless? Meaning without representatives we can actually trust our government knowing that it can't be corrupted. It is so obvious that just sending money at problems and expecting people not to act in their own self-interest is destroying any hope for people who actually need it. Let people keep their money and you will see local economies flourish. Eventually there will be less competition for grant money because more and more people will be able to afford to get a good education.

When we talk about and acknowledge the capitalist extraction of the health and wellbeing of communities where the likes of Big Pharma, Big Coal, and Big Timber devasted their regions by leaving them to die, racism has nothing to do with what happened. Government regulation reinforced the self-interest of the people in charge of these companies to find other regions to establish and develop. Of course these corporations are not innocent either, as they lobby for government to give them what they want all the time. So where does racism fit into all this?

The way the authors write about race tells me how important they feel about it, which is a defect in the logic of many lefties, in which that race is the forefront issue of any political situation. Where everything is "Black" vs white. They even go as far as to differentiate the capitalization, as if white people have no culture or are inferior in some way - lefties love to place black Americans on a pedestal, spouting on and on about how they are oppressed and how Black power is a sign of resistance and justice. In the past this was the case, but liberals tend to focus on these things without really learning from the past. Why for example was there an Emmett Till Antilynching act passed in 2022? This obviously should have been something passed decades ago, so why in 2022 would this be a bill other than for the criminals in government to be able to bate the public into thinking they support black people? This is another example of the liberal façade where they pander about race while turning around and disenfranchising those same people from having any means of a good life. I tend to think of myself as socially liberal, but modern day "leftism" for lack of a better term seems to refuse to acknowledge their own hypocritical nature, where they seem unable to see black people as fellow Americans, and instead they are just Black people and victims. It's like they say, if the horseshoe fits...

Another section where the authors seem to contradict themselves is when they discuss the nation's natural disaster policy and it's lack of help whatsoever in the poorest areas of the country where black people live in moldy houses. The authors say that structural racism is deeply embedded in the policy, but the policies that lead to disparate outcomes are not overtly racist. Either the policy is structurally racist or it isn't. I think people like these guys just like throwing around the term racism at everything and then get confused about actual racist situations, maybe it's confusing to them when it's the Obama administration that upholds these practices? The contradiction continues as they elaborate that these policies only have a racist impact because federal funding doesn't take into account the history of ownership, but it's also racist because it does take into account history of ownership? This is an example of the mind twisters that "lefties" spin to make sense of their predetermined truths about structural racism. To reiterate, the problem is government bureaucracy, and the solution is free-markets. Only then will the disenfranchised prosper.

Every other instance of structural racism they list are corporations taking advantage of people. They are at least right when they say it is a lot of shitty policy that screws people over. But it's just funny how they continue to contradict themselves on this point. They state that there is no "grand conspiracy" against black people, "it is instead a toxic alchemy of government policy, market forces, good and not so good intentions, and pre-existing differences in wealth and other resources. When combined, these pressures-what might be called the invisible hand of structural racism- all push in one direction: toward the deepening of inequalities." So if there is no grand conspiracy how can you turn around and say structural racism exists? I agree there is this toxic alchemy that all together form a boot on the necks of American citizens, but, again, I think they just like throwing around the term "structural racism" like it means something. Despite all this, this book made me think a lot, and for that I give it three stars.

[Jerry Jennings · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Injustice of Place: Uncovering the Legacy of Poverty in America by Kathryn J. Edin, H. Luke Shaefer, and Timothy J. Nelson (2023) is a unique look at the current state of poverty in America through the lens of place. The authors set out to study inequality, severe poverty, ill health (including children), and limited mobility by zip codes in America. Further the authors chose to use the words “disadvantaged” as being more accurate than “poverty”. They wanted to study “place-based disadvantage” because poverty, if measured by income alone tells a different story than place-based disadvantage.

The authors tell a story of deep poverty — that means living on less than half the poverty level, having a reduced life expectancy, having a lack of social mobility from an intergenerational point of view (the likelihood that a child who grows up low-income in a community can rise to the middle class or beyond in adulthood), and low birth weight. The last measure is a huge predictor of the child’s future health outcomes.

To do their research they assigned each of the 500 largest cities and all 3,200 counties in the U.S. a composite score and put them on the map. What they found was that the most disadvantaged places are mostly rural — not big cities. These places have a very small number of “haves” and a huge class of “have-nots.” One of their hallmark characteristics is that they have or had a single industry (think coal mines, cotton fields, tobacco fields, small factory towns).

The authors also researched the most advantaged communities in America using the same criteria. The most advantaged places are in pockets of the Midwest with a strong middle class and diverse small industry — with no “Kings” of anything.

The data that was gathered and analyzed led the authors to want to know. So they went to the towns the data identified and interviewed citizens.

Bringing data together with firsthand narratives makes an engaging and powerfully stimulating book. The Injustice of Place: Uncovering the Legacy of Poverty in America is likely to lead to an expanded awareness of poverty as not just urban, not just a situational disruption to a life, not just about income and much more. It is likely to lead to more research and hopefully new and effected answers to the question of what America might do to reduce poverty.

Kirkus in their starred review reports that this book is, “A powerful, alarming portrayal of how poverty remains entrenched in unfairly forgotten places across America” – I agree.

The Harvard Bookstore writes on the website, “Three of the nation’s top researchers known for taking on key mysteries about poverty deliver a new, multi-dimensional way of measuring deep disadvantage in every county in the nation as well as in its 500 most-populated cities.” They describe the book as, “A sweeping and surprising new understanding of America’s places of most extreme poverty, drawn from original data-driven research.”

I highly recommend this book.

[Emily Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

So, full disclosure, I am one of the research assistants who contributed to this book. I got my copy earlier this week (I guess that is one benefit for being an academic in the summer who is constantly in the office) and couldn’t wait to read the final product!

This book takes us all over the country (Appalachia, the Mississippi Delta, south Texas, and the PeeDee/Cotton Belt) and back in time (Daniel Boone, Trail of Tears, the Civil War, Reconstruction, the New Deal, and Civil Rights Era). The book covers huge and heavy topics throughout its chapters: education and segregation, addiction and social connection, violence, corruption, climate change and structural racism, and advocacy. These are themes you hear often in the news, but what is insightful and wonderful about this book is it examines how these processes play out in settings that aren’t often covered in the national eye, namely the communities in the rural United States, which are the most disadvantaged according to the novel “Index of Deep Disadvantage.”

The book intertwines early research from groundbreaking scholars, current social science research from multiple disciplines, historical and contemporary archival newspaper analyses, interviews with have and have-nots in each community, statistics, and ethnographic observations. The book describes with vivid details and storytelling the uniqueness of each place, but also the commonalities across these “internal colonies.” Some of the connections are surprising and every chapter I learned something new. I just wish there were more chapters to read!

The book also offers insight into what makes places work, what locals are doing to address challenges, and importantly what we as a country can do to right some wrongs. It is a must read for anyone remotely interested in the inequality, injustice, history, and politics in the United States. I am very grateful and humbled to be part of this team.