Poverty

The New York Review- White Poverty: How Exposing Myths About Race and Class Can Reconstruct American Democracy by Reverend Dr. William J. Barber II with Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove. Liveright, 270 pp., $22.99 

Reverend Barber wears many hats. He is the president of Repairers of the Breach and cochair of the Poor People’s Campaign, both nationwide anti-poverty organizations, and the founding director of the Center for Public Theology and Public Policy at Yale Divinity School. (I have participated in events with the Poor People’s Campaign and have promoted its work.) But in his latest book, White Poverty, Barber is simply a “watchman,” one who must “cry aloud, spare not,” as the prophet Isaiah exhorted. “I’ve written this book to ask America to look its poor—all its poor—in the face,” Barber writes.